Finding the right balance: Are 12-week assessments long enough?

By Lauren Fitzjohn, September 2024

After working at Amber for over 7 years, I’ve seen hundreds of referrals, and the contrast between how they used to be and how they are now is huge! Years ago, we would have a referral for a family with maybe one or two issues that were quite simple to monitor and assess through placement. These could have been concerns like previous mild substance misuse or lack of engagement with professionals. A 12-week assessment period in these circumstances would give plenty of time for these issues to be unpicked, explored and assessed with a parent whilst ensuring a fair and robust final assessment could be produced.

Fast forward to current referrals, and they are becoming more and more complicated. As society and people have developed, we find that we are receiving referrals for families with more significant concerns and issues, such as severe and complex mental health difficulties, significant past trauma, use of a range of substances, highly violent previous relationships and more. Just one of these issues can take weeks to explore with a parent, so with more than one-factor present, is it fair that we try to complete a parenting assessment within 12 weeks?

It also needs to be considered that many parents come to placement straight from the hospital, sometimes as first-time parents. Putting them into a new environment where people want to start discussing their traumatic past almost straight away, as they are working to strict timescales, is bound to unsettle them. We try to focus on getting families settled into placement and being supported in their first few weeks. Still, we also need to balance this with the tight timescales that we are under, which are prescribed by the Courts and Local Authorities.

When considering a request for a placement extension, we have a lot of discussions both internally and with the placing authority, as there are many things we need to consider. Our mission statement refers to our assessments as being ‘fair, robust and honest’. It’s hard to present our assessments as fair and robust if we have not had adequate time to fully explore all of the issues. On the other hand, a lot of parents see 12 weeks in placement as a very long time, so to then advise that we need to extend their placement can have a detrimental impact on their well-being and sometimes on our working relationship with them. It’s important that this is explained well and the parents are fully aware of our rationale behind placement extensions.

Whilst we write the assessment independently of the Local Authority, we must also be aware that the Court sets timescales by which a Local Authority must have an assessment of a family completed. Requesting an extension can cause upheaval in timetabling and increases in costs, and that is why working in a partnership is so important to us. We are always mindful of the delicate balance between the costs of the placement and ensuring that the right outcome is agreed upon for the future of the child in placement. We need to remember that our assessment is just one piece of the jigsaw in care proceedings. Hence, we need to balance a quality assessment with ensuring there is time and funding for everything else to be completed, too.

Given the nature of the situations of the parents who come to Amber Family, it’s safe to say that a one-size-fits-all assessment length of 13 weeks isn’t as feasible anymore. As things get more complicated, we’re seeing more and more assessments being extended so that we can produce good-quality, fair assessments. It may be time for the courts and local authorities to consider this part of the initial care planning process, especially when they have families with wide-ranging, complex issues.