Common Assessment Framework (CAF)

Family Picture

The CAF is a framework used by all practitioners working with children and young people to identfy their needs.


The aim is to provide the right support at an early stage before the need increases.

CAF involves listening and working closely with the child, family or young person to find out what help is needed and what is working well in their lives.

The framework has been developed as a result of the government documents - Every Child Matters and Children Act 2004.

Please find the Making it Happen magazine and the Derbyshire CAF briefing sheet, which includes further information regarding CAF in the more information section on this page. There are also flowcharts for the CAF process and the CAF Action Plan process, these are for use by practitioners.

Related documents

The following documents are in Portable Document Format (PDF). You can download the PDF software for free from the Adobe website (opens in a new window)

The following documents are in Word format. You can download the Word software for free from the Word viewer page (opens in a new window) of the Microsoft website.

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