Improving Child and Family Assessments: Turning Research into Practice (Book review)

Abstract

This book is based on a review of recent British research about assessment in child and family services, mainly child protection services. It focuses on the impact of assessment on planning, choice of interventions, and psychosocial outcomes for children. Five problems have consistently been identified with social work assessment in this field: (a) a failure to engage children in the assessment process; (b) inadequate informationgathering; (c) differential thresholds for determining levels of risk and need; (d) shortcomings in analysing the information gathered; and (e) shortcomings in interprofessional work. I am sure readers will be familiar with these problems, whatever their field of practice, especially assessments that are long on description of the ‘‘he said, she said’’ variety, without ever reaching a conclusion. In the book, each of these problems are worked through with regard to what the research has found, and in doing so, the book provides pointers about what might be done to improve assessment practice. It is notable that although assessment is a core social work activity, there is not a lot of research that examines it specifically. Rather, assessment has been mainly investigated as a component of broader studies about social work with families.