This (UK) study, aimed to explore the impact of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) on both children and families and professionals

- and examined how far a 'bottom up' cost calculation methodology could be extended to include the costs of the Common Assessment Framework. The study was carried out in four local authorities using a mixed methods approach.

By Lisa Holmes, Samantha McDermid, Matthew Padley and Jean Soper  Introduction

Go to: https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RB210.pdf

Over a third of families helped by the Family Fund are living in the two most deprived areas in Wales according to a new report. 

The research maps the location of families raising disabled and seriously ill children, who received help from the Family Fund against the Wales Index of Multiple Deprivation and indicates a strong correlation between families with disabled children and child poverty.

Keith Towler, Children's Commissioner for Wales said:

"There remains a lot of scepticism and cynicism that child poverty exists in this country. This valuable research from Contact a Family and the Family Fund highlights that it's a problem that is real, it is raw and it is debilitating. For families with disabled children and young people, the struggles are great.  We need to be investing more in detailed research to realise the full extent of the problems if we're to succeed in curbing the trend of more families and their children sinking into poverty."

This is the first study that concentrates on data within the Welsh borders. The findings pose a number of key questions for Welsh Government policy, indicating the need for further, more detailed research into families with disabled children and childhood poverty.

Further information:

The research can be found on the Family Fund website

The Wales Index of Multiple Deprivation Index http://wales.gov.uk/topics/statistics/headlines/compendia2009/1108311/?lang=en

Recent research on families with disabled children and child poverty can be found via University of Warwick http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/research_says_uk/

An Introduction to Keyworking and TAC in the Horizontal Landscape: Joint working in support of children and adults in need

By Peter Limbrick. Published by Interconnections on Kindle. June 2012.

If you do not have a Kindle, you can down load the book to your PC with free software here

This essay is offered as an introduction to the multiagency keyworking model and the TAC* System – and to their place in the horizontal landscape for service users of any age who require support from two or more agencies or services in the same time period. 

Readers are invited to relate its content to the needs and situations of the service users (babies, children, teenagers, adults or old people) they meet in their work or to categories of service users they belong to themselves or represent in some way. 

The appeal, and the solutions offered, are for improved joint working to remedy the great dangers of chaos and fragmentation that happen so commonly when agencies and the people working in them fail to co-ordinate and collaborate with each other. 

An Introduction to Keyworking and TAC in the Horizontal Landscape refers to other writing on the subject and explains such concepts as: 

• The multifaceted condition
• Collective competence
• The matrix of shared responsibility
• The multiagency integrated pathway
• The horizontality of interagency collaboration
• Three tiers of increasing joint working
• Being genuinely user-centred
• Being genuinely family-centred when working with children
• TAC as an antidote to the additive approach
• The primary interventionist
• Collaborative teamwork
• Integration of programmes for a whole-person approach

* The original TAC stood for Team Around the Child but is more widely used now for other service users who need joint working.