Risk assessments

After the safety assessment, the caseworker will keep learning and understanding more about your family. A risk assessment is done whether the safety assessment decided that your child was safe, safe with a plan or unsafe. The risk assessment will include learning about your family’s life now and in the past, and what life is like from your child’s perspective. Sometimes you might get a different caseworker. This depends on staff changes or your family’s needs.

For the risk assessment, the caseworker looks at whether your child is likely to be reported at risk of harm in the future. DCJ uses risk assessment tools to help the caseworker decide if the risk is low, moderate, high or very high. The risk assessment is different to the safety assessment, which looks at dangers to your child right now.

The caseworker uses everything they have learned about your family, including the risk assessment, to decide if DCJ needs to keep working with your family to reduce the future risk for your child. If DCJ continue working with your family the caseworker’s next step is to work with you and your network to develop a Family Action Plan for Change.

When the caseworker has worked with you on your Family Action Plan for Change for three months, they will do a risk re-assessment. They will look at the risk assessment again, as well as any new worries that might have come up for your child’s safety in the past three months. They will also look at changes you have made in this time and what that has meant for your child’s safety and wellbeing.

A risk re-assessment is done every three months while the caseworker is working with you. Risk re-assessments check how much change you have made for your child.

Each risk assessment helps to decide if the future risk level for your child has gone down or gone up. When the tasks in the Family Action Plan for Change are done, and there has been enough change to bring down the risk level the caseworker will stop working with your family. This is sometimes called closing the case.

Some of the things the caseworker may look for when first assessing risk to your child is if DCJ has worked with you before. This includes your history of alcohol and other drug use, mental health, and domestic and family violence, as well as things that are happening now that may hurt your child.