Child/young person and family consult

Updates made to this tool

Changes have been made to a number of pages on the Practice Centre to align with the practice approach. Specific changes include:

• Tiaki Oranga replaces the safety and risk screen, and is now being used throughout the life of a case, across service lines whenever we need to understand current safety.
• All references to the Tuituia domains and subdomains have been removed and we now promote the use of Te Puna Oranga and our models, tools and resources to build and deepen our understanding.
• The Tuituia report has been replaced with the assessment report. 

What is the child/young person and family consult

The child/young person and family consult is a tool that helps us structure our thinking about what we understand is happening in the whānau or family. It helps us to identify and consider areas of need and danger/harm alongside safety and strength.

The consult aims to increase oranga with a focus on safety for te tamaiti or rangatahi by using the strengths and resources of the whānau or family to address the areas of danger or harm.

We use Te Puna Oranga and the oranga-framed practice prompts to build and deepen our understanding of harm and risk of harm with tamariki, rangatahi and whānau and family.

Te Puna Oranga

Oranga-framed practice prompts

When to use it

The consult supports decision-making at any point in the social work process to build and deepen our understanding where there are complex issues.

The consult must be used:

• during the care and protection assessment (child and family assessment or investigation) to inform the analysis and next steps
• for all tamariki (aged 10–13 years) who offend
• for all rangatahi (aged 14–16) who offend and who have a care and protection intervention which is current or has been active within the last three months
• when removal from or return home is considered
• as the framework for the professionals meeting held when returning te tamaiti or rangatahi home
• when reviewing the plan for te tamaiti or rangatahi
• when the caregiver social worker identifies potential risk or issues when completing a caregiver assessment
• at the completion of a section 18A assessment of a parent of a subsequent child.

Policy: Assessment

Policy: Caregiver and adoptive applicant assessment and approval

Policy: Subsequent child

The consult can also be used:

• ­during the youth justice pre-family group conference case consultation to structure what is known about the risks and needs for te tamaiti or rangatahi
• ­during the process of completing an assessment report across service lines to support analysis and next steps
• during the case transfer process
• when in a case-specific multi-agency/multi-disciplinary meeting, as a way to facilitate purposeful information sharing, focus on risk and safety, and support analysis and decision-making.

Who uses it

The consult can be used:

• by a social worker in discussions with te tamaiti or rangatahi and their whānau or family
• individually by a social worker in thinking through their own case
• by co-workers when planning and analysing
• during the case transfer process for the originating and receiving sites to discuss case planning or practice issues
• in supervision between a social worker and supervisor
• in a group consult process
• with the professionals/other agencies involved to ascertain their views.

The allocated social worker is responsible for ensuring that the written record of the consult is transferred into CYRAS, including into the relevant sections of the assessment report.

Using the group consult process

While it can be used in a variety of ways, the group consult process provides additional practice strengths and possibilities, including:

• robust, open and transparent decision-making
• a range of expertise and experience being brought to bear on complex issues
• building professional capacity.

For this reason, Oranga Tamariki promotes the use of the consult within a facilitated group process using Appreciative Inquiry techniques to promote professional analysis and decision-making.

How to use it

The process of working through the elements of the consult in conversation helps us clarify our thinking and make sense of what is known.

Purpose

Begin by defining the purpose of the consultation.

The purpose states what the critical decision is that needs to be made. This ensures that the conversation is focused and purposeful, and leads towards achieving a clear outcome. Review at the end whether the purpose has been achieved.

Genogram

Genograms describe the composition of the whānau or family and key relationships. Completing a comprehensive genogram helps us understand the whānau or family and other relationships important to te tamaiti or rangatahi, including pets.

Danger/harm and safety continuum

The consult is headed with a double-headed arrow, reflecting that work with whānau or family operates on a continuum.

Under the danger/harm end of the continuum, consider information relating to past, current and/or future risk of harm for te tamaiti or rangatahi, including:

• abuse
• neglect
• offending that has been established or alleged
• other aspects of the situation that contribute to potential danger (such as alcohol or drug abuse, family violence, offending).

At the other end of the continuum, consider information relating to factors that indicate safety for te tamaiti or rangatahi. In this context, 'safety' is defined as 'strengths demonstrated as protective factors over time'.

Risk statements

Being clear about the risks to te tamaiti or rangatahi ensures that our involvement is transparent and focused on the areas that require attention and resolution. If the risk statement is not clear, then identifying the safety goal becomes difficult.

Risk statements should relate directly to their impact on te tamaiti or rangatahi. They focus on:

• the adult behaviour and the impact if that does not change
• the behaviour of te tamaiti or rangatahi and the impact if that does not change.

It's important to use language that all members of the whānau or family can understand.

Example

A useful structure for a risk statement is: I am worried that (the person and their behaviour) and this will result in (impact on te tamaiti or rangatahi).

Needs

Consider any needs te tamaiti or rangatahi has. Pay particular attention to those needs that pose the greatest risk to their oranga, including safety. Use the assessment report to record all known needs of te tamaiti or rangatahi.

Assessment report

Strengths/protective factors

Consider strengths and resources within the situation or whānau or family that may be developed to achieve safety and oranga and reduce the possibility of future harm.

Strengths become protective factors when they can be used to address safety and/or behaviour change for te tamaiti or rangatahi.

Grey areas

Often there are areas of information that we are not sure about or do not yet understand how they contribute to potential danger/harm, risk or safety.

These are identified as grey areas, and should be identified for follow-up in your next steps.

Complicating factors

These are factors or dangerous dynamics that may complicate our work with te tamaiti or rangatahi. They are complicating factors because:

• they're factors that remain constant, and
• they have a dynamic relationship with danger/harm and safety for te tamaiti or rangatahi.

Try to determine if these factors or dynamics contribute to danger/harm or safety and record them so they can be addressed as next steps.

Example

A rangatahi is 16 and has a tamaiti of her own. We need to consider their individual and mutually dependent needs to understand what this means for both.

Example

We know the parent of te tamaiti or rangatahi has a mental health diagnosis. The impact on danger/harm or safety for te tamaiti or rangatahi depends on how the condition is being managed – and this could change over time.

Scaling

Scaling is important – a continuum from danger to safety automatically embraces the possibility of change occurring. It is an accessible and straightforward way to show views about safety, and it allows comparisons over time and between key people.

Once you've identified the indicators of safety and of danger/harm, scale the case – 1 indicates immediate safety or protection is required and 10 indicates no safety issues or enough safety to close.

Where the consult is about a rangatahi with offending behaviour, there's an additional scale for their offending behaviour and their progress towards pro-social behaviours and taking responsibility for their actions.

Using scaling questions

Next steps

Working through the consult process will identify what the next steps are. They could be:

• gathering additional information
• meeting with the whānau or family to build safety around te tamaiti or rangatahi
• communicating the outcome of the consult with others
• finalising the assessment report.

Whatever they are, record them clearly — using the SMART principles and the three Ws – What, When, Who.

Protect and support the development of tamariki and rangatahi within healthy whānau and families

Assessment report