Establishing a day in the life of a school age child
Learning Objectives
This resource should help you to consider all the aspects of daily life that can have an impact on a child's welfare. It should also help you to achieve better understanding of the child’s own perspective on these.
In order to take children's own wishes and feelings into account when making decisions about their futures, social workers need to engage in meaningful communication with them about their lives. Otherwise, as research has shown (Holland, 2004), children can become the objects of the assessment rather than its subjects.
This resource, reproduced from Jan Horwath's Child Neglect: Identification and Assessment (2007), sets out the kinds of question that may be asked to ascertain children's views and feelings about life at home and school. The questions simultaneously offer a prompt for the kinds of things social workers should ask themselves about the underlying factors at play.
To read more from this chapter 'The Assessment Task and Process: Factors that Promote and Inhibit a Child Focus' from Jan Horwath's Child Neglect: Identification and Assessment (2007), click here.
Reflective Questions
- What barriers might you, or have you faced in engaging children in an assessment of their situation and needs? How can you mitigate against the effects of these barriers?
- How do you balance your own observations with what you hear from different family members? Consider how you build and record a full picture of the child's life.
- How do you factor cultural sensitivity into your assessments?
Reference:
S Holland (2004) Child and Family Assessment in Social Work Practice. London: Sage
J Horwath (2007) Child Neglect: Identification and Assessment. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan