If your child needs extra support, the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) will help your child receive the right support at an early stage. As the CAF is a shared assessment, you and your child will not have to repeat the same details to different workers.

The CAF is voluntary – you and your child can choose to be involved. You can also choose which service providers you want your information to be shared with.

A CAF cannot guarantee service provision but it will provide evidence of a need to access a service and it will also help provide evidence of any gap in provision of services.

The majority of services providing support to children and young people in your area will be connected with a Locality Team; these are local teams, made up of professionals working in a range of different fields, set up to coordinate service provision for children and young people. 

If a number of people are providing support for your child, one of these people may be appointed as a ‘lead professional’. They’ll be the main contact and coordinate the different services you are involved with.

If you need to discuss CAF in relation to your child you should contact your ‘lead professional’ if you have one or your Locality Manager – contact details on the right hand side.