In child welfare work assessments are essential. They are what we use to make judgments and decisions about what should happen next in our work with families. That’s why the quality of assessments matters so much.
Thorough assessments of different kinds conducted by child welfare professionals, mental health providers, and others help us ensure the interventions we provide are both helpful and necessary. This can lead to parents getting what they need to successfully care for their kids. Accurately reflected in our documentation, assessments can influence what gets decided in court.
Good assessments can be a pathway to the outcomes we seek—strong families, healthy children, safe communities.
For this reason, practitioners have a natural interest in making their assessment skills and processes as good as they can be. This issue of Practice Notes seeks to support this effort by reflecting on system- and agency-led efforts to strengthen assessments, the process of assessing prospective adoptive families, and the relationship between effective assessment and family engagement.
We hope it will be helpful to you in your quest to continually improve outcomes for families and children.
Contents of this Issue
