Discover a universal, transformational assessment tool for social care in England.
By introducing the internationally established CANS comprehensive assessment tool to local authorities and care providers in England, TCOM England is transforming the role of assessment in social care to improve decision-making, evidence and outcomes.
What is the Child & Adolescent Needs & Strengths (CANS) Assessment?
A collaborative, universal assessment tool - for the whole person, the whole system and the whole care journey.
The Child & Adolescent Needs & Strengths (CANS) is a multi-purpose assessment tool developed for use throughout children’s services. It provides a structured way to reliably measure and communicate needs, strengths and risks - as well as how they change over time - throughout the whole complex system of care.
The CANS enables the process of assessment to play an integral part in decision-making, care-planning, monitoring of outcomes and service responses.
What does the CANS measure?
The CANS measures a comprehensive range of items within key domains. Items are designed and selected to be consistent with information required across the full scope of service planning. For example, items, ratings and definitions are consistent with diagnostic criteria to ensure a coherent thread of information and reduce the need for unnecessary additional assessments prior to interventions or when securing placements/services.
How is the CANS used and by whom?
What does implementation look like for your organisation?
The CANS provides a reliable, shared understanding of individual needs, strengths and goals – one that is compatible between services and with the requirements of outcome monitoring and management, service assessment and commissioning strategy.
It is designed for integrated use by practitioners and support workers, social workers, clinicians and any other helpers in an individual’s world – providing the shared understanding that is so desperately needed to improve decision-making and partnership working, and monitor an individual’s progress in realtime.
As well as immediately informing care planning at a practice level, use of the CANS assessment also provides the opportunity to gain ‘real-time’ service-level and system-level perspectives of needs, outcomes and trends across groups and populations, through the summing and analysis of data.
TCOM England’s assessment strategy is free to use after implementation, with low cost training and annual accreditation supported by an established international community of experts, organisations and experienced practitioners.
Assessor training and accreditation is provided online and on-demand, so that every organisation can easily empower their people and implement the TCOM England strategy effectively and sustainably.
TCOM England is a collaborative initiative providing internationally established assessment, outcome monitoring and decision-support tools for local authorities and care providers in England. Contact us