Chronologies

Chronologies are an essential analytical and reflective tool that should be used in assessing, planning, working with families, understanding, and responding to cumulative harm (trauma informed, healing and repair) and in evidence-based decision making. The chronology of the child’s significant events should also be a reliable ‘go to place’ for practitioners and managers who need to get a quick and accurate understanding of the child’s experiences, the harm they have or may have suffered, what has worked well in the past and to gain an up-to-date position of the case.

This guidance provides a short summary of the thinking and process that should be followed in order to develop a meaningful multi-agency chronology of the child’s significant events. Other types of chronologies maybe required within your work and you will need to refer to your own agencies policies and guidance for these. This guidance specifically supports you in creating, using, and updating a multi-agency Chronology of the Child’s Significant Events. It is the child’s lead practitioner’s responsibility to hold the ‘master’ multi-agency chronology on their record/file.

What is a Chronology

Chronologies are a record of key events, in sequential order. Events that are significant for the child could be positive or negative. Chronologies are fundamental to good practice as they improve understanding and insight into individual cases including the child’s lived experiences and cumulative harm.

Chronologies can be used in many beneficial ways for the practitioner, child, and family. It is the responsibility of the lead practitioner to create the chronology and the responsibility of partner agencies to contribute relevant and succinct information directly and regularly to be included.

Why we might need to do a chronology of significant events

Shows the child’s lived experiences and family history
It shares information that might otherwise not be known by other agencies who are involved with the child and/or family
It helps identify gaps and prompts the use of best questions with children and the family network to fill these gaps
Helps to prevent significant information becoming ‘lost’ within records
Chronologies are a key element in every kind of assessment, though is not a substitute for an assessment
Helps you to focus on all relevant issues, not just those presenting right now
Makes you the practitioner better prepared, gives you a better understanding and makes you better able to challenge (but not pre-judge) and to be curious
Supports the practitioner and family to identify and make sense of what we are worried about, patterns, themes, cycles, increases or decreases in events or behaviour in the life of a child and their family
Helps to identify existing safety that could help protect the child now and, in the future,
Makes it easier to identify the build-up of harm/ cumulative harm and plan support and services that will help heal and repair harm and are trauma informed
Helps the practitioner and family to understand the frequency, severity, first, worst, and most recent harm, and the potential cumulative harm or difficulties and its impact on the child. Parental and family members responses to significant events may add or reduce the impact of harm on the child (also helps you to complete the in the harm matrix which supports best practice)
Helps empathy, reflection, and analysis on the part of the practitioner and others during work with the child and family, and sometimes after a serious incident within the family
Is useful in supervision and can act as a summary of events to facilitate review, reflection, and work out what might be going on and why
Informs and supports evidence-based decision making, planning and intervention
Helps Emergency Duty practitioners and new practitioners to get an understanding of the child’s experiences and harm quickly
They are the starting point for internal and external auditing
Chronologies are a legal requirement for some cases

What makes a Good Chronology?

It lists events in the order they happened, not in the order they came to professional attention
They tell the story of the child and family, not of the agencies working with them
They show the impact on the child, positive or negative
Identifies existing safety as well as worrying events
They are up to date, accurate, use straightforward language that is non-blaming and succinct
They are multi-agency so increase everyone’s knowledge of the child’s live experiences
They save time for practitioners by front-loading their exploration of the child and family’s history and any relevant themes and gaps in their knowledge
When professional judgement is used: chronologies cannot be automated or treated as an administrative task or something that is done at case closure
When they are succinct and are fundamentally different from case notes, or an ‘audit’ chronology
When they can be used as an ‘index’ and allow you to find more details in the agencies case record
When they are written in plain language with no abbreviations, or these are explained in the first instance they are used in each event entry
They provide evidence of change (or lack of change) over time

