What is a Chronology?
A chronology is a sequential list of events, in date order, which records all significant fact and changes in a child or young person’s life; this includes positive changes and achievements. They are an essential tool in the assessment of harm for a child. Chronologies have been defined as:
“Chronologies provide a key link in the chain of understanding needs/risks, including the need for protection from harm. Setting out key events in sequential date order, they give a summary timeline of child and family circumstances, patterns of behaviour and trends in lifestyle that may greatly assist any assessment and analysis. They are a logical, methodical and systematic means of organising, merging and helping make sense of information. They also help to highlight gaps and omitted details that require further exploration, investigation and assessment” (Social Work Inspection Agency, 2010).
When assessing neglect there is not necessarily an identifiable ‘trigger incident’ when the case moves to child protection, and without a chronology incidents are often seen in isolation of each other. A chronology allows for patterns to be identified and for change or lack therefore to be recorded. Analysis of a chronology can provide insight into both the immediate and long-term effect of individual events on a child’s physical, emotional and educational needs.
What should be included?
Chronologies should start from the child’s birth or pre-birth where appropriate and not from the initial Children’s Services involvement.
Significant events for the child listed in date order.
Changes in circumstances for the children, for example marriages, birth of siblings, family compositions, deaths, changes of residence, changes in care, changes in contact arrangements.
Previous social care and/or multi-agency involvement in the child’s life, for example referrals, significant illness or injury, medical appointments, transfers, key incidents which give rise to concerns of harm or future harm, nature of the intervention (S.47, S.17), services provided to the child, key planning and decision-making meetings, statutory visits, reviews, court orders.
Actions taken by the multi-agency team to support the child’s physical and emotional safety including the outcome and impact of actions taken to safeguard the child..
Chronology template:
Important features of a chronology:
Chronologies should be factual, accurate and shouldn’t contain opinion, contentious information or judgement.
Be concise and provide detail without replicating case recording. Information should be summarised to record key events.
Be a ‘live’ document allowing for unplanned events to be included and be regularly updated with new information and reviewed often.
Include the action that was undertaken by each multi-agency partner and the outcome for the children.
Should be one document for each individual child. Multiple chronologies should be compiled into one working document.
Should include acts of omission as well as commission e.g. medical appointments that have not been attended, declined professional visits, non-attendance at school.
Different agencies have different demands and focus. Professional judgement is necessary to determine what constitutes a significant event. Multi-agency teams will need to have a clear consensus on the worries for a child/ young person when deciding upon significant events.
WHEN SHOULD A CHRONOLOGY BE STARTED?
A chronology should be started as part of completing the initial Single Assessment and be regularly updated during the period of social services involvement with the child.
Multi-agency partners e.g. health, education, police, children’s centres are likely to already hold key information from before the start of social care involvement and this must be reflected within the document.
Note: It is important that although the chronology may be started when involvement starts, the document also contains historic information.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
All multi-agency partners are responsible for contributing to a chronology. Information sharing between the multi-agency team is essential to ensure that the records of all agencies are compiled together in one succinct document.
An integrated chronology should therefore be started when there is concern about a person’s wellbeing, to support a multi-agency response.
A lead professional should be identified at the initial multi-agency meeting (e.g. Early Help Team Around Me Meeting, Child in Need meeting, Core Group) to identify who will be responsible for collating a multi-agency chronology and updating it regularly.
Note: The process will work best when there is a shared sense of responsibility by all for gathering, recording and passing the information to the lead professional