 |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
|
||||
| ACF Home | Services | Working with ACF | Policy/Planning | About ACF | ACF News | HHS Home | |||||
Questions?
|
Privacy
|
Site Index
|
Contact Us
|
Download Reader™
|
Print
|
|---|
Comprehensive Family Assessment
Assessment is the process of gathering information that will support service planning and decision-making regarding the safety, permanency, and well-being of children, youth, and families. It begins with the first contact with a family and continues until the case is closed. Assessment is based on the assumption that for services to be relevant and effective, workers must systematically gather information and continuously evaluate the needs of children and parents/caregivers as well as the ability of family members to use their strengths to address their problems.
Many assessments are conducted for different purposes throughout a family's involvement with the child welfare system. For example, initial assessments conducted during intake are used to assist in determining the immediate safety of and the future risk of harm to a child. Assessments of safety and risk are also used to guide decisions when new concerns are identified and before major case decisions like reunification. But safety and risk assessments alone are not sufficient for understanding the range of issues related to the present concerns. There is a need to gather information on broader issues that will affect each family's ability to resolve concerns that led to its involvement with the child welfare system. It is also critical to gather information on the strengths, resources, supports, connections, and capacities that will help families nurture their children and keep them safe.
Comprehensive family assessment is the process of identifying, gathering, and weighing information to understand the significant factors affecting the child's safety, permanency, and well-being, the parental protective capacities, and the family's ability to assure the safety of their children.
When Is Comprehensive Family Assessment Done?
Comprehensive family assessment is not necessary for every referral. When reports of child maltreatment are screened in as meeting state statutory requirements, the initial assessment work focuses on safety and risk. These assessments lead to decisions about the need for child protection services. If child protective services are needed, a comprehensive family assessment is usually the best means to obtain information to guide decisions on service planning.
As part of the decision to open a case for services, regardless of whether the child is placed outside the home, a comprehensive family assessment is undertaken as part of the development of a useful service plan. If the child welfare agency is responsible for serving the family, a comprehensive assessment is crucial. Identification of risk and safety factors and implementation of a plan to manage these issues in the short-term promotes further engagement of the family and the opportunity for a comprehensive family assessment.
Over the course of a family's involvement with child welfare, circumstances often change. These changes result from the various factors in the life of the child, youth, and/or the family as well as the effectiveness of the services provided through the service plan. Furthermore, additional information may become known to the agency and affect the plan for service delivery. Therefore, assessments should be completed not only at the outset of the service planning process, but also revised and updated periodically throughout the child, youth's and family's involvement with the child welfare agency.
Information about the children and the family is often available only as the relationship is built among the social worker, other service providers, and the family. Thus, early engagement of families and children in the helping relationship is a necessary prerequisite to developing a full and accurate understanding of the circumstances that create the need for child welfare services.
Comprehensive assessment information has to be updated whenever major changes in family circumstances occur and at points of key decision-making on a case. These include:
- Decisions about in-home services
- Placement decisions
- Reunification decisions
- Decisions related to changing the service plan (or case goal)
- Decisions related to permanent placement for adolescents and eligibility for Chafee program activities and services
- Formal reviews of progress, including court reviews
- Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) decisions
- Case closure
When important changes occur within the family or when significant information emerges through the service provision process, whether by the child welfare agency or others, workers should update assessment information. This assumes there is a regular process of communication between child welfare and other service providers, contractual or otherwise, on the changing conditions within the family. Significant new information may also trigger concurrent safety and risk assessment to determine if the child can remain at home.
Ongoing assessment, through regular communication between caseworkers and families as well as with other service providers and the court, becomes critical for many other reasons:
New information about the child and family is often available only as the relationship is built between the social worker, other providers, and the family;
- Significant new information may be learned through the service provision process (by the child welfare or other service providers); and
- Important changes may occur as a result of the planned interventions, or new problems may develop.
A systematic re-assessment of needs and strengths provides useful documentation on progress, risk reduction, justification of permanency decisions, or requests that may be needed to inform the family, worker, supervisor or the court.
Fundamentals of Comprehensive Family Assessment
Comprehensive family assessments form the basis of effective practice in child welfare. These assessments help workers meet the needs of families and use resources efficiently. If workers are to engage and motivate families to change, the process of assessment needs to be relevant to the family's life.
These guidelines are based on important fundamentals related to how the assessments are done and how they are used. These, in turn, reflect family-centered principles of practice.
Family involvement
An effective comprehensive family assessment must be completed in
partnership with families. Family involvement in assessment fosters
engagement by enhancing communication between the agency and the
family about how the family got to this point, what has to change,
what services are needed, the expectations for who will do what by
when, the time frames, and what alternative resources might exist
within the extended family and social network to address the
safety, permanency, and well-being of the child or youth.
