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Child and adolescent mental health – a guide for healthcare professionals

June 2006

Appendix 3
The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) [Go to note 135]

The CAF combines:

• a simple pre-assessment checklist to help practitioners identify children who would benefit from a common assessment
• 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
• a standard form 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.

The CAF has been developed from combining the underlying model of the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families with the main factors used in other assessment frameworks. The elements that form the framework for common assessment are shown below.

Development of child
Health:
- general health
- physical development
- speech, language and communications development

Emotional and social development

Behavioural development

Identity, including self-esteem, self-image and social presentation

Family and social relationships

Self-care skills and independence

Learning:
- understanding, reasoning and problem solving
- progress and achievement in learning
- participation in learning, education and employment
- aspirations

Parents and carers
Basic care, ensuring safety and protection

Emotional warmth and stability

Guidance, boundaries and stimulation

Family and environmental
Family history, functioning and wellbeing

Wider family

Housing, employment and financial considerations

Social and community factors and resources, including education

Assessing the needs of a child requires the systematic, holistic approach of a CAF, which uses the same processes for gathering and analysing information about all children and their families, but discriminates effectively between different types, and levels of need and strengths.

The CAF provides an easy to use assessment that is common across agencies. It will help embed a shared language; support better understanding and communications among practitioners; facilitate early intervention; speed up service delivery and reduce the number and duration of different assessments that historically some children and young people have undergone.

Consultations are under way within DfES, across government and with the agencies responsible for other assessments to best determine how they should fit with the CAF and how to reduce duplication.

Where a referral to a more specialist assessment is required, use of the CAF should help ensure that the referral is really necessary, that it is the right service and that it is supported by accurate up-to-date information. The information gathered will follow the child and builds up a picture over time rather than a series of partial snapshots.