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In this section you will have the opportunity to meet a family, the Johnson family, that is being assessed under the Framework for the Assessment of children in need and their families.

On the coming screens you will be able to explore this framework in relation to the family's situation and to help you do this, a social worker called Barbara, will talk you through the case as you explore.

Click NEXT now to meet Barbara and learn about the family.

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Meet Barbara and the Johnson family

Sue Johnson is a thirty five year old white British woman. She has five children, Paul aged 14, Danny aged 12, twins Chloe and Lauren aged 6 and Marcus aged 3. Geoff, Sue’s husband and the father of the 5 children, left the family suddenly two years ago and has since had a child with a new partner. Since Geoff left Sue has felt under enormous stress. She has had to give up work and struggles financially to cope on state benefits. After some initial telephone contact Geoff has no contact with the Sue or the children and provides no financial assistance. The family live in a small privately rented house which is overcrowded and in poor repair. Sue misses Geoff terribly, and she has been treated for depression by her GP. The family had moved shortly before Geoff’s departure and she has had few opportunities to make friends locally. Sue has a sister to whom she is close, but she lives 200 miles away.

The children also miss their father and Danny in particular has found school difficult and has already been excluded twice from his secondary school. Paul and the twins cope better although they too frequently feel sad about their father. Marcus was only a baby when Geoff left but Sue has found him an extremely demanding toddler and while she is relieved he has recently started nursery part-time, she finds him very challenging. All 4 of the older children have, like Sue found the decline in the family’s finances difficult to come to terms with.

Sue feels that after struggling for 2 years she can no longer cope and having spoken to the head teacher at the twin’s primary school she approaches social care services for help.

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Explore the framework

In the Framework for the assessment of children in need and their families the various dimensions of a family's life are positioned along three domains of:

  • child development
  • parenting capacity
  • family and environmental factors.

Click through the next few pages to explore the framework and find out more.

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Child Development

Assessment of what is happening to a child requires that each aspect of a child’s developmental progress is examined, in the context of the child's age and stage of development. This includes knowing whether a child has reached his or her expected developmental milestones. Account must be taken of any particular vulnerabilities, such as a learning disability or a physically impairing condition, and the impact they may be having on progress in any of the developmental dimensions. There must be a clear understanding of what a particular child is capable of achieving successfully at each stage of development, in order to ensure that he or she has the opportunity to achieve his or her full potential.

Health

This covers growth and development as well as physical and mental wellbeing.

Education

This covers all areas of a child’s cognitive development which begins from birth.

Emotional and Social Development

This concerns the appropriateness of response demonstrated in feelings and actions by a child, initially to parents and caregivers and, as the child grows older, to others beyond the family.

Identity

This concerns the child’s growing sense of self as a separate and valued person.

Family and Social Relationships

This covers development of empathy and the capacity to place self in someone else’s shoes.

Social Presentation

This concerns child’s growing understanding of the way in which appearance, behaviour, and any impairment are perceived by the outside world and the impression being created.

Self-Care Skills

This concerns the acquisition by a child of practical, emotional and communication competencies required for increasing independence. Includes early practical skills of dressing and feeding, opportunities to gain confidence and practical skills to undertake activities away from the family and independent living skills as older children.

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Parenting Capacity

Critically important to a child's health and development is the ability of parents or caregivers to ensure that the child's developmental needs are being appropriately and adequately responded to, and to adapt to his or her changing needs over time. Again, these descriptions are illustrative rather than comprehensive of all parenting tasks.

Parenting Capacity

Providing for the child’s physical needs, and appropriate medical and dental care.

Ensuring Safety

Ensuring the child is adequately protected from harm or danger.

Emotional Warmth

Ensuring the child’s emotional needs are met and giving the child a sense of being specially valued and a positive sense of own racial and cultural identity.

Stimluation

Promoting child’s learning and intellectual development through encouragement and cognitive stimulation and promoting social opportunities.

Guidance and Boundaries

Enabling the child to regulate their own emotions and behaviour.

Stability

Providing a sufficiently stable family environment to enable a child to develop and maintain a secure attachment to the primary caregiver (s) in order to ensure optimal development.

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Family and Environmental Factors

The care and upbringing of children does not take place in a vacuum. All family members are influenced both positively and negatively by the wider family, the neighbourhood and social networks in which they live. The history of the child's family and of individual family members may have a significant impact on the child and parents. Some family members, for example, may have grown up in a completely different environment to the child, others may have had to leave their country of origin because of war or other adverse conditions, and others may have experienced abuse and neglect as children.

Family Hisotry and Functioning

Family history includes both genetic and psycho-social factors. Family functioning is influenced by who is living in the household and how they are related to the child.

Wider Family

Who are considered to be members of the wider family by the child and the parents? This includes related and non-related persons and absent wider family. What is their role and importance to the child and parents and in precisely what way?