The social worker's ability to engage with families is crucial, and staff must be trained and supported in this work. Engagement requires an understanding of the clients' need for a sense of reciprocity and shared power in the relationship. Because in child protective services the worker-client relationship is inherently unequal, particular care must be given to attempting to achieve a relationship characterized by trust. The social worker must convey that family members' active involvement is wanted, needed, and valued in the process of assessment and service planning.
The quality of family involvement is related to their “stage of change”— their readiness for accepting the reality of their situation and their willingness to change. Family involvement is therefore dynamic, evolving as their readiness and capacity to change evolve. Understanding stages of change helps caseworkers make important decisions; for example, there are service plan implications if a parent refuses to or is unable to recognize problems in his or her parenting. Moreover, assessing stages of change helps caseworkers in engaging the parent to move forward in specific ways in the change process. The bottom line, however, remains the importance of family engagement no matter what the stage of change.
|
Families are an essential source of information on what is affecting the safety, permanency, and well-being of their children. Understanding the family's views about their needs as well as their attitudes toward addressing these needs is critical in comprehensive family assessment. Gathering information on the family's perception of the problem, even when the family does not recognize or denies the existence of a problem, is crucial. This perception is usually affected by the family's cultural background and life experiences.
Families and extended family members are also a valuable source of information for ongoing assessment. Their views on which services and supports are helpful and which are not as well as their perceptions of why interventions are working or not working are essential. Even if their perceptions are incomplete or biased, they have to be sought out to gain a perspective for realistic service planning.
Family meetings are a particularly effective strategy to promote family involvement in initial and ongoing assessments. Family team meetings emphasize inclusion and promote the active participation of family members as collaborative partners in the initial and ongoing process. Policies and practices regarding family team meetings vary from state to state. When family team meetings are to be utilized, caseworkers need training to develop the skills that support the incorporation of such meetings into daily practice.
Individualization
Although some of the same factors may be present among families who enter the child welfare system (for example, substance abuse, mental illness, poverty), each family is unique in the way these factors affect their ability to protect their individual members. Workers need to be careful not have preconceived ideas of the needs of individual families and look for information to confirm these ideas. All the available information should be considered to see how it fits together to describe each family.
Through the process of comprehensive family assessment, the worker gathers information on the impact of specific needs and protective factors in each family. Families vary in their motivation to change, the context and duration of the issues that affect the safety, permanency, and well-being of their children, and the cultural context within which they parent. These variations must be taken into consideration along with their values, communication patterns, and functioning. This individualization carries through to service delivery—each family as a unit (and their individual members) should receive services that address specific areas in need of change in the context of the protective factors and resources identified.
Individualizing our response requires an agency commitment to distinguish between what the family needs and what the agency generally offers. We cannot simply give families what we have rather than what they need. It requires the child welfare agency to work with its community stakeholders to ensure that needed services are developed and made available in all the state's jurisdictions.
Cross-program focus
Families who enter the child welfare system often have multiple and intersecting needs. The variety of needs that affect the vulnerability of children can only be met by a combination of programs that serve children, youth, and families. The very definition of comprehensive in comprehensive family assessment suggests that most of the time, many programs must work together to address families' complex needs.
A cross-program focus is useful in the family assessment as well as in the coordinated delivery of services from a variety of programs and agencies. Jurisdictions sometimes accomplish this through multidisciplinary team meetings or other mechanisms of joint assessment and service planning such as case conferencing.
Other agencies are often already involved with the families who come to the attention of child protection and therefore have information that can contribute to a more comprehensive assessment of needs. These agencies can also learn from the comprehensive family assessment how to do a better job of individualizing their services.
It is the responsibility of the child welfare agency to assure that all of the assessment information and services included in the service plan— whether provided by them or others—are working together to address commonly understood needs and goals. In addition, all agencies working with the family need to have ongoing communication to update the family assessment, discuss progress towards the goals, and inform the decision-making process.
Use of assessment information for service planning and decision making
Although the child welfare agency is not the only agency providing services, not all issues facing the family need to be addressed in the service plan—only those impacting safety, permanency, and well-being as they relate to the reasons for the agencys' involvement with the family. These are the factors that will govern the development of the comprehensive assessment and the service plan.
The comprehensive family assessment and the service plan are the organizing processes and instruments for the coordinated provision of services and supports. Decisions regarding service provision, placement, reunification, concurrent planning, and case closure, among others, have to relate directly to the initial and ongoing comprehensive assessment of the needs, progress, and current resources of the family.
Engaging children, youth, and families in the development of the service plan has a significant impact on the family's understanding of expectations and their commitment to make the necessary changes.