Top Tips

Starting a chronology of the child’s significant events should be one of the first actions for both emergency and non-emergency cases
Start the Chronology as soon as the child/family is allocated to you and work backwards by adding in historical events as you learn about them throughout your involvement, and forwards by adding new events as they happen
A chronology doesn’t give you all the answers for your analysis, but gets you asking some of the right questions
Have ‘updating child’s chronology’ as an agenda item for Core Groups, Team Around the Family meetings and Care Team Meetings. Ask other professionals, the child and family if they know something significant to add to the chronology.
Enter event as the date they happen on (and put when and how they were first reported/first known about in brackets)
If the actual date of the significant event is unknown, use the 1st of the month and explain in the details, why you can’t identify a specific date
Focus on the person not the agency, this is not a chronology of your agencies work
Don’t clutter the chronology of the child’s significant events with processes, routine information and insignificant events that detract and hide what is important to know.

Deciding on what is a significant event will often require professional judgement. Some events will be universal and others specific to an individual child/family and their circumstances. Remember to include significant events that have a clear positive impact not just the negative ones as this may help with safety planning and understanding what works for this family which can then be built upon in the safety plan.

A chronology of the child’s significant events will include some but not all processes such as Strategy Meetings, Team Around the Family meetings, Public Law Outline Panel (PLO) Family Group Conference etc. Remember to include the ‘person centred’ part, which could be the reason the meeting was needed, the decisions made, following actions and the impact on the child.

When using your professional judgement and practice wisdom in deciding what events are significant, ask yourself, “Does this decision, event, occurrence, or omission hold significance for the child, why and what is the impact or potential impact on them, positive or negative, and how do we know this?

Suggestions for significant events can be found below, this is not an exhaustive list, it doesn’t and can’t include events that might only be specific for an individual child (remember to be specific and include positive and negative events):

When trying to identify what significant events might be – Think – Does this decision, event, occurrence, or omission hold significance for the child, why and what is the impact or potential impact on them, and how do we know this?

Births, including parents and child
Bereavement/deaths
Safeguarding referral
Physical or mental ill health in the family (including disability) drug/alcohol misuse/ overdose/self-harm/ depression, serious injury including accidental
Child becoming a young carer or their responsibilities changing Change of address, GP, School etc
Change of marital or other significant relationships
Domestic abuse incident
Positive or worrying weight loss or gain
When a child tells you or someone else something that is a safeguarding concern
Any type of harm or risk of harm
When someone stepped in and protected the child from harm (existing strength) or mitigated the harm in someway
Missing from home and return to home
Unexplained school absence
Child protection/Child in need referrals
Start of Public Law Outline (PLO) protocol
Key decision such as change in legal status, living arrangements or who and how the child spends family time, level of need, care plan or level of involvement etc
Achievements, awards, exam results
Child subject to a child protection plan – beginning and end
Parent, important adult, or an abuser starts or ends a custodial sentence
Missed immunisations and other ‘was not brought’ medical appointments
Child Protection Strategy Meetings/Child protection conferences/ Core groups/Team Around the Family Meetings, Care Team Meetings, Family Group Conference etc.
Parental or young person overdose and other forms of self-harm
Treatment/programme for substance problematic substance misuse – start and finish
Change in medication script
Pandemic lock downs or similar events/disasters that impact on the child/family
Changes in the child’s legal status/ becoming or ceasing to be accommodated/looked after by the local authority.
Urgent Care attendance / hospital admissions and discharge
Chronic or significant acute parental/carer/child illness
Referral to services LADO (Local Authority Designated Officer)
Was not brought to medical/health/therapeutic appointments
All observations which may be related to sign of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse and neglect including sexual or criminal exploitation
A new adult, child or young person moving in or out of the household.
Committing of offences by the child or significant adults
Fixed term or permanent exclusions from school
Court proceedings, hearings, and their outcome.
Significant incident e.g., house fire

Examples of what is not a Significant Event for the Child (unless something significant, positive or negative, occurred within them)

Routine recording/case notes
Attendance at appointments
Statutory visits
Letters
Emails
Attended school, unless the first time/first time following significant non-attendance
Routine visits
Telephone calls
Legal advice
PNC checks (but do enter offences in on the date they happened)

Please make sure you are logged in before trying to access the training events or resource library