What? A framework for helping practitioners assess children’s additional needs earlier and more effectively, develop a common understanding of those needs and agree a process of working together to meet those needs

When? Needs are not clear or are not being met. CAF may be appropriate to be used before or in conjunction with specialist assessments to help practitioners understand and articulate the full range of needs

Who? Potentially anyone working with children and young people but most likely those from universal or preventative services (who have been trained)

How? There is a standard form for recording information. There is also a common process, which includes four key steps: identification of need; preparation; discussion and delivery

How will it help?

When you're concerned about a baby, child, or young person, it's not always easy to know what to do. You may not be sure what the problem is. Even if you're reasonably sure, your service may not be able to help. You may not feel confident that you can get other services to help.

Common assessment can help you identify what the needs are, when you're not sure use the Continuum of needs to help you make your decision. It provides a structure for recording information that you pick up in conversation with the child, young person or family. It can also help you in getting other services to help, because they will recognise that your concern is based on some evidence, not just your assumption. Other services in your area will be using the common assessment themselves.

You don't have to be an expert to do a common assessment. Nor do you have to fill in all the boxes. The key thing is to record what information you do have. Others will be able to add more later if a specialist assessment is needed.

Why the common assessment is being introduced

We all want better lives for children. Most children do well. Some don't, but don't get help until things are really bad. We want to identify such children earlier and help them earlier before things reach crisis point. The most important way of doing this is if every person whose job involves working with children keeps an eye out for their general well-being, and is prepared to help if some thing is going wrong.

The common assessment is one way to help people to do this. It is a tool to identify unmet needs. It covers all needs, not just the needs that individual services are most interested in.

The CAF consists of:

• Simple pre-assessment checklist to help practitioners identify children who would benefit from a common assessment. The checklist can be used on its own or alongside specialist universal assessments, such as those done by midwives and health visitors
• A process for undertaking a common assessment, to help practitioners gather and understand information about the needs and strengths of the child, based on discussions with the child, their family and other practitioners as appropriate
• Standard forms to help practitioners record, and, where appropriate, share with others, the findings from the assessment in terms that are helpful in working with the family to find a response to unmet needs
• A process for implementing a Team Around the Child (TAC)

When to do a common assessment

You can do a common assessment at any time. A common assessment can be done on unborn babies, children or young people. It is designed for when:

• You are concerned about how well a child (or unborn baby) or young person is progressing. You might be concerned about their health, welfare, behaviour, progress in learning or any other aspect of their well-being
• The needs are unclear, or broader than your service can address
• A common assessment would help identify the needs, and/or get other services to help meet them

There is an easy-to-use checklist – the Pre-CAF check list – to help you decide whether a common assessment should be completed. The checklist is designed to be used alongside existing assessments or routine checkups of a child, for example as part of ante- or post-natal care or in an early years setting.

Whether to do the assessment is a decision you should make jointly with the child and/or parent. If
the child is old enough to understand, and competent enough to make their own decisions, they
should be the one to decide with you. Always encourage them to discuss things with their parents.

When not to do a common assessment

There is no need to do a common assessment for every child you work with. Children who are progressing well, or have needs that are already being met, do not need one.

You don't need to do a common assessment where you have identified the needs and your service can meet them, or you know how to get the required help from another service, using established procedures.

If you think the child is a child in need, which includes being at risk of significant harm, you should follow established Sunderland Safeguarding Children Board procedures immediately. Common assessment doesn't mean these procedures aren't followed.