Structured Analysis Family Evaluation provides the home study practitioner tools to assist them in evaluating families. Evaluation entails saying what something means and not merely a description of what the family has related to the home study practitioner. Too often home studies are long on description but short on meaning. This leaves the home study incomplete and requires child placement workers and others to speculate on a host of issues related to the family, their capabilities and their ability to be appropriate resources for children.
The introduction of a child into a family, especially a special needs child, imposes burdens and experiences, some of which the family has never experienced before. To determine a family's strengths and resources and their likely capability to cope with and integrate these challenges is the key to good home study practice.
SAFE leads and supports the practitioner in applying sound social work practice to develop a rounded and complete view of families with all of their strengths, issues of concern and foibles. In so doing SAFE provides the foundation for both a descriptive and psychosocial evaluation of families.
This evaluation sheds light on individual and collective behavior and social interaction involving the family and its members both internally and externally.
SAFE also provides a concrete basis for inter-jurisdictional placements by providing a common method, language and home study format with meanings understood at both ends of the transaction.
This is what "families for children" is all about.