Assessing men who may be a sexual risk to children is a challenging task, particularly when the man has no convictions and practitioners are trying to make sense of allegations made against him to decide whether he can safely have contact with children. This requires considerable and well developed assessment skills and can be emotionally challenging for the staff involved. The stakes are high for the families assessed too, who may be anxious about the outcome of the assessment or feel like they are being judged. This can make them defensive with staff. These factors create a difficult context for any assessment service.
Based on the NSPCC experience of implementing Assessing the Risk: Protecting the Child, these are some of the challenges that commissioners and practitioners should be aware of, along with suggestions of how to overcome them.
Having experienced, supported staff is critical
This is the number one thing to get right. Providing training and guidance alone will not be enough for staff without previous experience of assessing sexual risk. It takes years of experience for staff to have the practical skills and confidence to know how to ask the right questions of families and then know how to make sense of the information they are told. Without access to appropriate support this can feel daunting for new staff.
- Co-working with an experienced practitioner helps less experienced staff learn the practical skills and techniques needed.
- Having a mix of skills is also useful. For example, probation staff with experience of assessing sex offenders and social workers who can focus on the child’s needs.
- If these skills aren’t available within the service, seconding in experienced staff or getting mentoring from another service could help.
Incorporate the views of the child into the assessment
Understandably, these assessments are focused on the risks posed by the man, but including the views of the protective parent/carer and children can give new information or different perspectives. The views and wishes of children are sometimes based on the opinion of their parents or the referring social worker. By directly speaking to children, we’ve had examples of them giving a different view to the adults involved and this changing the outcome of the assessment.
However, sometimes it’s hard to do this if children are very young or are worried about what they say.
- Assessors should try to find other ways of including the child’s perspective.
- This could include working with someone who already has a good working relationship with the child so they talk to the child as part of the assessment.
- Or use other information about the child, for example school or health visitor records.
Reports need to be accessible to families
Assessment reports are often pitched at social workers or courts. However, families also need to see them to understand what is being asked of them and why. They can find the reports long and difficult to understand and find it hard to see their life history in writing. Some can also feel that their views haven’t been accurately reflected.
- Use clear, accessible language, avoiding the use of jargon in reports.
- The conclusion and recommendations should link back to known behaviours or things families said in the sessions.
- Assessors should meet face to face with families to go through the report and explain what it means for them.
Recommendations should be practical and achievable
We found social workers who referred families for assessment usually agreed with the recommendations made, but they were not always implemented. This was because appropriate services were not available locally or social work teams did not always have the skills to carry out the suggested actions.
- Use tools and resources to help ensure recommendations are implemented. For example, worksheets to use with a child to give them strategies about keeping safe.
- Alternatively, a post assessment service could continue the relationship with families to work through the recommendations.
Some reports need to be independent
Being able to carry out assessments in-house could save money. However, there will always be a need for some reports to be independent, such as court reports. Social workers said they felt more confident in making decisions if their view had been confirmed in writing by someone independent, so it could also be useful for more complex cases. This could be achieved by seconding an experienced staff member from another agency into children’s services, who could then write reports on behalf of their parent agency when needed.
Despite the challenges, these assessment services are clearly valued by social workers who may be struggling to know what to do with these kinds of cases. They can also help protective parents/carers become more aware of sexual risk and take steps to protect their children.
Emma Belton is leading an evaluation of the NSPCC’s assessment service, Assessing the Risk, Protecting the Child. You can find out more about other NSPCC evaluations of assessment tools and interventions at www.nspcc.org.uk/evidencehub.
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