ABSTRACT This paper describes a project undertaken by family centre staff, drawing on the ideas of the Marlborough Family Service in using multi‐family groups as part of their parenting assessments. Child protection assessments are complex and have a far reaching effect on the lives of vulnerable children; practitioners can carry the burden of assessing parents' capacities to meet their children's needs without adequate supervision or support. Our project was developed following the implementation of a new policy, the Public Law Outline, requiring parenting assessments to be completed within a 40‐week time frame. We were concerned that this would not afford the opportunity to develop a sufficient relationship with families to provide a thorough assessment. The paper describes the incorporation of multi‐family days into the parenting assessments and the effect of this work on clients and practitioners. This paper is a practice paper, rather than a formal evaluation, and describes a project in which family centre workers sought to provide a model of assessment based on working as part of a team, managing uncertainty and valuing the opportunity to develop a relationship with clients in order to make an assessment.
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