Assessment
Key findings
- Analysis is required of how best to support the child’s desistance and how to keep the child and other people safe. Risk and protective factors have been identified at the individual, family, community and society levels, recognising the importance of considering the individual child in the context of their lives and the society they live in, supporting responses which are holistic and child-centred.
- Assessment that draws from multiple sources of information can build a more complete picture of the child’s life. Robust assessment is thus more likely when there are strong partnership arrangements which facilitate good information flows.
- Wherever possible, the child and their parents/carers should be meaningfully involved and engaged in the assessment process. Engaging the child in the process of assessment provides an opportunity for them to feel listened to, meaningfully involved and supported in working out what they want to achieve.
- Senior managers need to ensure that risk policies, procedures and assessment tools are unbiased and fit for purpose, with appropriate quality assurance, monitoring and training in place. It is important that assessment tools are applied with an understanding of their respective strengths and weaknesses.
- To minimise bias and error and ensure that decisions are balanced, reasoned and well-evidenced, there is a need for practitioners to seek and critically appraise information, and adopt an open, honest and reflective approach.
Background
Within England and Wales, the main structured assessment tool used by youth justice practitioners is AssetPlus. It was designed to combine the assessment of offending-related needs and risk of serious harm with the insights of the Good Lives Model of rehabilitation and desistance theory. Practitioners are required to identify and analyse concerns relating to the safety of the child and to others, individual and social needs, and strengths/protective factors.
Assessment must go beyond merely describing the facts. In Scotland, the Framework for Risk Assessment, Management and Evaluation (FRAME) emphasises that assessment is a process that involves four key aspects – Identification, Analysis, Evaluation and Communication – while the getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) national practice model promotes the participation of children and their families in gathering information and making decisions as central to assessing, planning and taking action.
Summary of the evidence
The research evidence supports an assessment process which:
An individualised and contextual whole-child approach
Theoretical models and research findings consistently highlight the importance of respecting individuality and understanding the specific characteristics of the child. Analysis is required of how best to support the child’s desistance and how to keep the child and other people safe. Identifying safety concerns, either in relation to the child or others, including other children and members of their family, is important to prevent long-lasting effects on life outcomes and to provide a safe platform for the constructive work aimed at fostering positive development.
Risk and protective factors have been identified at the individual, family, community and society levels, recognising the importance of considering the child in the context of their lives and the society they live in, supporting the development of responses which are holistic and child-centred.
In our Academic Insights paper 2020/07 (PDF, 334 kB), Carlene Firmin set out how Contextual Safeguarding has changed the response of child protection systems to children at risk of significant harm in extra-familial settings and relationships. Different forms of extra-familial harm present various welfare risks, and plans to address these harms need to attend to the contexts and associated environmental factors. Attention is given to how staff working in a youth justice context can integrate a Contextual Safeguarding approach, encompassing incorporation within assessment frameworks.
The process of assessment
The process of assessment – how it is undertaken – is as important as the outcome. Robust assessment is more likely when case managers are organisationally supported by strong partnership arrangements with statutory, community and voluntary agencies which facilitate good information flows. Assessment that draws from multiple sources of information such as police, children’s social services, schools, parents and youth offending team (YOT) records of siblings, can build a more complete picture of the child’s life, including factors influencing the child’s offending and relevant safety concerns.
Wherever possible, the child and their parents/carers should be meaningfully involved and engaged in the assessment process. Engaging the child in the process of assessment provides an opportunity for them to feel listened to, meaningfully involved and supported in working out what they want to achieve. Giving the child a voice – enabling them to tell their stories in their own way – and treating them with respect also helps to build the one-to-one trusting personal relationships that can be a powerful vehicle for change. For effective assessment, the importance of rapport building, open questions, and ensuring the child’s understanding have all been highlighted.
Find out more about the relationship-based practice framework
At the organisational level, senior managers need to ensure that risk policies, procedures and assessment tools are unbiased and fit for purpose, with appropriate quality assurance, monitoring and training in place. It is important that assessment tools are applied with an understanding of their respective strengths and weaknesses. The assessment process should be completed in a timely manner, allowing time for sufficient rapport building and gathering of evidence, but not being left for too long without concerns being addressed.
The need for reflection and professional curiosity
A wide-ranging field of literature has identified a number of potential sources of error and bias. To minimise error and ensure that decisions are balanced, reasoned and well-evidenced, there is a need for practitioners to seek and critically appraise information, and adopt an open, honest and reflective approach. Case managers need to have the time to reflect and review their practice with managers and colleagues, and display professional curiosity and an analytical mindset in understanding the life of the child. These skills, implemented in an empathic manner, allow practitioners to understand more about a child’s identity, motivations, capacity, resources, strengths and needs. A better understanding of the child also strengthens engagement and ensures that the most effective strategies are implemented to support their positive development.
There is further relevant learning from serious child safeguarding incidents. In their review of such incidents, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel report that there is often a lack of ‘professional curiosity’ and ‘over-optimism’, with assumptions remaining unchanged in spite of continuing or spiralling risk. They set out the following learning in relation to assessment:
- a mindset of ‘respectful uncertainty’ supports the effective identification of risk factors and the mitigation of risk, underpinned by comprehensive assessment
- up-to-date and appropriate evidence-based tools support assessment but they require critical reflection about the evidence to inform next steps
- in assessing risk in adolescents, it is important to understand and observe a ‘risk trajectory’.
In our Research & Analysis Bulletin 2022/05 (PDF, 564 kB), we explored the types of safety concerns that children face as well as those they pose, and provide examples highlighting what good assessment looks like in practice. We also provide insights into the main reasons why inspectors deemed some safety classifications to be incorrect. It is highlighted in the bulletin that the safety concerns relating to the children themselves and to other people (commonly other children) are often intertwined, with links to a number of areas, including the carrying of knives or other weapons, drug and alcohol misuse, adversity and trauma, domestic abuse, care experience, criminal exploitation, and mental health issues.
In our Research & Analysis Bulletin 2021/05 (PDF, 531 kB), we focused upon out-of-court disposals, and found that a theme running through almost all the poorly performing YOTs was an insufficient focus upon the safety of the child and/or other people. This often commenced at the assessment stage, where there was a focus upon desistance, but insufficient attention given to potential safety issues. There was a sizeable number of cases in which our inspectors concluded that insufficient recognition had been given to specific concerns and they disagreed with the ‘low’ safety and wellbeing and/or risk of serious harm classifications. There was thus a sub-group of children missing out on potentially beneficial support and protections; safety concerns can escalate over time, and well-focused, personalised and coordinated multi-agency activities have the potential to benefit both the children and wider society in the longer term.
Further analysis revealed that assessment was less likely to be judged sufficient for community resolutions compared to youth conditional cautions. We found instances of assessments not being completed at all, assessments being completed by unqualified or untrained staff, and the use of tools which did not sufficiently consider all relevant circumstances and the full context, hindering a whole-child approach.
Baker, K. (2014). AssetPlus Rationale. London: Youth Justice Board.
Case, S., Lorenzo-Dus, N. and Morton, R. (2021). ‘YOT Talk: Examining the communicative influences on children’s engagement with youth justice assessment processes’, European Journal of Criminology.
Public Health England (2019). Collaborative approaches to preventing offending and re-offending by children (CAPRICORN). London: Public Health England.
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Last updated: 10 March 2023
