Resources – Key documents

Common Assessment Framework: Practitioners’ Guide

This guidance is designed to help frontline professionals in all children’s services to use the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) in order to better understand the needs of children and improve outcomes through early intervention.

The CAF is a standardised way of assessing a child’s needs that can be used across children’s services. It contributes to the delivery of integrated frontline services, as outlined in the statutory guidance supporting section 10 (inter-agency cooperation) and section 11 (safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children) of the Children Act 2004.

This summary provides an introduction to the issues involved in using the CAF.

See the full document on the Every Child Matters Web site.