CAFCASS Assessments: Parental mental illness, Sexual abuse, Parental drug or alcohol abuse, Neglect, Child exploitation

CAFCASS Assessments

See CAFCASS’ guidance and procedures for working with children here 

See a useful account of how CAFCASS assess harmful parenting in their  Other forms of harmful parenting guide

Use the links below to see what the CAFCASS Family Court Adviser (FCA) will be using in their assessment.  See exactly what CAFCASS thinks is useful.  FCAs are expected to follow these processes although they do have discretion in how they conduct their assessments.

SCODA – risk assessment with parental drug misuse

This is used in interviews to assess drug misuse

Tool for drug abuse

Used in interviews to assess drug abuse

Alcohol use tool

Used in interviews to assess alcohol misuse

Tool for parenting knowledge and style

Used in interviews to explore parents’ understanding of their child’s needs according to age and stage of development.

Child exploitation screening tool

This is used in assessing any children under the age of 18 to assess a child’s risk of sexual abuse or exploitation

Adult wellbeing scale

Used to assess ‘wellbeing’

Parenting daily hassles scale

Used to assess parents/carers view of the children’s needs and how they are coping with them

Mental health thinking tool

This is designed to organise FCAs’ thinking and help them to review the evidence where parents have mental health difficulties. It is not designed to be a prescriptive or definitive measure of risk 

Sexual behaviours traffic light tool

This lists examples of sexual behaviour in children divided into four age categories. All green, amber and red behaviours require some form of attention and response, but the type of intervention will vary according to the behaviour