About Parents In Partnership

ParentAssess is a specialist framework designed to assess parents with a learning disability or additional issues such as mental health, trauma, exploitation, domestic abuse, alcohol or drug misuse and offending.

Developed by Independent Social Worker Sarah Lowe, who has 30 years’ experience working with children and adults with learning disabilities, ParentAssess is designed to be clear, understandable and measurable to parents and legal advocates.  

The framework has been developed to ensure that parents fully understand and are involved in the 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. 

ParentAssess uses a traffic light system to represent the parents level of parenting capacity over five domains.  

The child’s experience of being parented 

The parent’s daily living skills 

How the parent functions 

Specific issues such as domestic or drug abuse 

Support. 

It is recommended that the assessment takes place over an eight to 12 week time-frame, depending on whether the parent needs to work at a slower pace. Usually there are six sessions with the parent, plus observations of the parent with their child. The support network is also carefully explored as this is usually of particular importance with parents who have a learning disability.  

Why ParentAssess? 

It is specifically designed for use in Family Proceedings and is Re D compliant. 

The parent is enabled to understand the process and outcome. 

The whole framework is designed to be easy to read and understand. 

The assessment is completed by one trained assessor who must be SWE registered, as different people assessing the parent can be confusing. 

The questions asked of the parent are no different than would be asked of a parent without a learning disability, so importantly the bar is not set higher. 

The child’s experience of being parented is at the centre of the assessment. 

Issues such as attunement, attachment and the child’s developmental journey are considered carefully. 

ParentAssess covers additional issues that often affect these vulnerable parents, such as domestic abuse, offending, mental health, drug and alcohol abuse. 

ParentAssess provides training courses for professionals to help them focus on developing skills in working with parents who have learning disabilities.