What is the Family Assessment?

Designed to be a resource pack or tool kit for practitioners, the Family Assessment provides a systematic and evidence based approach to assessing family life and relationships. This includes family adaptability, parenting and how family members communicate, handle feelings, relate to each other and approach crucial issues of identity, as well as the impact of family history. The Family Assessment has a range of approaches for engaging with and talking to families about their lives together with an emphasis on giving all family members a 'voice'.

Information on training course: Assessing families in complex childcare cases using the Family Assessment

Aim of the training
The aim of this three-day training is to introduce The Family Assessment and to build up practitioners’ skills in using The Family Assessment model and methods for making assessments and to develop specific skills in working with children and families during the assessment process Course members are also taught a model of analysis and planning interventions and outcomes developed using the Assessment Framework triangle.

Who is the training for?
This training is suitable for staff whose work includes assessing and working with families either at the core assessment stage or later when a more specialist assessment of family relationship difficulties is required.

The Family Assessment
The Family Assessment is a systematic, multi-dimensional approach to assessing families. It is a resource pack or tool kit which can be used and adapted to suit a range of purposes. It is particularly useful at the core assessment stage with more complex families to plan support and other interventions. It can be used to assess change over time and where specialist assessments are required related to rehabilitation of children, therapeutic work, permanency planning and court proceedings and other decision-making forums.

The Family Assessment was specifically commissioned (along with the HOME Inventory and the Family Pack of Questionnaires and Scales) by the Department for Children, Schools and Families to assist social workers using the Assessment Framework although it suitable for use by a wide range of professionals. Using a systemic perspective, it looks at the dynamics of the whole family and at relationships between family members and provides a model for understanding, describing and assessing family strengths and difficulties and family competencies.

Building on research and development work at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and elsewhere over a number of years, provides a set of practical tools which will equip practitioner systematic, comprehensive and evidence-based assessments and promotes reflective practice.

Who are the trainers?
The Department for Children, Schools and Families sponsored the preparation of a group of accredited trainers who were trained by Dr Arnon Bentovim and Liza Bingley Miller, co-authors of the Family Assessment. Each training is led by two trainers from this group and can accommodate 20 staff.

What sort of training course is it?
The training course is based on principles of adult learning and the importance of a mixture of teaching input and practice when receiving training in skills development. It therefore involves three days of formal input spread over several weeks with the equivalent of a further two days (not taken at once) between the training days to allow time for familiarisation with The Family Assessment and gaining practice in using the range of approaches to family assessment.

To ensure staff get the most out of the course, it is therefore important that their managers are fully briefed about the purpose and structure of the training and that they agree to ensuring staff are given the time to undertake the course work, which includes having the opportunity to use the model and methods in practice and then build on their learning as part of the training. A Managers Day Conference is usually delivered in agencies where staff are undertaking the training in order to brief them about the tools and advise on supervising and audit trailing their staff’s effective use of the tools.

What are the learning objectives for the course?
The training course aims to:

• enable participants to develop skills in observing and describing family functioning using the Family Assessment model in the context of both family history and the problems or concerns bringing the child and family to the assessment
• provide micro-skills training in making qualitative and quantitative assessments of family competence, strengths and difficulties and sharing that assessment with families
• provide micro-skills training in a range of methods for working with children and families during the assessment process including conducting assessment interviews with a whole family group, using The Family Assessment Interview Schedules and setting and working with a range of Family Tasks
• set action learning tasks enabling the practitioner to practice using the different components of the Family Assessment in their agencies
• provide an opportunity for review and further consolidation and development of participants' knowledge and skills in using the Family Assessment model and methods
• introduce and use a model for analysis and planning based on the Assessment Framework triangle to make effective use of the information collected using evidence-based assessment tools such as the HOME Inventory and the Questionnaires and Scales.

• have a working knowledge and skills in using The Family Assessment model of family functioning and methods for making a systematic family assessment
• have developed new skills and methods for working with families during the assessment process using The Family Assessment
• have a strategy for consolidating and further developing their use The Family Assessment in an ongoing and supported way
• have developed transferable skills in making evidence-based and reflective assessments in an open and transparent way with families
• be able to apply the model of analysis and planning to the information they have collected using the assessment tools to inform interventions and outcomes in their work with children and families.