e-Enabled Common Assessment

The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) for Children and Young People has been developed for use by Practitioners in agencies involved with assessing children’s needs for services. It is a nationally standardised approach to conducting an assessment to help agencies communicate and work together more effectively.

Specifically developed to encourage greater sharing of information between practitioners (where consent is given) the CAF will promote earlier intervention where additional needs are observed, reduce the number and duration of different assessment processes, improve the quality and consistency of referrals between agencies by making them more evidence-based, help embed a common language about the needs of children, enable information to follow the child and promote the appropriate sharing of information.

In addition to being a key component in the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme, the CAF is particularly suitable for use in universal services (health and education) where it will play an important role in providing early intervention by identifying and tackling problems before they become serious. The CAF will provide simple, non-bureaucratic processes for a holistic assessment of a child's needs, taking account of the individual, family and community.

Esprit’s ShareCare eCAF solution has been developed in partnership with a number of First Wave local authorities to meet and exceed the requirements and objectives of the Common Assessment Framework. The solution centres around a process that coordinates the safe gathering, sharing and analysis of personal information about children and young people, preventing multiple assessments and joint working between agencies, practitioners and teams by enabling them to collaborate in a seamless, single process when assessing, service planning and caring for children. 

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