Developing and using vulnerability audits

Why develop a vulnerability audit?

Staff in the targeted youth support (TYS) pathfinders, particularly headteachers, believe that it is crucial to use a systematic process to record and identify at risk children and young people as early as possible (at an earlier point than the common assessment framework, CAF) to ensure effective targeted youth support.

They report that vulnerability audits (and/or risk assessment logs) help capture the insights and gut feelings of frontline workers for example teachers, teaching assistants and others in schools about the children and young people they work with. Audits are also an excellent way of recording and quantifying essentially qualitative evidence or assessments.
 
In addition, audits help address the issue of data lost during transitions, for example between primary and secondary schools. They help identify children and young people, and their families, who move around a lot and those that are hard to reach.

Audits also assist the development of multi-agency locality-based teams to support identified vulnerable children and their families and support local areas and schools fulfil the statutory early identification and swift and early referral requirements (by September 2007).

NB. Links to a range of example audits are listed at the bottom of this page.

Developing and using a vulnerability audit

The TYS pathfinders addressed a range of issues around developing and using pre-CAF vulnerability audits, including:

• How to draw up and validate vulnerability criteria. Stokeswood Primary, for example, is working with Loughborough University to validate quantitative and qualitative measures and their relationship to children's achievement and well being
  
  
• How to find the time and resources needed to develop a vulnerability audit and a systematic process of using it
  
  
• How to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of a vulnerability audit on children's and young people's outcomes
  
  
• Who should lead the process and how should data access and control issues be addressed?
  
  
• The importance of linking into the CAF criteria and also the five Every Child Matters outcome targets to assess need and risk see the DfES pre-CAF document below
  
  
• The challenges of working across school clusters and the early development of multi-agency panels to support vulnerable children and young people and their families
  
  
• The need for further investment in developing geographical schools clusters
  
  
• The increased need for staff development, for example CAF training, and capacity building around IT skills, data collection and analysis and information sharing protocols
  
  
• How to involve key stakeholders, for example parents and voluntary and community services
  
  
• Information sharing protocols need to be in place and the sharing of data across key agencies and boundaries needs to improve
  
  
• Greater coherence across related policy areas needs to be addressed in order to support vulnerable children and young people, and their families, more effectively
  
  
• The need for further research on the role of lead professionals and budget holding lead professionals
  
  
• Does the approach to collecting data in primary schools work for secondary schools?  Should the best of the primary bottom-up models be combined with local authority top-down development models?

The benefits of using vulnerability audits

The TYS pathfinders report a range of benefits from the early use of vulnerability (pre-CAF) audits. For example, they report that audits:

• Help identify at risk children and young people and steer them away from potential risks, see Derby's predisposition to NEET audit below (NEET data extract)
  
  
• Encourage a partnership approach and support multi-agency working, see Gateshead's vulnerability audit below
  
  
• Help identify children and young people, and families, who are hidden from services
  
  
• Support the training and development of frontline workers. For example tier 2 child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) workers are training tier 1 workers in Knowsley in the identification of children with mental health issues
  
  
• Inform the redesign of public services
  
  
• Engage parents and carers in the process of early identification and action
  
  
• Encourage member involvement
  
  
• Encourage school clusters communities of schools sharing data
  
  
• Help share real information in a friendly and supportive way
  
  
• Create real grass roots policy development generated by local people
  
  
• Support the role of Government Office in evidence based policy development, sharing learning and building local capacity

Example audits

• Gateshead vulnerability audit (blank)
  
  
• NEET data extract (includes example data)
  
  
• Every Child Matters indicators (includes example data from School x, Autumn Term 2006)
  
  
• Pre-assessment checklist - Common Assessment Framework (CAF) for children and young people (links to CAF Forms page)

The contacts below are happy to be contacted for discussion and sharing of their learning about their vulnerability audits:

David Hewitson, Gateshead local authority: davidhewitson@gateshead.gov.uk
Lesley Kibble, headteacher of Stokeswood primary school, Leicester: (c/o rchohan@connexions-leics.org)
Graeme Ferguson, Derby City local authority: graeme.ferguson@derby.gov.uk
Fiona Robson, South Tyneside local authority: fiona.robson@southtyneside.gov.uk
Bibi Dzieglewska, Wandsworth borough council: bdzieglewska@wandsworth.gov.uk

Click to read more case studies on redesigning services to help young people with particular needs.