Housing

The degree to which the accommodation has basic amenities and facilities appropriate to the age and development of the child and other resident members. Also includes considerations of whether the housing is accessible and suitable to the needs of disabled family members.

Employment

Who is working in the household, their pattern of work and any changes? What impact does this have on the child? How is work or absence of work viewed by family members? How does it affect their relationship with the child?

Income

Income available over a sustained period of time. Is the family in receipt of all its benefit entitlements? Is there sufficiency of income to meet the family’s needs? Are there financial difficulties which affect the child?

Family's Social Integration

An exploration of the wider context of the local neighbourhood and community and its impact on the child and parents.

Community Resources

Describes all facilities and services in a neighbourhood, including universal services of primary health care, day care and schools, places of worship, transport, shops and leisure activities.

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Now choose 3 of the dimensions (for example, Guidance and boundaries; Identity or Community resources) and write down how you might assess Sue's situation in relation to them, particularly as a parent living in poverty. You can read information about Sue and her family again by navigating back through the previous pages. To do this, click on the 'previous' link at the bottom of the page.

Sue's Story

Sue Johnson is a thirty five year old white British woman. She has five children, Paul aged 14, Danny aged 12, twins Chloe and Lauren aged 6 and Marcus aged 3. Geoff, Sue’s husband and the father of the 5 children, left the family suddenly two years ago and has since had a child with a new partner. Since Geoff left Sue has felt under enormous stress. She has had to give up work and struggles financially to cope on state benefits. After some initial telephone contact Geoff has no contact with the Sue or the children and provides no financial assistance. The family live in a small privately rented house which is overcrowded and in poor repair. Sue misses Geoff terribly, and she has been treated for depression by her GP. The family had moved shortly before Geoff’s departure and she has had few opportunities to make friends locally. Sue has a sister to whom she is close, but she lives 200 miles away.

The children also miss their father and Danny in particular has found school difficult and has already been excluded twice from his secondary school. Paul and the twins cope better although they too frequently feel sad about their father. Marcus was only a baby when Geoff left but Sue has found him an extremely demanding toddler and while she is relieved he has recently started nursery part-time, she finds him very challenging. All 4 of the older children have, like Sue found the decline in the family’s finances difficult to come to terms with.

Sue feels that after struggling for 2 years she can no longer cope and having spoken to the head teacher at the twin’s primary school she approaches social care services for help.

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Now we're going to turn to an assessment of Sue's situation using the framework. Barbara, the social worker, will give you her views on how each dimension in the Framework relates to Sue's family. As you work your way through the framework, compare Barbara's assessment of the three dimensions you chose on the previous screen to your own.

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Child Development

Selfcare skills

Sue is not very good at looking after herself and so therefore not very available to the children in this respect. She can't afford much in the way of toiletries not to mention new or even nice clothes for the children or herself. The bathroom is rather 'grotty' and the demands of the large family mean that there is considerable pressure on it, and little privacy, in particular for the teenage children. The fact they have to share bedrooms also adds to the problem. For example the oldest boy is just entering puberty and is embarrassed to talk to his mother about some of the changes taking place in his body, when he knows she is depressed and hard put to keep going, just on a daily basis. His sister feels the same and they are both self conscious about the cleanliness of their bodies and of their clothes - the lack of hot water and the broken washing machine add considerably to these stresses.

Social presentation

The children are embarrassed at the fact they 'don't have a father any longer' and have been teased at school for looking scruffy and, in the case of the older children, for not having the right school uniforms. This in turn makes them lacking in confidence which they have sometimes tried to disguise by being surly and looking as though they don't care.

Family and social relationships

Sue feels very ambivalent about Geoff's parents - she has heard they have been very welcoming to Geoff's new partner and this makes her very angry and reluctant to encourage the children to maintain their links with their paternal grandparents, even though the latter have tried to keep in touch with their grandchildren. The children miss their father very much and they also miss their grandparents, who were a very important part of their early lives.

Identity

Although there are many other children in the schools the children attend whose families have broken up for a range of reasons, Sue's children are finding it very difficult to come to terms with the new situation in the family. They were used to having a fairly involved father and a quite jolly mother - all this has changed for them. Things that all of them took for granted, like the oldest boy being an active member of the local football team supporter's club, where he went with his father team, no longer happen. Money is short and so a range of identities have changed for the children in addition to the sense of having become 'children from a broken home'.

Emotional and behavioural development

Children react to living in adversity in very different ways. Some children are resilient and able to cope with even very stressful circumstances. However others, such as Danny in this scenario are deeply affected and this presents as challenging behaviour. Although Marcus is only very young his behaviour may also well be a response to the tensions in the family home.

Education

The stresses on the children could well impact on their education. Although financial assistance can be provided the children, particularly the older ones may feel stigmatised by this. The overcrowded housing may also impact on education in terms of space for homework.

