Why is caf important?

It is a tool that will help in the early identification and assessment of children and young people's additional needs and promote co-ordinated service provision to meet them. It provides a framework for reaching a shared understanding with families and other practitioners about a child or young person's needs and how these can be met.

CAF in this context is the 4-step process outlined in national guidance for managers and practitioners:

In Thurrock, practitioners across a range of services have engaged in the CAF process with children, young people and their families and many are producing high quality assessments leading to more effective service provision and better outcomes for children, young people and their families.

Educational providers have noted that completing the common assessment provides a holistic picture of a child or young person's needs and supports their understanding of how the varied factors in the child's home and/or environment are contributing to the current situation.

Parents and carers have reported that use of the CAF and in particular the process of sharing expectations and plans of action has helped them understand what is being proposed. However, the tool still remains under utilised and is a fundamental principle of targeted early intervention.

When practitioners discuss CAF, they sometimes mean the assessment or the form or both. The CAF has 4 components:

The assessment itself covers 3 domains:

The CAF is aimed at children and young people with additional needs who have needs that are not being met by their current service provision. We have provided some examples of the kinds of needs that may be targeted by practitioners working with children and young people, although this is not exhaustive. Thurrock Children's Services recommends that a CAF is carried out for children who experience issues falling within level 2 and above.

There are other targeted groups where universal service practitioners may find themselves recording the assessment, intervention and progress children and young people have made on a CAF form. This may not need to be shared with anyone else unless further support is requested because interventions are not having the desired effect.

It can help professionals develop a shared understanding of a child's needs, so they can be met more effectively. It will avoid children and families having to tell and re-tell their story.

The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is the common European quality management instrument for the public sector. It is a free tool to assist public sector organisations to improve their performance. The CAF helps the organisations to perform a self-assessment with the involvement of all staff, to develop an improvement plan based on the results of the self-assessment and to implement the improvement actions. The model "is based on the premise that excellent results in organisational performance, citizens/customers, people and society are achieved through leadership driving strategy and planning, people, partnerships and resources, and processes. It looks at the organisation from different angles at the same time, the holistic approach of organisation performance analysis."[1] On 7 September 2011, 2382 public sector organisations from 43 different nationalities or from the EU institutions were registered as CAF users in the CAF Database.[2]

The CAF Model is derived from the EFQM Excellence Model and shares the same 9 criteria.

In 1998, discussions amongst the Directors-General of the Public Administration of the EU Member States in the European Public Administration Network (EUPAN) revealed that there was a need for a common European quality framework that could be used across the public sector as a tool for organisational self-assessment. As a consequence of this, it was decided that this quality framework should be jointly developed under the aegis of the Innovative Public Services Group (IPSG), an informal working group of national experts set up by the Directors General of the EUPAN network. The first version of the CAF was then developed in 1998 and 1999 by the IPSG and with the support of the European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM), the Speyer Academy (which organised the Speyer Quality Award for the public sector in the German-speaking European countries) and the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA).[3]

The CAF model was launched in 2000 at the 1st European Quality Conference in Lisbon. A European CAF Resource Centre was established in 2001 at EIPA in Maastricht to serve as a centre of expertise in CAF implementation, to provide training and consultancy, to support the Member States in disseminating the CAF and to further develop the model. The first two years of CAF were evaluated with a study on the use of the CAF. The results led to the CAF 2002, an improved version of the model, which was presented at the 2nd European Quality Conference in Denmark. In 2005, a new study on the use of the CAF was conducted. A number of areas in the CAF needed further improvement: increase the coherence and simplicity of the model, increase the user friendliness by improving the examples and the glossary, develop a more fine‐tuned scoring system for certain users, and broaden the quality approach with directives for the improvement action plans and guidelines for bench learning. The CAF was improved for the second time in 2006. The new CAF 2006 was presented at the 4th European Quality Conference in Finland. In 2009 and 2010 followed a procedure for external feedback on the CAF implementation in the organisation and a tailor-made version of the CAF for the education sector.[2]

Until today, the CAF 2006 is the most recent version of the CAF model. A new revision of the model is planned for 2012 and will be based on the results of a study conducted during the first half of 2011.[2]

The CAF has four main purposes:[1]

The Common Assessment Framework is based on eight principles, "the principles of excellence". These eight principles are:[4]

The CAF has nine criteria representing the main aspects requiring consideration in any organisational analysis. There are five enabler-criteria (Leadership, Strategy & Planning, People, Partnerships & Resources and Processes) and four result-criteria (Citizen/Customer Oriented Results, People Results, Society Results and Key Performance Results).[1] The Enablers cover what an organisation does. The Results cover what an organisation achieves. By performing a self-assessment with the CAF, public sector organisations can find areas for improvement in the functioning of the organisation and in pursuing the desired results.[5]

The CAF is especially designed for the public sector. As a matter of a fact, this focus is what distinguishes the CAF from the EFQM Excellence model.

The 9 criteria of the CAF model are further broken down in 28 sub-criteria. These sub-criteria identify the main issues that need to be considered when assessing a public sector organisation. Each sub-criterion is illustrated by a series of examples that explain its content.[1]