Practice tools take the method or aspect of a method tried and tested in full-scale research or development work underpinned by the Common Language approach and translates the main components so they can be used by managers, practitioners and other people responsible for improving the lives of children. The tools can be used in many ways. They test the findings of research and find out if they hold true in the context of their own work. But also each tool is designed to produce a concrete improvement in children's services. Some are intended to generate new services that are better tailored to the needs of children, some help agencies plan and manage the services they already provide more coherently. Others should lead practitioners to check their judgements with each other and so improve consistency of approach. In every case the tools should make it possible to better evaluate impact on child outcomes.

There are nine practice tools in the Common Language series, seven of which are now published, leaving two currently in preparation and another two still in an initial testing phase. All tools are subject to continuous development. In addition, supporting information and guidance is available or in preparation. This includes the instruments in each of the tools, case studies that illustrate how the tools work in practice, guidance on how to complete selected instruments and other support. This information and a pdf excerpt from each practice tool is available by clicking on the respective links below.

Published tools

PaperWork is a package of instruments designed to improve diagnosis, analysis and record keeping for individual children in need, irrespective of which agency handles the case.

Matching Needs and Services is a way of auditing referrals to children’s services in order to establish a pattern of need on which the design of new services can be built.

Structure, Culture and Outcome is a way of realigning the objectives of residential and foster services around the needs of children, and agreeing the appropriate cultural response to common situations.

Threshold encourages practitioners to consistently measure level and type of impairment to development and to take a second opinion from colleagues and supervisors.

Prediction provides a method for clinicians to make a prognosis about a child’s future development that will inform decisions about how and when to intervene. The tool encourages checking actual outcomes against predictions.

Going Home comprises a series of checklists of indicators and other advice tailored to the needs of social workers making decisions about the return to relatives of children looked after away from home.

Aggregating Data is a procedure to enable two managers of planners of services to collect sufficient key information on a sample of cases to give a reliable aggregate picture of needs, thresholds, services and outcomes in an agency or authority.

Tools in preparation

Service Design helps a country, local authority or community group to design, implement and evaluate strategies and services designed to improve outcomes for children.The tool deals with strategy development, service design and manual development.

Epidemiology helps children's services organisations gather accurate data about the needs and prospects for children they seek to support.

Tools in initial test phase

The idea behind Taxonomy of children in need is to show practitioners how their case fits into national or international categories of children in need.

Reference Tables, if successfully developed, would show managers, researchers and practitioners what ordinarily happens to children in the taxonomy and so provide a realistic guide to what it is possible to achieve with different types of case.