Collaborative, integrated assessment tools - for the whole person, the whole system and the whole journey.
Reliable and Valid
Theoretically robust and backed by extensive research and peer review.
Needs-led, strengths-based
Powerful in facilitating a strengths-based approach in practice, planning and analysis.
Decision-support
Ratings translate to action levels to guide case planning and caseload/service management.
Affordable for all
No annual licenses, low-cost online training and accreditation, flexible implementation support.
In social care and human-serving systems, the complex sources of information that inform case planning are often confused or even conflicting. TCOM’s assessment strategy gets everyone on the same page, speaking the same language about needs, risks, strengths, and outcomes.
TCOM provides a set of reliable, comprehensive assessment tools to communicate needs, risks and strengths and guide decision-making throughout an entire service or system of care. Empirically validated and simple to use, they provide strengths based assessments that allow the combining of multidisciplinary perspectives. This enables the process of assessment to play an integral part in decision-making, care-planning and service responses.
The Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths Assessment (CANS) is a primary communimetric tool at the heart of the TCOM approach, particularly suited to use in children’s residential care.
The CANS is a way to communicate needs, strengths and risks throughout a system of care.
What does the CANS measure?
Measure what matters to inform decision-making, care-planning and strengths-based practice.
The CANS measures a comprehensive range of items within key domains. Items are designed and selected to be consistent with information required across the full scope of service planning. For example, items, ratings and definitions are consistent with diagnostic criteria to ensure a coherent thread of information and reduce the need for unnecessary additional assessments prior to interventions or when securing placements/services.
For high/specialist needs and risks, extension modules are triggered to ensure more detailed assessment when necessary.
A rigorous review of Residential Care by the Department for Education in 2015 identified the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) assessment as one of only two sophisticated, fit-for-purpose tools available to the sector.
How we rate needs and strengths with the CANS
The CANS uses consistent and validated 4-point (0-3) ratings to measure and effectively communicate the full comprehensive spectrum of needs, risks and strength items. Each item is supported by item and rating definitions and makes space for professional judgement.
Because the assessment items relate directly to the real-world context of planning and monitoring care, every rating provides an action level to guide care-planning and decision making, while providing a meaningful framework for monitoring progress and outcomes. The universal application of the communimetric rating system across need and strength items also enables summing of actionable items to understand case loads, progress and more.
The CANS rating system is a fundamental strength of the approach. It strengthens inter-rater reliability, supports practitioners in making unbiased, evidence-based professional judgements, while making the output of assessment more meaningful.
How is CANS data used across systems?
Use levels of use content from training presentation.
Where did ‘communimetrics’ come from?
The ‘communimetric’ approach to assessment was developed by Dr John Lyons, Professor of Public Health at the University of Kentucky, and has been used widely in the US since 2004. The communimetrics approach responds to the reality that the primary roles of assessment in human-serving systems must be measurement and communication to support effective, consensus-based decision-making. With this focus in mind, communimetrics restructure the process of assessment to more reliably and meaningfully measure needs, risks and strengths, and be integral to communication, collaboration and planning.
While the theoretical approach may sound complex, the assessment tools are not. This universal, simple and intuitive format is not only empirically validated and reliable, it is well-liked by providers, practitioners, individuals and families in care systems internationally.