Common Assessment Framework In Childrens Services

Common Assessment Framework In squirtrens mendmentsWhy was the Common Assessment Framework introduced in Childrens Services, what does it attempt to achieve and how fortunate is it in doing this?This essay will discuss why Common Assessment Framework was introduced to Childrens Services, what it attempts to achieve and whether or not it has been successful, the concept behind it and briefly, the difficulties in running(a)s with opposite health professionals to get the Common Assessment Framework to do what it was set come out of the closet to do.The E really Child Matters Green Paper proposed the introduction of a Common Assessment Framework (CAF) as a central element of the strategy for fostering children, young populate and their families. (DfES 2004)Common Assessment Framework is a standard assessment shit to be used by all professionals functional with children for assessments and referral (British Journal of societal Work (2009). The reform agenda in Childrens Servic e was catalysed by the public inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie (Laming 2003), an eight year old West Afri ass girl who was abused and murdered in the UK in 2000 as a result of extreme cruelty and neglect by her great-aunt and the her partner, who were her guardians.An inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie (Laming 2003) exposed a failure to site in place the necessary basic procedures to protect her. Factors identified included lack of early intervention, poor co-ordination, failure to share reading and the absence of each unmatchable with a strong sense of accountability. As a result, the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) was one of the measures introduced low the changes in child protection policies and the green paper, Every Child Matters (2003) at that placefore was introduced to set out proposals for major changes in childrens programmes to allow every child, whatever their background or their circumstances, to have the needed support towards the achievement of a better outcome in the following key areasbeing healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving making a dictatorial division and achieving economic well-being (DoH 2003)The design, in conjunction with the maven professional and better information sharing policies and procedures to change the method by which run are delivered, moving the focus from dealings with the consequence of difficulties in childrens lives, towards a more than proactive preventative and precautionary measure. CAF is intended to be used for children who have supererogatory needs which may not be complex or severe enough to require statutory intervention. It is for use in accompaniments where there are concerns with how a child is progressing in any way (raised by the child, a heighten or a professional), the childs needs are unclear, the childs needs are broader than a professionals own attend to can address or where it is thought that CAF would serve to identify the childs needs.The draft Common A ssessment Framework was developed in late 2004 with its revised version published in 2005. CAF is a new, more appraise approach for assessing the needs of children for service and deciding how those needs should be addressed and met. It is meant for children with additional needs that is, children at risk of poor outcomes (DfES, 2005b,p1). CAF is designed to be evidence-establish , counsel on needs and strengths, rather than concerns as seen in the British Journal of social work (2009) 39, 1197-1217.The three stated vexs of CAF are to support earlier intervention, improve multi-agency working by, for example embedding a parking lot language of assessment reduce bureaucracy for families (DfES, 2005b, p1.)CAF is not meant to replace many other assessment schedules used in the various agencies, such as the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families documentation, but the g everywherenment would like the CAF to represent the main assessment tool to support inter-agency referr al and multi-agency working (DfES, 2005b, p 2).Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is one of the contributing elements to the following both of which are outlined in the Childrens Act 2004, the delivery of integrated services the support inter-agency co-operation and the safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. emailprotectedHow are children services organised? What is the key legislation that governs children and childrens services,The aim of Every Child Matters is to have a few agencies working together bearing in mind their professional boundaries to liaise and support children from 0 to 19, using a simple language to meet the needs of these children. It came up with the structured Childrens System (ICS), the Contact focus and the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), they all have different systems and style of working but have one common aim which is to improve the well being and to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people.When a child is seen as suffered neglect, abuse or has any server difficulty or being looked after under the Childrens Act 1989, their needs are assessed using the Framework for Assessment of Children in Need and their families. The Integrated Child System (ICS) is used at this stage, this is done by putting information together step by step and recording information close both the child and family, where a thorough assessment is required an in depth information is needed at this stage and must be self-contained in a way that can set as the basis for decision making and can be used for different purposes. ICS is supported by information technology and its the basis of the electronic social