Health

Sue knows that all the children need to have check ups and to have the right 'jabs' when they are offered. It takes a lot of will power to synchronise all these things and much of the time she is too tired to cope. She is also only too aware of the need to safeguard their dental health Ð however since the last NHS dentist closed their books in the new area, and they can't go back to their old dentist this is difficult.

The oldest child is having some difficulty in reading the board at school as well as the computer screen but does not want to worry his mother because he thinks that going to the optician will be a further drain on the family finances and so is putting up with headaches.

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Parenting Capacity

Basic care

Most parents on state benefits are able to provide basic care for their children perfectly adequately. (It is worth remembering that claiming benefits can be a complicated and anxiety promoting process for claimants. Parents often need knowledge and often advice, as well as reassurance about their continuing entitlement to state benefit.) Altogether the process of ensuring access to the benefits to which parents are entitled can be very stressful - Sue's parenting may well also be impaired from depression.

Ensuring safety

Sue is an experienced parent and no doubt understands sources of potential harm to her children. However she is living in poorly maintained property which may well present safety hazards. The children are not well known to the relatively new neighbours, who therefore may not ' be on the look out for them' as they are for some of the other children in the area. Sue is also very depressed and therefore may well be distracted from attending to the day to day needs of her children. The youngest is very interested in matches and often picks them out of the kitchen drawer.

Emotional warmth

There is every reason to believe that Sue is a loving mother. However the stress of living in poverty and the depression associated with this and the loss of her relationship may lead to her being emotionally unavailable at times. She gets very tired just coping with the practical demands of looking after 5 children on a limited income, and at the same time of putting on a brave face for them.

Stimulation

ue may well understand the needs of her children but her fragile mental health and low energy levels means she may not be capable of providing as much stimulation as she would like. There are also related practical/finance issues. It is often helpful to use toys and books as a resource for stimulating children. However toys are often expensive, and although the local toy library is good it is a long way away for Sue to push the pram with the young children.

Guidance and boundaries

Sue's capacity to reinforce consistent guidance and boundaries will be impaired by her low self esteem and depression. There are multiple pressures on the family that stem from the trauma of Geoff leaving. These include both the economic hardship the family faces, as well as the sense of 'responsibility/personal sense of guilt' which Sue carries with her. This is true for many single parent families. She often feels she could have 'done something differently' and this makes her vulnerable to the lack of cooperation of the younger children.

Stability

Sue strives to offer stability. However her position is precarious. She is in unsuitable, privately rented property and she will be building up increasing levels of debt. Her mental health is fragile. The links she has from the community where she used to live have been hard to maintain due to expensive bus journeys, so she has a sense of being in a limbo-like state, where things can change -for the worse- at any moment, and she struggles not to transfer this sense of impermanence to the children.

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Family and Environmental Factors

Family history and functioning

Sue was brought up in care herself, and in a time when little care was taken to ensure that links were maintained with the extended family - as a result she has limited family links of her own. In addition of course the experience of being abandoned by Geoff has brought back the pain of earlier loss when she was abandoned by her mother and placed with foster carers.
The past and the present are understandably very difficult for Sue to separate out, and she is doing her best.

Wider family

Sue's sister is an important figure in the family's life and despite the distance could be an important source of support at this difficult time. Nevertheless Sue's lack of money means she would struggle to visit her sister, particularly with the children. She is too proud to ask her sister for the money to get on the train although the sister would offer this.

Housing

A major source of stress in Sue's life is the poor housing. Overcrowded conditions can exacerbate tensions in the family and the poor condition of the home can pose health and safety problems.

Employment

Sue gave up her job shortly after Geoff left the family. This has had a negative effect on the family's income but has also had a profound impact on Sue's self esteem and important source of social contacts.

Income

Sue is living on state benefits. The state expects Geoff to contribute financially but often little is done to enforce this. In any case although Sue misses Geoff she may well be ambivalent about the ongoing contact financial support would entail. This family is coming to terms with the loss of income as well as the inherent difficulties of managing on a low income.

Family's social integration

The family are isolated. The children have some friends at school. However at home Sue has little money to engage in social activities for either herself or the children. The prospect of inviting people in to a home which she feels looks shabby deters her from asking neighbours or friends in, and the costs of travel for her and the children stop her going a bit further afield.

Community resources

The area in which Sue lives was not one of the original Sure Start programmes and although the local children's services department is now in the process of establishing children's centres this process is taking time - also Sue feels apprehensive about going into the new posh children's centre building, which seems to be used by families with cars and more money than her. Also the children's centre only seems to cater for the young children - she has children of all ages. Unfortunately the local family centre has just closed. One other factor stops Sue from accessing the community resources that do exist- she is very frightened that someone like a social worker or a health visitor will see that she and the children look shabby and consider talking the children into care - she has heard that this sometimes happens to people.