Getting it right to get it right

Assessment Prompts

Below is list of things to consider when discussing issues with families. This list is not exhaustive and you may come up with your own as you work with the family. Please remember your follow up questions to families will be based on the information provided to you and specific to that family. These are just starting points or ways to help facilitate the conversation. Always give the family a chance to tell you their story, then ask questions to get more depth.

Reason for undertaking the assessment

• What is the referral requesting?
• What would they like you to do?
• Why did they refer to your service as opposed to another?

Relevant history or background:

• Does the family have a history with your service? If so what is this? What was achieved? What wasn’t? What was the outcome?
• Does the family have a history with other partner agencies (social care, TYSS, YOT, Community Safety, and Educational Welfare)? If so what information do they hold about the family? What insights can they offer?

Where a young person / parent has a disability or where they have specific communication needs, what actions have been taken to address this

• Does the family need an interpreter? What language do they speak?
• Are there mobility issues?
• Are there learning difficulties in the family?
• Have you made reasonable arrangements for any/ all of these?

Health

• Are there any members of the family with a chronic illness?
• Are there any historical illnesses in the family?
• Is there a high prevalence for illness in the family? (Cancers, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.)
• Is anyone on medication? What is it for? How often? Are they compliant? Who is monitoring?
• Anyone formally diagnosed with a mental health disorder?
• Anyone seeing a specialist? What is this for?
• Any addictions in the family? Alcohol? Drugs? Prescription meds?
• Anyone using substances (alcohol, drugs) regularly?
• Anyone currently pregnant? Are they receiving pre-natal care?
• Anyone ever have an extended period of illness? What is the status of this illness now? What was the illness?

Education

• How many children are there in the home aged 5-19? If they have a disability up to 25?
• Are they all registered in education? What school, college or university?
• What is their attendance? Do they attend regularly? Are they punctual/on time?
• Do any of the children have statements? If so, what kind of support are they receiving?
• Have any of the children ever been excluded? If so, why and for how long?
• Are any of the children in an alternative provision or PRU?
• How well do parents think are they achieving? What is their attainment level?
• Which education professionals are currently working with the family (EWO, SENCO, learning mentors, Educational psychologists, etc.)?
• If they are year 2, 6, or year 11, what did they get on their SATs/GCSEs?
• What were the children’s experiences in primary school?
• What are the children’s favourite subjects?
• What was secondary school like for each child?
• How did children manage the transition from year 6 to year 7? What was that year like? Did you make any friends? What was their timetable? Did anything go wrong? Why/what happened?
• If things went wrong, what would have helped? Would they have liked someone to talk to about things?
• Are parents aware of the issues brought up by young people? If so, how did parents manage issues in school?
• What was the parents’ experience of education? How far did they go? Were there any barriers to going further?
• What is the parents’ view of education?

Family and Social Relationships

• Who’s in the family home?
• Who’s important to family function that doesn’t live in the family home?
• Who do individuals in the family consider their support network? Are they inside or outside of the home?
• What do individual family members think of each other?
• What do individual family members think of the family as a whole?
• Which members of the family have the closest relationships?
• Which members of the family have strained relationships? Why is this? When did it begin? What precipitated it?
• How do the parents interact with the children?
• How do the children interact with each other?
• How do children respond to parents?
• What are the important non biological relationships that exist for the family? How are they involved?
• How do the family view support from other members?
• Do family members talk to each other?
• Are family members able to say positive things about each other?
• How often do the family spend time with each other?

Social presentation

• Do the family know their neighbours?
• Do they have relationships with their neighbours? Is this positive or negative? Why?
• Do they use services in the neighbourhood? Which ones? How are their relationships with the providers of these services?
• Do they like their neighbourhood? If not why? If so why?
• Has anyone in the family committed an offense? If so what offense? What was the outcome?
• Is anyone in the family involved in gang activity? If so which gang? What do they get from this? Why is this important for them?
• Has anyone been engaging in anti-social behaviour? If so what happened? What was the outcome?
• Has there been a lack of engagement with services in the past? What is the family’s explanation of this? What did they get out of the service? What did they want from the service that they didn’t get?
• How does the family present to you? Closed? Open? Ambivalent? What is the family’s explanation of this?

Self-Care skills

• How do the family present? Do they appear to be clean, groomed? What do you see, physically, when you look at them?
• How is the family home? Is it neat? Is it tidy? What did you see when you went to the home?
• How are the children in the home? How often do they bathe? How often are chores done? Who is responsible for which chores?
• Was there a smell present in the house? Where was this coming from?
• Were there things in the home that needed to be repaired? What were these? What have the family said they are doing about this?
• Is there furniture in the home? How are these being cared for? What do they look like?

