Community Based Assessments - Case Study

Case Study

A lone father of three children aged 3, 5 and 7 years applied for Residence. He had not lived with them for a number of years and in recent months had been denied contact by the children’s mother. He was allowed supervised contact by the local authority when the children were removed from their mother’s care. There had been issues of domestic abuse and substance misuse in the parents’ relationship. Father was assessed as having a relatively low IQ. The permanency plan for these children was adoption.

Following an initial assessment of father’s abilities, JLS Consultancy recommended a further community-based assessment should proceed. This assessment resulted in the children moving to live with their father on a permanent basis. Two years later, the children remain living with their father.

We believe that parenting assessments must prioritise the child’s welfare and must consider how the parent/child relationship is experienced from the child’s perspective. Traditional psychological tests devised to measure intelligence and personality were not designed to evaluate an adult’s capacity to care for children and these are therefore incorporated as part of our assessments.

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