care record for children. The IT system is in any case known as ISC. Contact Point is a desist method to find out who else is working with a particular service user, making it a lighter way to liaise and support, it is a major tool Every Child Matters uses to deliver a better service to Children and young people, having said that Contact Point only holds a little information nearly a child, parent, practitioners providing services to the child and carers until their 18th birthday, except for exceptional cases for example children with mental health and sexual health problems where their details are still held under sever security. Common Assessment Framework on the other hand comes in as soon as assessment is needed at the very early stage and deciding what action to take. It gives practitioners the chance to put together and record information roughly a child or young mortal with additional needs in an orderly, straight forward and simple. Work start from then and practitioners begin to look out for the needs and what should be done and its dealt with. CAF makes practitioners crossways all agencies, after the required training to go according to the procedures to achieve a dependable assessment that can be used by everyone dealing with the case. The national IT system to s upport CAF will be developed. (eCAF). This will befriend authorised practitioners to electronically create, share and store CAF within the agencies. Unlike Contact Point CAF only holds the information about some young people and children, with consent, and for a limited period of time. Both Contact Point and CAF were created to for use within childrens services, their goal is to help children with additional needs get the help and support they need, its a tool to make easy early intervention and help deal with additional needs before they get out of control and become more difficult to resolve. CAF and ICS has a common method to assessment, they both have a common way of collecting data about a child or young person around the domains of developmental needs of a child parent capacity and family and environmental concomitantors. CAF and ICS are supported by technology where as Contact Point is a basically technology solution www.evertchildmatters.gov.ukWhy was CAF introduced and wh ats its aimThe green paper, Every Child Matters, proposed the introduction of a national CommonAssessment Framework (CAF) as an important part of a strategy for destiny children and young people to achieve the five priority outcomes ofbeing healthy enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy life-style staying safe being protected from harm and neglect enjoying and achieving getting the most out of life and developing the skills for adulthood making a positive contribution being involved with the community and society and not engaging in anti-social or offending behaviour economic well-being not being prevented by economic disadvantage from achieving their full potential in life.The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) was decided upon based on the five basic keys. By the help of a lead professional and better information shearing procedure CAF was designed from the concerns that the existing procedures for identifying and responding to the needs of children who a re not achieving the five outcomes identified in Every Child Matters do not work as effectively as they were meant to, to bring a better way of how services could be delivered, collectible to the fact that services have in the past been delivered based on dealing with the consequences of difficulties in childrens lives to preventing things from taking the wrong route from the start. Its main focus is to pass to the fact that every child gets the five keys. It is also created to help assessing children with additional needs which are not too complex or sever as to demand external intervention such as statutory intervention. CAFs aim is to give a method of assessment to give support to early intervention, to help decide what needs to be done at an early stage rather than later, its to provide good and a lot more evidence based referral to targeted and specialist services. CAF is created to enhance on joint working and communication between practitioners in a common language of asses sment and views and as to how it could be resolved, it was also designed to improve the coordination and consistency around assessments leading to fewer and shorter specialist assessments. CAF was designed to help to decide whether other specialist assessments are needed and if so provide information to help get it done. It was to give a clear picture of a child or young persons needs to be create up over time and with the right consent shared among professionals.Has CAF achieved its aim?(positives and negatives)Through CAF some practitioner began to accept sheared responsibility for children and young people with additional needs. Apart from having to get parents consent to be part of the assessment procedure some practitioners and managers are in view that in conjunction with other services CAF has a lot more prospects in support to early intervention mostly universal services. Some also had doubt as to whether there was enough funds to meet the problems raised and the requiremen t of CAF.It is apparent that CAF has had mixed responses. One estimation of path-finding authorities revealed that practitioners and managers believed it has enabled a more rigorous follow-through of service delivery, promotion of better multi-agency working and were optimistic that it would eventually pull down thresholds for service receipt (Brandon et al., 2006). The introduction of CAF like everything has its strengths which in superior general gives a positive view seen by all, however, others