Parents’ / carers’ attributes

• How do the parents feel about being parents? Were pregnancies planned? What were the circumstances of the children’s births? Was it a happy occasion or was there tension or strain in relationships (with family or partners) due to pregnancy?
• What did parents know about babies and children when they got pregnant?
• Did they want children?
• What was it like being pregnant? Giving birth? Holding the baby for the first time?
• Are the parents married?
• Do they both live in the home? If not, which parent is the primary care?
• Are parental duties shared? If so, how? If not, what are the feelings about this?
• How are parents/carers managing the home? Are there boundaries in place? How are these enforced? Are the children responding to the boundaries? Are some responding and not others? Why is this?
• Are there issues affecting the parents’ ability to completely engage as head of the household? (physical illness; mental illness; physical disability; learning disability; sensory impairment; period in care; period in care during childhood; experience of being abused; experience of being abused as a child; known history of abuse; known history of abuse of children; substance/alcohol misuse; domestic violence; known history of violence) How long have they been issues? What has been tried to help manage the issue? What’s helped in the past? What hasn’t helped?
• How old were parents when the children were born? Was this during a period of developmental transition? What developmental activities did they miss out on due to pregnancy/parenting? How does this impact their parenting?
• If there are multiple children in the home, how was each pregnancy different? What did they do differently with each child? What did they learn as they continued to parent?
• How much do the parents know about their children and their children’s activities?
• What are the rules in the home? How well are these adhered to? Why?
• What kind of discipline is used in the home? Who is the primary disciplinarian?
• How involved are the parents with their children’s education? Do they know their children’s timetable or what time they start? Helping with homework? Going to parents’ evenings? What is their relationship like with their children’s teachers?
• Do parents know their children’s friends? How do they feel about their children’s friends? Has there ever been a need for parents to intervene to end friendships due to negative influences? How was this handled? How was it received?
• Do parents know their children’s friends parents? What is their relationship like?
• What is the parents’ view of their children? Positive? Negative? Why?
• What do the parents think is the potential of each of their children? What do they see as their role in helping their children reach this potential?
• What do parents see as their role in the lives of their children overall?
• Are there relationship difficulties between parents and children? When did this start? How do parents and children explain this?
• Are there historical difficulties in parent/child relationships? What helped improve these?
• What do they enjoy about being parents?
• What do they find particularly challenging about being parents?
• How do parents rate their own parenting ability? Why?
• How do the children rate their parents parenting ability? Why?
• What would help make these ratings higher for each?
• What kind of parent would they like to be? What would help them achieve this, realistically?

Identity

• How do the family see themselves as a whole? Good? Needing improvement? Why?
• How do individual family members see themselves?
• What ethnicity is the family? How do they identify themselves?
• What traditions do they have?
• What do they feel is important about their culture?
• Are they religious? What is their religion? How often do they attend services? Are they active in their religious institution? What religious traditions do they have?
• What is the family’s immigration status? Does everyone in the family have status? What is being done about this if not?
• How do the family think they are seen by members of their local community? Their religious community? Their broader family? Their friends?

Family history

• What has led the family to being referred to the service?
• What do they see as the significant events in their lives? How have these events impacted them as a family and individual members of the family?
• What do the family think they can do better? Why?
• What kind of family would they like to be? Why?
• What would they change about their past if they could? Why?
• How are they different now than they were 2 years ago? 5 years ago?
• What issues have they had in the past that they have successfully managed? What helped?
• What issues have they had in the past that continue to be issues? What have they tried? What would they be willing to try?

Family and environmental factors

• Where do the family live? What kind of accommodation? Rented or owned? Private, council or housing association? Are there rent arrears? How much? How long has it been going on? What is being done about it? Are they going to be evicted?
• Who in the home is employed? What do they do? How much do they make? Would they like to work toward a promotion? Would they like to be doing something else? Have they looked into changing careers? For those not working, what would they like to do? What have they done to forward this goal? What would help them take steps toward work?
• How much money is coming into the family home? Are they on benefits? If so how much do they get and how often? Is there still a need after they receive their benefits? Is anyone in the home unemployed and looking for work? What kind of work? Do they need extra training?
• Is the family engaged with any other services? Which services? What are they helping with? Does the family think the services are making an impact? What could be better? What is working?

Views of the family

• What would the family like to change?
• What do the family see as the major issues within the family?
• What do the family feel are their strengths?
• What would they like to start changing first?
• What are they able to do for themselves?
• What areas will they need support in addressing?
• What do they want from you?
• Do they believe you can have an impact on their situation? How and why?
• In a perfect world, what would their family look like?
• Based on their previous ratings as parents, from the parents perspective how can that rating be improved?
• From the children’s perspective, how could their parents improve?
• What would the children like to be different in the family? Why? How do they see this happening?

