ABSTRACT

A thorough assessment of parenting capacities is the basis for providing answers about questions of children’s safety and the chances of a successful rehabilitation outcome. One is trying to strike a balance between the rehabilitation of children to their families and their permanent placement outside the birth family. When coming to decisions about whether or not a family should be rehabilitated, the issue of whether adoption or long-term fostering would be a better option clearly has to be addressed, and certainly at the very least remains in the background. A common request made by referrers with the multi-problem family is not only to look at the prospects for rehabilitation, but also to look at the family with regard to the potential risks to the child. Clearly, when it comes to considering rehabilitation of a family, one will want to see how the risk changes over time, moving from, for example, high to medium and then to low risk.