What Do You Base Your Evidence On?

When undertaking assessments that you may be later called upon to give evidence and be cross-examined on, it is vital that the information you have gathered and based your assessment and recommendations on are accurate and reliable.

Even when the information you have gleaned or been provided with is factually accurate, it may not be the most reliable, and this may be the case because it relates to a 'one off' incident or because the interpretation of the events is not accurate, or at the least does not show the entire picture.

There is also the potential for comments and responses to be be taken out of context and thus not properly understood or evaluated.

Normally however, matters such as these are rectified because assessments rarely rely on one or a few pieces of information.

But what happens when the history that you have based the case on is inaccurate?

If a case is allocated to you and there is a history of involvement before your time, or that you were not involved with, how do you know that the information you have based a substantial part of your evidence on is correct or reliable?

The reality, in my view, is that the information you have seen on the records is something that you inevitably tend to accept, and although you will do your own work with the client or parent, you will already have accepted the history to be a true reflection of what has occurred, often many years earlier.

It is perhaps important to consider that when something is documented on the file or records, it is rarely if ever, changed or corrected later.

Once you have accepted certain information to be reliable and true, this has already impacted or undermined your ability to work with that parent or family as if you had a completely blank slate.

For this reason it is crucial that we take the time to be circumspect concerning our work with the family from the time of our involvement onwards because the potential to make assessments based on evidence that may be unreliable is huge, as a result.

It can be very useful to check and evaluate your perception of a parent with the experiences from other professionals in an attempt to gain greater clarity about the perception you have of them.

I do not think there are any foolproof methods of ensuring you make accurate assessments, it is thus necessary to look at all of your evidence to see if your evidence is consistent with the facts of the case and whether or not there is a pattern of behaviour which supports the views and assertions you have arrived at.