ABSTRACT
The importance of assessment in childcare as an issue has grown dramatically with the increasing publicity over childcare tragedies. It has been argued that social work assessment is central to the processes of for caring for and controlling children and families. Despite assessment in childcare being ‘multi-disciplinary’, and the government strongly encouraging the idea of ‘working together’, problems of assessment and working together remain. The tradition of assessment in childcare has thus been an amalgam of psycho-dynamic theory and pragmatic common sense in the study of cases, with an infusion of social systems theory. The issue of social assessment is crucial - particularly for social services. The critical auto/biography CA/B principles provide a comprehensive theoretical framework suitable as a basis for a social assessment of the needs and risks of a childcare case, and gives the practitioner an intellectual base to work from in multi-professional settings.
