When social workers become involved with families who are having problems, they use assessments to help them find out what the issues are. This will help them to see how they can work with the family to make things better.
Social care services would normally only become involved with families whose problems or needs are complex. They may require more support than universal services, like schools, health visitors or youth workers can provide using the Early Help Assessment. This may also be the case where they've got child protection concerns.
An assessment involves gathering details about a child or young person’s circumstances. This is so we can get a picture of their needs and whether they’re likely to be at risk.
The assessment we carry out is called the Barnsley single assessment.
What happens during a Barnsley single assessment?
This is an assessment of a family’s current situation. It helps us to find out if we need to provide any support and agree how we should do this.
Unless we have concerns for the safety of a child, we need the family’s consent to carry out an assessment. We'll aim to complete some assessments in 20 working days. Sometimes more complex situations may take up to 45 days.
We'll involve all the relevant family members. If they’re old enough, children themselves can contribute to the assessment. We’ll also talk to any extended family members, like grandparents, aunts, or uncles, especially if they have significant input. We'll also speak to other services involved with the family, such as schools and health visitors.
At the end of the assessment, we’ll be clear that either:
- We don’t need to provide further ongoing support to the family.
- We need to draw up a plan of how we intend to support the family. We’ll continue to review this on a regular basis until the family no longer needs our support.
A copy of our assessment will be available to families. We'll also share this with services already involved in the 'team around the child', if one exists.
We won’t share families' personal details with other agencies if they prefer us not to. We may not be able to keep details confidential if we think the child is at risk from harm.
Where children are at risk of significant harm, initial assessments can lead to a:
- child protection investigation
- child protection case conference