Views of the professionals

• How long have they worked with the family?
• What service did/do they provide?
• How would they describe their relationship with the family?
• What were their impressions of the family as a whole? Individual members?
• Who did they see as influential members of the family?
• Were there any members that appeared to be divisive? How so? What did they do? What didn’t they do?
• Did they encounter any resistance? Why was this? Was it challenged? How?
• If they are no longer working with the family, why did service come to an end? What were the outcomes of their interventions? Were there any recommendations for further work?
• Did they make any referrals on behalf of the family? (If they did and the family did not engage this should be discussed with the family to find out why not)

Analysis

• What long term impact would the current situation have if it were allowed to continue (= risks)?
• What are the mitigating factors, i.e. – those things that make the risks less worrying (= strengths)?
• Are there any gaps? What risks remain once the strengths/mitigating factors have been identified?
• This information will lead you to the services that might be able to assist the client and mitigate the remaining risks. Having this information will inform your plan.

 

Singularity of Children’s Services

Addressing children’s issues singularly holds no benefit for the professional or the child. We need to better understand the child’s lived experience which means understanding the context in which they live. This means understanding their family environment including their neighbourhood and extended network. We cannot expect to effect lasting change in any system if we only change part of the system while the others remain the same. Either the change will dominate causing conflict with the rest of the system or the change will be overshadowed by the familiar in order to maintain status quo – which, is always easier than change.

Our children do not grow up in isolation so why is this our approach to effecting positive change in their lives? As adults we are supposed to be the authority. As professionals we are supposed to be the experts. How is it then that we continue to ignore vital information about a child’s reality? Parents/carers are a child’s reality. If they are to progress we have to recognised and challenge the aspects of this relationship that are either facilitating the child’s troubles – actively or passively – or contributing to it. Where this relationship is the cause of the troubles, we need to intervene to change the trajectory of the child’s life path. When did everything else become more important than the life chances of a child?

We need to critically evaluate programs calling themselves family services that are unable to see and work with the connection between outcomes for adults and the outcomes for the children. How do we separate the two and expect lasting change?

How can we do better? How can we focus on the child while addressing the needs of the parents? The latter is easier to answer. We have to recognise during assessment and planning that if we improve circumstances for parents we can then help them better focus on what their children need. I know some may say that parents need to know that they’re children come first and I wouldn’t disagree. However, the reality is, it is difficult to focus on someone else when basic needs are not being met or one’s own needs are so pervasive they inhibit meeting one’s own needs. If they could cope with this, frankly, we wouldn’t need to be involved. It doesn’t make them bad parent, they just need help. And that is what, as social workers, we are here for – to help.

 

Productive Moaning: Be an Asset to Your Team

When I was a Social Worker, I used to hate going to meetings and listening to others moan complain about everything and expecting everyone else to fix them. They didn’t come with any ideas, or thoughts on how to move things forward, just complaints. They were never the Social Workers that saw positives in anything, just problems.

There is a difference between being someone who can identify the gaps and make productive suggestions as to how to close them and being someone who just complains about absolutely everything with no view of how things can be better. You are not seen as a productive member of a team if all you see are problems. No one may say anything to you, but you will not be seen as someone who is a strong practitioner. Being a Social Work is about being a credit to yourself first and foremost, to your profession and to those who employ you. You are after all a representative of your organization. If you are someone who has more complaints than ideas, someone who complains about everything, you will not be seen as a productive staff member. Organizations will only keep people on who will be a positive addition to staff.

Being someone who can identify a need for change not only establishes you as someone who is a committed and consummate professional, but it also shows your decision-making and critical thinking skills. It shows you’re a thoughtful, progressive and responsible practitioner. It makes you a valuable staff member.

A key to being a good Social Worker is critical and creative thinking. It’s about finding ways to do your job that do not put a strain on resources but still helps your client. It’s about being able to appropriately challenge the system when extra resources are needed that may be outside of what is usually used for the sake of your client. It’s about empowering your clients to make changes for themselves. It’s about learning how to do all these things and in so doing you learn how to make decisions about what happens for your clients and about the service you are able to provide for them.

If you learn to think critically and creatively about the problem which you encounter when working with your clients, then you can also make the best use of supervision. You can go into supervision with ideas as to how to help your clients and get management approval because you have made a case for your decision. This will be looked upon favorably.

One of the greatest pieces of advice I would be able to give anyone is: Be the kind of practitioner you would go to for advice.