Parenting, PAMS Assessments & ParentAssess

Parenting Assessments

This assessments will look at the parent’s personal history, views and attitudes toward parenting, understanding of child development and the child’s needs, the resourcefulness of the parent to seek help and support and who forms their support network.

At Social Work Reports our Independent Social Workers will conduct a holistic assessment to draw together a family history with reference to prior information and chronologies and recognise the existing strengths and skills of the child and family.

‘Parenting Assessment Manual’ Assessments (PAMS)

‘Parent Assessment Manual’ Assessments are also known as PAMS assessments and include assessment of:

child care and development
behaviour management
independent living skills
safety and hygiene
parents’ health
relationships and support
the impact of the environment and community on parenting.

Where a parent has a learning difficulty or disability, a PAMS assessment provides techniques that the assessor should use when they are working with parents and families with this diagnosis.

When completing a PAMS assessment the assessor will look at the parents knowledge and quality of their parenting skills.By assessing all of these different areas of parenting, the assessing social worker forms a picture and gathers evidence of how the family functions and the quality of the parents parenting skills. The result is an evidence and knowledge-based report.

ParentAssess

ParentAssess is a specialist framework that is designed to assess parents with a learning disability or additional issues such as:

• mental health
• trauma
• exploitation
• domestic abuse
• alcohol or drug misuse
• offending

Our trained, independent Social Workers will use this tool to ensure that parents fully understand and are involved in the assessment process. Importantly, the child’s experience of being parented and their views are considered. The parent is also helped to understand the impact of their parenting.