Graded Care Profile 2 (GCP2) is an evidence-based assessment tool for measuring the quality of care provided by a parent or carers in meeting their child’s needs. The tool uses a graded scale from 1 to 5 by capturing levels of physical and emotional care through the eyes of the child. GCP2 also gives practitioners the tools to work with the child and family to enable change or seek further support.
Graded Care Profile success in school
Jennifer Russell and Lucy Jones from Kingsmead School, in Cannock have been speaking to us about the success they are having with the Graded Care Profile 2 (GCP2). Designated Safeguarding Lead Jennifer Russell explained that learning from Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews highlighted the ammount of low-level neglect involved in the families in reviews which was the driver for the school’s safeguarding priority of neglect especially low-level neglect for the next three years. Jennifer explained the effects of neglect on a child can have far reaching impact and lasting trauma and that working with children in school in these cases enables staff to spot the signs and implement actions to effect change. The school uses a dedicated neglect toolkit which includes many resourses including the child action plan, flowchart, risk factors and the voice of the child capture form amongst others.
Working with Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead Lucy Jones the school invited Viki Hulme, Education Safeguarding Lead and licensed trainer of GCP2, into the school to train 13 of their safeguarding and pastoral team. The team have since been carrying out CGCP2s with children and families in their care and have recently had three successful outcomes this term.
As every practitioner who works with children knows it is sometimes hard to meet threshold when a child is suffering with low level-neglect and after not meeting threshold with a child multiple times Jennifer and Lucy carried out a GCP2 assessment and used this to ensure the Social Worker they were talking to had the evidence needed to go to a strategy meeting. On a separate occasion a child in the school received Early Help from Familiy Action, again off the back of the GCP2 assessment.
We asked Jennifer to tell us what GCP2 means for them;
“In the beginning we thought the form was complicated and daunting, however working with Viki and the team at Education Safeguarding Advice Service, we soon realised that the more times you complete an assessment the easier it gets. Time is short for everyone who works in schools but taking the time to use GCP2 is so valuable and can have real impact on the child, the family and the outcomes through threshold, plus having successes with GCP2 makes it well worth doing and pushes you on to use it more and more. We were aware of the challenges posed by schools who potentially don’t go into the home environment, but for us, many children with needs associated with neglect don’t attend school so the need to do home visits is essential, but if home visits are not done or accepted, we use the voice of the child to give us the information we need to do an assessment.
Working with GCP2 has given us the opportunity to have those conversations with parents of low-level neglect children because we know it is often not wilful or intended neglect but surrounded in circumstance, so we explain we are going to try to use the assessment to help the family access support and also to help them see what they are and aren’t doing well and how we can work together going forward. One parent expressed how grateful she was that now after trying to meet threshold for 18 months her child has a social worker and is doing well.
My advice to anyone trained to use GCP2 is have a go, that’s the hardest part over, assign someone to lead on it in your team and you will be surprises by the difference it makes to children and families. We are all used to hearing no when we seek support but GCP2 gives us the evidence we need to get the help the child deserves.”
GCP2 training is free on the Boards website. Book your training here