have expressed their concerns about its been too formal to some organizations as descriptive tyranny, restricting the narrative making sense of the situation the difficulties of various professionals and practitioners with other skills and expectations terminate CAF differently or partially in the assessment process (Garrett, 2008 Gilligan and Manby, 2008 White et al, 2008). CAF in the East Riding for example is alone aimed as a minimal level involvement which will help use universal s ervices to manage early problems and deject wrong referrals to Social Care. The major intentional level for engagement agencies with the CAF has broader responsibility than CAF alone, covering all included services provision. The different agencies involved is broad, but some agencies are little active in attending meetings and buy in, in terms of resource input is limited. However, there some problems which littleen the positive involvement, and makes CAF less effective, these include less involvement of some agencies in terms of resources input. Practitioners were of view that CAF was not reducing the need foe reassessment, giving examples of some parents forced to repeat their stories during reassessments, I can understand sometimes practitioners would just want to be sure that things have not changed since the last assessment, but the public is of the view that CAF always has the updated information at any time needed, but for luck of training and human error we find out that CAF still is not doing what it was set out. As well as distracting twaddle-telling way of writing reports, the CAF writers often found that the boxes did not help them adequately to characterize the child and parents. The format of the CAF was opposed by some professionals and practitioners working with it.. merely some professionals used the language of need, whereas over 80 per cent talked about challenges. In addition to the descriptive demands, CAF forms also makeCAF doesnt tell a story it feels like school exams, multiple choice, you can tick the boxes with the right answer, but it really doesnt give you er the er .The story. It is about narrative isnt it. Its about peoples lives. It isnt about um dividing a life up into a lot of small boxes. And when you put all those boxes together it will be EQUAL to the narrative As seen in (BJofSW 2009 39, 1197-1217)Sure start worker said I prefer a blank sheet of paper to express by thoughts ibid..Upon a period of over a decades work in human services organizations, Gubrium et al describe what they call the descriptive tyrannies of people forms, forms used in one way or the other to describe and categorize people coming to the attention of human service professionals, hence, for Gubrium et al, the relations of form completion to human activity is two-fold. They are come to with what sorts of descriptions the forms invite or the reportorial expectations assumed to underlie acceptance organizational description (Gubirum et al, 1989, p 197). What may be the rational, moral and artful capacities of form-completers? That is, what wiggle room (Erickson, 2004, p, 20) do they have with these descriptive demands? (Oxford University press 2008). Gubrium et al argue that, completed forms like any mode of description, have transformative effects. They do not simply describe events as they occurred in real time. For example they may contain mutually exclusive categorizations, which demands that the form-computer suspend disbe lief that only one category can apply at any one time, bearing in mind that CAF is designed to have evidence-based , focused on needs and strengths, rather than concerns. Professionals are encouraged to evaluate strengths, needs, actions and solutions for children crosswise three domains derived from the framework for Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (DoH 2000).Please ignore the recommendation below still have that to do I have it written down will type it out tomorrow, Im working in the dark because my landlady forgot to get some electricity and my eyes are hurting now. My lecture ends at 11 so will finish it all with the Ref..Recommendation and conclusionIt is clear to me that the purpose of the CAF and its work load is to ensure that professionals attend to, and record information deemed most relevant to their primary activities as distinct at this historical moment. The CAF is also an over view presented as a complete professional judgement. However, I have sho wn above that the demands of the form cause information to be ordered in preferred ways, which can be unintelligible. I have talked about the fact that CAF constrains professional practice in particular ways, it is indeed designed to exert its own rigid demands, which can feel harsh to the one person completing the form. CAF in particular relies on the assumption that it can foster uniform professional application and an ordinary (White, Hall and Peckover, 2009). Laming (2009) still recommended that we need to involve more agencies to make the workload easier and effective and saidthe use of Common Assessment Framework CAF needs to be further promoted with Agencies.To achieve the reason it was introduced practitioners and everyone involved in using CAF must be fully aware of what its all about and must be fully trained to know the pros and cons of what CAF wants to achieve, other Agencies working in line with CAF must also keep their systems and information updated to suit the needs of the children and young people who might need this service to also live the lives they deserve. Parents and the general public must be fully aware of what CAF is hoping to achieve in that way they dont feel pressured if they are called upon to give their approval before an assessment is carried out for their children.