Assess Severity of Risk to Children from Parental Health Conditions: Balancing Risk to Child and Allocation of Resources

This chapter reviews proposals about how to assess the severity of a parent’s health problem, including mental health. It is proposed that an assessment of severity is required as part of an assessment of a parent’s capacity to meet the needs of their child. The topic of assessing risk to a child is also relevant when a decision is required about the level of resource to allocate to a vulnerable family. This chapter discusses approaches that have been used to assess severity of impacts on parenting of mental disorders, and the principle of matching level of service provision to assessed severity of risk to a child.