Graded Care Profile 2 (GCP2) helps professionals measure the quality of care being given to a child. It’s an assessment tool that helps them to spot anything that’s putting that child at risk of harm.
It’s important we find children who are at risk of harm as early as possible so we can get them the right help. GCP2 shows:
- strengths
- weaknesses
- what needs to be changed.
By working out what parents can do better, it’s easier for the person working with a family to get them the right support to improve the life of their child.
Professionals are specially trained to use the tool. They visit families at home to do an assessment, which is a bit like filling in a questionnaire. It’s called Graded Care Profile 2 (GCP2) because different aspects of family life are ‘graded’ on a scale of 1 to 5. Questions are broken down into 4 areas:
- physical, such as quality of food, clothes and health
- safety, such as how safe the home is and if the child knows about things like road safety
- emotional, such as the relationship between the carer and child
- developmental, such as if a child is encouraged to learn and if they a praised for doing something good.
GCP2 is designed to be used with families where someone is concerned about the care of a child.
The number of visits needed depends on the family. After all the visits, they put the results together and talk it through with the family.
The original tool was developed by Dr Srivastava, a consultant paediatrician in South Yorkshire. We worked with Dr Srivastava to develop the only authorised update of the tool. Graded Care Profile 2 is true to the original model but more user-friendly and comprehensive.