ABSTRACT
We are taking these three stages together, conscious of the convention that chapters on evaluation usually come at the end of books. But what may be claimed at the end stage is dependent upon the quality of the original assessment, the goals arising from it, and the measures against which progress has been monitored. Working the other way, the accuracy of assessments can only be judged against measures of progress and, ultimately, by the outcomes which result. Otherwise, as computer programmers say, ‘garbage in, garbage out’. There are some other general points to make about assessments and why they can be problematic:
1 First, we should be sure that there is one. Obvious as this point might seem, inquiry after inquiry in both the childcare and mental health fields have found, instead, case notes which amount to little more than collections of factual data intermingled with more speculative material, giving the impression that these comments were put there more for storage purposes than as the considered basis for a plan.
