Advanced Assessment skills

Good quality assessments are fundamental to protecting children and supporting families. We need to be able to gather information, make sense of it and use it to create effective plans. This requires us to utilise a range of questioning and thinking skills for different purposes. It also requires us to use research and to analyse the information in a robust way to make sense of the story.

This course is for professionals working with children and families. We will explore, through presentations, discussions and case studies a range of advanced skills to enhance decision-making. Course content includes:

• Gathering information – the concept of the story
• The need for humble curiosity in relationship-based practice
• Understanding the different thinking styles and their application to practice
• Recognising evidence, difference, grey areas and missing information in the assessment process
• Understanding colliding or nurturing biographies; cumulative and interacting risks and strengths
• The top 5 questions for all assessments
• Using hypothesis types to reduce assumptions and error
• How to undertake thematic analysis of lived lives stories
• Analysing themes: strengths, risks; patterns, trends, time and impact
• Tools to guide a range of practice decisions