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• Family Functioning Formulation Assessments 

• Parenting Capacity Assessments

• Attachment Assessments

• Risk Assessments (AIM3, STABLE & ACUTE, also Fire Setting risk assessments)

• Independent Social Work Reviews

• Capacity to Protect Assessments

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PARENTING CAPACITY ASSESSMENTS

Troubled families in Ireland find themselves in a care system upon which they are dependent to make life-changing decisions for all involved. Both the families and the care system itself need comprehensive assessments to support decision-making to either enable achievable and successful reunification plans or to build the foundations for stable foster placements.

There are over 6000 children in the care system in Ireland, born to parents whose life experiences and current circumstances do not currently allow them to provide the care and protection needed by their children.  As a result, children who remain within the care system carry a burden of Trauma and Loss that needs comprehensive understanding and support to enable them to enjoy stable foster placements and achieve their potential in life

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COMPLEX CASES
Complex cases will have a number of factors that will need careful consideration from several perspectives such as Sensory Regulation, Trauma, Attachment, Sexualised Behaviour, Cognitive Capacity, Speech and Language.  Each factor effects the other and when one is overlooked it will undermine care planning, therapeutic planning and reunification planning. Complex cases require several different types of expertise and collaborations  to highlight the various findings to be amalgamated into one assessment to give both a broad and detailed view of family dynamics.

As a multi-disciplinary team, we share a common language to shape our overall understanding of troubled families. Patricia Crittenden’s Dynamic - Maturational Model (DMM) of Attachment and Adaptation; it is hugely influential in the way we approach our assessments. 

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“The words ‘dynamic’ and ‘maturational’ in the label for the DMM highlight the idea of developmental pathways.  The DMM is a life-span theory in which on-going maturation is in dynamic interaction with experience such that early experience influences later development but does not determine it.  Instead, maturation creates natural points for re-organisation, and experiences provides both new information and opportunities to organise new strategic responses.”

  (Crittenden, 2008, pp.10)

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