Children's social care assessments
An assessment is how we find out about your child's needs and the problems you are having, and work out what help we can offer you.
What happens at an assessment?
Before the assessment takes place we will talk to you about who needs to be involved and what information we need.
If English is not your first language, or you use British Sign Language, we can arrange for an interpreter to be present.
A social worker will meet with your family and will ask you and, wherever possible, your child some questions about:
- your child's development
- how you look after your child
- your wider family, community and environment.
How to arrange an assessment
To speak to an advisor or submit an enquiry online please contact our Customer Service team.
After the assessment
If the assessment shows that your child/your family needs our help, we will draw up a plan of action to show what we're doing, we want you to be involved in this.
We will start to give you the help that you need as soon as we can.
If you are unhappy with the assessment, you can record your point of view on the assessment record. You can also make a formal comment or complain about our services.
Any information you give us will be confidential. We will ask your permission if we need to share the information about your family. However, if there are concerns about the safety of your child, or if we have information about criminal matters, we will need to talk to other professionals. In these circumstances we may not ask your permissions to contact other agencies such as school, health services or police.
