Supporting Families with Complex Needs: Findings from LARC4

Claire Easton, Gill Featherstone, Geoff Gee, Ben Durbin, Helen Poet, Helen Aston

30 March 2012

Executive summary

This is the fourth report from the Local Authorities Research Consortium (LARC). This report looked at the use of the common assessment framework (CAF) with families with complex needs and explored the interface between CAF multi-agency teams and social care in meeting children and families' needs. Building on the success of previous rounds of LARC, this report presents the findings from twelve authorities comprising 39 case studies. Each LA developed, conducted, analysed and reported their own research project with the support of NFER and RiP researchers.

Overall the LARC4 research shows that using the common assessment processes with children and families with complex needs can help improve outcomes and be very cost effective for local services in the longer term.

The report will be of particular interest to local staff and managers who lead and operate the CAF process and the services that support children and families, including those in schools, children’s centres and in the health service, including Clinical Commissioning Groups.