Cerebra and Leeds University Child in Need Assessment Survey 2020
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Why are we carrying out this survey?
The purpose of a ‘Child in Need’ assessment is to gather enough information to decide what care and support needs to be provided for a disabled child and their family.
Cerebra receives a significant number of enquiries from families about child in need assessments. The object of this survey is to obtain the views of parent carer support organisations about how well assessments are carried out in their geographic area highlighting things that are done well and things that could be improved / changed.
Some families have informed us that practitioners without any experience or knowledge of disability are conducting Child in Need assessments for disabled children. They are also often heavily focused on child protection issues to determine whether the child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm rather than the child’s (and the family’s) disability related needs. We have received reports from families in England that the assessment process is intrusive, insensitive and distressing. A key objective of this research is to determine whether these concerns are isolated or representative of a more deep-seated and widespread problem.
The survey responses will be anonymised and then analysed by our Legal Entitlements and Problem-solving (LEaP) Project Research Team under the supervision of Professor Luke Clements, Cerebra Professor of Social Justice at Leeds University.
The findings of this research will be published in the Spring of 2021. Previous research reports of this kind produced by the LEaP Project can be accessed at https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/downloads/download/45/cerebra_pro_bono_research_programme .
If you know of any other parent carer led organisations which support disabled children and their families and who you think would be interested in completing the survey, please feel free to share it with them.
The survey has just eight questions.
Cerebra receives a significant number of enquiries from families about child in need assessments. The object of this survey is to obtain the views of parent carer support organisations about how well assessments are carried out in their geographic area highlighting things that are done well and things that could be improved / changed.
Some families have informed us that practitioners without any experience or knowledge of disability are conducting Child in Need assessments for disabled children. They are also often heavily focused on child protection issues to determine whether the child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm rather than the child’s (and the family’s) disability related needs. We have received reports from families in England that the assessment process is intrusive, insensitive and distressing. A key objective of this research is to determine whether these concerns are isolated or representative of a more deep-seated and widespread problem.
The survey responses will be anonymised and then analysed by our Legal Entitlements and Problem-solving (LEaP) Project Research Team under the supervision of Professor Luke Clements, Cerebra Professor of Social Justice at Leeds University.
The findings of this research will be published in the Spring of 2021. Previous research reports of this kind produced by the LEaP Project can be accessed at https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/downloads/download/45/cerebra_pro_bono_research_programme .
If you know of any other parent carer led organisations which support disabled children and their families and who you think would be interested in completing the survey, please feel free to share it with them.
The survey has just eight questions.
For any further information please email Derek Tilley at derekt@cerebra.org.uk
The survey will close on 31 August 2020.