Written for frontline workers with responsibility for child protection, safeguarding, and family support, this acclaimed book helps to navigate the expanding complexities of child care assessments. It will guide social workers to deliver better outcomes for children and families. The latest available evidence is accessed and utilized to inform assessments and care planning. Experts in their fields, the book's contributors draw on up-to-date research and integrate it into a body of knowledge that constitutes high levels of established wisdom. Now in its second edition, the book covers all aspects of how to assess, when to assess, and what to assess. Its focus will be of value to researchers, academics, and policy-makers, and especially useful to anyone undertaking postgraduate or post-qualifying studies. In some chapters, attention is given to local legislation and context, yet the over-riding emphasis is on exercising professional judgement in carefully mapped contexts that will benefit social workers throughout the world. The book incorporates responses to all major developments in the field. It gives increased emphasis to the importance of addressing risk, and it includes completely new material, for example, on working with parents with a learning disability. Contents include: risk and child protection: triangulation, trials, and templates * supervising and managing staff undertaking assessments * assessment of child physical abuse: towards a framework for assessment * assessing neglect * a framework for assessing emotional abuse * a framework for assessing failure-to-thrive * sexual abuse assessments: from perpetrator-friendly to perpetrator-challenging frameworks * serious injuries to infants: key risk assessment considerations * pre-birth assessments: context, content, and collaboration considerations * domestic violence: untangling the complexity to inform assessments * assessing the needs of disabled children * learning disability and parenting: improving understanding and interventions * parents with mental health problems: assessing and formulating parenting capacity, embedded within a service context * parental alcohol misuse: evidence-informed assessment considerations * the assessment of parental substance misuse and its impact on child well-being * involving children and young people in assessments * re-assessing fatherhood: the absence of the 'new man' in social work practice * assessments and social ecology: the importance of community.