CAF is a standardised approach to conducting an assessment of a child’s additional needs and National eCAF was introduced last year to help it work efficiently.
While not mandatory, many practitioners have now been trained to use eCAF. The system is designed to assist the team around the child and reduce the need for children and their families to repeat their story for different services.
Children with additional needs often require support from more than one agency and one local authority area, and eCAF is intended to support this cross-border, multi-agency approach.
While eCAF provides what is described as an ‘over-arching’ layer to support practitioners working in different services and locations to deliver a co-ordinated service, it may run counter to the recommendations in Eileen Munro’s Review of Child Protection. She endorses an approach to early intervention which is achieved locally through ‘responsible innovation and improved professional judgement’ by local partners, without nationally prescribed systems.
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