Assessing the needs of children living in chaotic and dysfunctional families
Jan Horwath
Children living in chaotic and dysfunctional families are likely to have a diverse range of problems which affect their cognitive and socio-emotional development. Assessing the needs of children living in dysfunctional and chaotic families is challenging for practitioners for a number of reasons: practitioners cannot always agree on what is good enough parenting, they need to assess parents’ willingness and ability to change, attention has to be paid to the parenting environment and it is important to understand how children experience their world. Through a comprehensive assessment practitioners can capture first what life is like for a child living in these conditions and secondly they can identify the impact that these conditions are having on the health and well-being of the children.
Keywords
Assessment – Dysfunctional families – Child protection – Social work – Parents involvement
