Common Assessment Framework (CAF)

The Department for Education & Skills (DfES) has introduced the Common Assessment Framework as part of the Every Child Matters: Change for Children Programme.

DfES write (on  )www.everychildmatters.gov.uk:

The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) for Children and Young People is a key part of the strategy to shift the focus from dealing with the consequences of difficulties in children's lives to preventing things from going wrong in the first place. It is a nationally standardised approach to conducting an assessment of the needs of a child or young person and deciding how those needs should be met.

The CAF will promote more effective, earlier identification of children's additional needs and improve multi-agency working. It is intended to provide a simple, non-bureaucratic process for a holistic assessment of a child's needs, taking account of the individual, family and community.

The CAF has been developed for use by practitioners in all agencies so that they can communicate and work more effectively together. Information will follow the child and build up a picture over time. The CAF will encourage greater sharing of information between practitioners, where consent is given. It will:

• ·Promote earlier intervention where additional needs are observed
• ·Reduce the number and duration of different assessment processes that children and young people need to undergo
• ·Improve the quality and consistency of referrals between agencies by making them more evidence-based
• ·Help embed a common language about the needs of children
• ·Enable information to follow the child
• ·Promote the appropriate sharing of information

The CAF is particularly suitable for use in universal services (health and education), to identify and tackle problems before they become serious. Using common assessment processes should streamline relationships between schools and specialist support services. Staff will need to be familiar with the CAF, which will support school's own ability to identify and deal with additional needs at an earlier stage. They will use the new database as an effective tool for making contact with other practitioners. Key staff, not all teachers, will form part of a wider team with other professionals to address individual children's complex needs.

If a common assessment suggests that a child has needs that require input from more than one service, it will help if one practitioner acts in the role of lead professional, to:

• ·Provide a single point of contact, who children, young people and families can trust, and who is able to support them in making choices and in navigating their way through the system
  
• ·Ensure that children and families get appropriate interventions when needed, which are well planned, regularly reviewed and effectively delivered
  
• ·Reduce overlap and inconsistency from other practitioners

The CAF will help practitioners undertake assessments in a more consistent way. In many cases, it will just formalise current practice. With the right attributes and/or training, we expect that practitioners in any agency will be capable of undertaking a common assessment. Where the assessment indicates that the child has urgent or complex needs, requiring specialist assessment and intervention, the common assessment information will feed into the specialist assessment process.

In Torbay, much activity is taking place to implement the Common Assessment Framework:

A Common Assessment Framework Implementation Board (CAFIB) has been established to manage the implementation of CAF across Torbay. The Board is made up from staff from all agencies working with children, young people and their families across Torbay, from pre-birth (midwifery) to school age and beyond (such as Connexions, Housing etc)

The Common Assessment Framework will be introduced initially with a CAF Pilot in Paignton. This will introduce the CAF and multi-agency working within a containable locality for a trial period before rolling-out this new way of working across all of Torbay.  

The Pilot will test a number of strands of the Common Assessment Framework, including the CAF Checklist, the need to co-ordinate and be aware of when Common Assessments are undertaken and completed, and the role of Lead Professionals. It will also test a new way of working, called Team Around the Child that was developed originally with children with disabilities, that offers a much better co-ordinated response to children, young people and their families. A Care Pathway has been developed that describes the stages in the process between identifying a child or young person about whom there may be concerns, working with them to identify what these are, and how to agree what action to take and how to co-ordinate this. A Levels of Need Matrix has also been developed that assists practitioners agree the level of concern, and the level of need that a child or young person may have. This will help to identify the type of services best suited to responding to those needs, and which can be found listed on the Service Directory (available elsewhere on this website).

Successful implementation of the Common Assessment Framework will be dependent in part on improved Information Sharing Practice. Tools to help improve such practice can be found elsewhere on this website (ISA Guidance and Documents).

The CAFIB has developed a CAF training programme based on DfES materials, but modified for use in Torbay. The training is delivered by a group of cross-agency practitioner trainers, supported by professional trainers.

The CAF Training Modules are (currently):

Module 1:: Introduction to CAF (including national context, opportunities for improved practice and improved outcomes, and consent and confidentiality issues)

Module 2: Doing a Common Assessment, and local arrangements

Module 3: The role of the Lead Professional (including common standards)

Information about these training events are circulated widely across agencies in Torbay, but if you wish to find out more please email  

To date in the region of 200 people have experienced Module 1 (December 2005 and January 2006).

Module 2 takes place during March – early May 2006, and Module 3 is currently being planned and expected to begin in early May onwards.

All the CAF Modules will be repeated and a waiting list for a repeat of Module 1 has been opened.  (Please email as above to add your details).

Next Steps

Staff will be able to begin common assessment activity following Module 2 training, and therefore we expect that this will begin and increase from around Easter 2006.

Arrangements are being put into place to offer sufficient co-ordination and support to staff from across agencies to enable them to work in this new way – it will be an evolving process.

During the year further development of Schools and Community Clusters will take place, that will create a local network in communities that bring together childrens centres, early years, schools and extended services (in and around schools) and an integrated youth support system. This would become a hub of services well positioned to offer early identification and early intervention to vulnerable children and young people who may have additional needs identified through the common assessment process.

These Clusters will be supported by the integration of processes described by the Common Assessment Framework.

Common Assessment Framework Forms & Guidance

Torbay will be using the DfES CAF Forms. DfES have commissioned work to make these electronic but until these are available and compatible with local IT systems we have to use them in Word format.

Guidance will be given to staff on how to use them in that format, to ensure consistency of use, and compliance with good information sharing practice.

The forms and supporting guidance are available below:

Forms:

Common Assessment Framework form

Common Assessment Framework Pre-Assessment  Checklist

CAF 1:  Record of CAF Multi-Agency Referral Meeting (MARM)

CAF 2:  Record of First CAF Multi-Agency Team Around the Child (TAC) Meeting

CAF 3:  Record of Next CAF Multi-Agency (Review) Meeting

Guidance:

Common Assessment Framework for children and young people: Training Support Pack & Guide for Service Managers and Practitioners (Torbay version)

Common Assessment Framework Definitions

CAF Levels of Need (extract from Torbays a practitioners guide to information sharing & assessment)

Care Pathway

Local CAF Guidance

CAF Multi-Agency Referral Meeting Membership