
Family Assessments
At Jamma Umoja we provide an ‘Active Assessment’ in which we work alongside parents, offering guidance, modelling behaviour and supporting parents to reflect on their own background history of being parented. We help them to identify and understand patterns within their own childhood, which could potentially replay themselves in their current family.
The assessment process aims to work with families around a wide range of areas including:
Assisting them in understanding the concerns of the placing agency
To develop an awareness around what constitutes abuse and the impact this has had or might have in the future upon their child(ren).
How to develop more robust protective parenting strategies.
Establishing patterns of care which meet their child’s requirements.
To consider the parent’s capacity to meet their child’s needs in their entirety in the short and long term.
Observations of families are carried out on all appropriate physical care tasks initially, reducing these observations when and if it becomes apparent that the parents / caregivers are competent in these areas. For the first two weeks we provide escort monitoring services for families when out in the community. Escort monitoring is only lifted by mutual agreement with the local authority in line with our risk assessments.
As well as our day-to-day observations, much of our work focuses on in depth sessions with service users, group work, we place focus on trauma informed practice. We support service users to engage in the process of change in the best interests of their children, this includes supporting bonding and attachment between parent and child and vice versa.
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Parents are expected to purchase their own food and prepare and cook meals for their own family. We support families to learn how to cook and learn about health and nutrition. The family has access to laundry facilities on site. There are no charges at the centre for service users.
The communal nature of the centre is designed to enable staff to see parents outside of their own living space mixing with other families. These observations enable workers to make an assessment of parents’ social skills, their capacity to engage with others and their ability to form appropriate boundaries.
These arrangements also offer an opportunity to assess a family’s capacity for social integration.
There are also arrangements in place with the local doctor’s surgery for all families to be registered. We have links with the local Health Visiting Team.

Assessment types
6 Week Assessments
These provide a prognostic view as to the likely outcome of the assessment. At the six week stage we provide a recommendation and prognosis report. 6 week assessments can be tailored to the needs of the family and extended if required.
16 Week Assessments
Jamma Umoja conduct 16-week assessments, in line with the with the Department of Health’s good practice guidelines, Working with Parents with a Learning Disability (DoH, 2007, updated 2021). 16-week assessments are recommended when we are conducting a PAMS or Parent Assess assessment, to ensure we are working within best practice guidelines for all families with disabilities and other additional needs.
Parent Assess
Jamma Umoja undertake Parent Assess assessments. Parent Assess is a framework developed in 2016 for assessing parents who have learning disabilities and other additional needs within childcare proceedings. It addresses both the practical and emotional aspects of parenting and seeks to identify both the strengths and concerns.
Community Assessments
These vary in timescales depending on the instruction. We provide community assessments all over the UK and when required overseas. Community assessments generally include observations of contacts, home visits and focused sessions with regular reviews and final or prognosis reports.
12 Week Parenting Assessments
This is our standard package of assessment which are usually set out at the planning stage:
2 week
6 week
10 week recommendation
12 week conclusion
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Risk Assessments
We conduct thorough risk assessments at pre-placement and throughout the assessment process, these are regularly updated. We also offer independent risk assessments as an additional service.
PAMS Assessments
‘Parent Assessment Manual’ assessments are also known as PAMS assessments and include an assessment of:
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child care, development and behaviour management
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independent living skills
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safety, hygiene and parental health
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relationships and support
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the impact of the environment and community on parenting.
Supervised Contacts
These are included in our standard assessment, we also offer supervised contact as an external additional service.
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Supervised contact can happen on-site or in an external location,