Identifying and assessing child neglect can be difficult, and monitoring progress – or the lack of it – can be even trickier. Yet this is crucial for making the right decision about a child’s welfare. Tools like the Graded Care Profile are designed to help, and the NSPCC’s evaluation has shown it to be effective in practice. But what can it tell us about how to carry out assessments? Here’s what we learned.
Help parents engage by identifying their strengths as well as weaknesses
The strength of the Graded Care Profile is that it enables professionals to identify what parents are doing well, as well as areas for improvement. Our evaluation found that presenting concerns in the context of positive feedback, where their care was meeting expectations, helped parents engage in the assessment process and respond constructively to suggestions.
Keep the focus on the child
It is crucial to focus on the experience from the child’s perspective, with an emphasis on the child’s needs, the level of care they are receiving and the impact on them, while acknowledging family and environmental factors. What is it like to be a child in that home? Where possible, involve children in the assessment process and gather their views.
Take a flexible approach
Co-working with another person, where it took place with the Graded Care Profile, had a number of benefits. Our practitioners reported it could enable a more thorough assessment and a more co-ordinated approach, where the other professional was from a different agency. However, it is recognised that in many cases this won’t be possible. Unannounced visits were also seen as helpful, particularly where there were concerns around disguised compliance (pdf).
Use family friendly language
This was a criticism of the Graded Care Profile from social workers and parents – that the language was too complex and formal. It is vital to use language the family understands and that you, the practitioner, feel comfortable using. That’s why we have produced an updated version of the tool, Graded Care Profile 2, developed with the author Prakash Srivastava and based on our evaluation findings.
Collect different types of evidence from different sources
As part of the profile, social workers observed family routines such as meal times, as well as parent-child interactions. There were also observations of the condition of the home and children’s clothes, and investigations of refrigerators and kitchen cupboards to look at the quality and quantity of food available. This was balanced with discussions with the family. Gathering different types of evidence from different perspectives was seen as an effective way to gather evidence in relation to neglect.
Don’t be afraid to use a scoring system
The Graded Care Profile uses a scoring system, where the practitioner rates the care provided by parents on a scale of 1-5 across different aspects of neglect. While this could be initially off-putting for some, it was found to be beneficial in a number of ways. It meant neglect was quantified and made more visible. It also helped parents, other people working with the family and even courts understand professionals’ concerns. Colour coding of the scoring was also very useful, especially in explaining findings of the assessment to the family.
Think about both the breadth and depth of assessment
Ensure you cover all aspects of parental care, and explore each area with sufficient depth, even in situations where there is a specific concern about one area. The Graded Care Profile helped practitioners to do this by setting out four domains for assessment – physical care, safety, emotional care and developmental care, such as if a child is praised for doing something good.
Ensure clear, focused case planning
The Graded Care Profile enabled social workers to be focused in their case planning, with specific targets that were achievable within realistic timescales. Parents were given specific areas to address and different aspects of parenting were broken down, making expectations and the timescales in which they should be achieved clear. Social workers, and parents themselves, felt this motivated them to make positive changes.
Carry out a follow up assessment
The Graded Care Profile is designed to be used again after a period of time in order to measure if targets have been met. Where this was done, it was seen as helpful by both professionals and families in charting the progress made, or lack of it.
Visit the NSPCC website for more about Graded Care Profile 2 and how you can get involved in the NSPCC’s pilot.
Content on this page is produced and controlled by the NSPCC, sponsor of the Guardian Social Care Network practice hub.
