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Common Assessment Framework (CAF)

Children and Young People's Services: a vision to encourage and enable all children and young people in Suffolk to aspire to and achieve their potential.

The CAF is a key part of delivering frontline services that are integrated, and are focused around the needs of children and young people.  The CAF is a standardised approach to conducting assessments of children's additional needs and deciding how these should be met.  It can be used by practitioners across children's services in England.

The CAF promotes more effective, earlier identifcation of additional needs, particularly in universal services.  It aims to provide a simple process for a holistic assessment of children's needs and strengths;  taking account of the roles of parents, carers and environmental factors on their development.  Practitioners are then better placed to agree with children and families about appropriate modes of support.  The CAF also aims to improve integrated working by promoting coordinated service provisions. 

Suffolk Children's Trust Partnership Board has endorsed the use of CAF as the baseline assessment framework to be used by all children and young people's service providers.

Further details can be found on the Every Child Matters website and Children's Workforce Development Council wesbsite

Further information to support integrated working in Suffolk:

Online CAF and Information Sharing (IS) training

Online CAF and IS training is free to those working with children, young people and their families in Suffolk.

Online training is intended as a supplement to face to face training. This training will deliver 'awareness raising' and will act as a startin point if you are unfamiliar with the concepts or as a reminder if you have completed full training.  It will be most effictive if used in conjunction with the Department for Education Information sharing materials

Online training using KWANGO will take around 20 minutes and there is a quiz at the end to test your knowledge

To register for KWANGO online CAF and IS Training, please email: caf@suffolkgov.uk

We will need to know:

  • Your name
  • Job title
  • Organisation
  • Community cluster you usually work in (or the postcode of your main workplace)

To access KWANGO online CAF and IS training

Click on these hyperlinks:

Once you have completed the online CAF or IS training

In order to work directly with CAF (ie complete the process including the paperwork), you will need the full training which takes a day.

Click on the links below to book training or contact admin.wfd@cyp.suffolkcc.gov.uk if you would like to register for future training dates in your cluster.

Partnerships and localities