Ealing Children's Services Procedures Manual

Chronology Practice Guidance

Amendment

This chapter was updated in March 2025.

March 25, 2025

1. Who is this for?

This guidance is for all teams in Children's Social Care.

Chronologies provide a timeline of significant events, key decisions and actions undertaken by all agencies involved with a child and their family. They enable us to understand a child's journey – in effect they are a road map of a child's life. They help in identify emerging patterns and assessment of risk. Good chronologies should be concise and supported by an up to date genogram to represent the child's family network.

3. Why are Chronologies Needed?

The chronology enables those undertaking assessments or making key decisions to quickly understand events or patterns of behaviour and to analyse the implications for a child or their family.

Chronologies Illustrate patterns of behaviour or interactions that support assessments by highlighting risk. Viewed in isolation events or behaviours can't be recognised as potential warning signs.

Chronologies can assist legal professionals and the Courts in decision making;

Chronologies can prevent the "re-start the clock" syndrome that builds in delay for children by repeating interventions that have already been unsuccessful or have not produced improved outcomes.

4. Who should have a Chronology?

Every child open to Children's Social Care teams. If there isn't a chronology on file, Social Workers should start one and / or retrospectively fill in any immediate, glaring gaps.

Where there is more than one child in a family, a chronology is held on the 'lead child's record. Social Workers should create a 'family group' in Mosaic wherever possible.

Where a child/children are allocated to more than one team, responsibility will lie with the Social Worker with primary statutory responsibility.

When a child's case is being transferred or closed it must have an up to date chronology.

5. Timescales

Chronologies should be started on file as soon as a child becomes open to us and continually updated especially every time there is a significant event, decision or action.

Chronologies should also be updated in good time to be presented at any review meeting or panel.

The expectation is that as a minimum, chronologies must be updated every three months.

6. When does a Chronology Need to be Shared?

An up to date chronology needs to be presented for all Child Protection Conferences and each Panel where decisions are made. Care needs to be taken as to how widely it is shared as it could increase the risk to an individual within the family. Caution may be needed when children are present at conferences. The extent of distribution will be decided between the Social Worker, Deputy/Team Manager and Child Protection Adviser.

7. Quality Assurance and Audit

The quality of chronologies and whether they are up to date will be part of any audit process and should be reviewed within supervision.

Absence of a good quality chronology at key decision meetings or panels will be escalated to the Team Manager.

8. Key Information to be Included

This list is not exhaustive and is intended as a guide:

It should include all significant events. It is also useful to indicate where more information can be found e.g. reference to assessments, documents etc. Remember to include the voice of the child throughout, as well as keep a multi-agency focus.

Personal/Family

Date and time and event, presented in chronological order usually beginning with the birth of parents and then the children

Births / serious illnesses / deaths /still births/ miscarriages/ dates of birth of new siblings;
Dates of birth of birth of parents;
Family relationships – parents separate/ father disappears / re appears / divorce / new partner moves in /others moving in and out of home;
Dates of entering/leaving UK;
Private fostering episodes;
Relevant aspects of parents' life including previous periods of being LAC or subject to CP history, health.

Education

Change of school / transition to nursery / school / secondary school;
School attendance – days missed;
Fixed term / permanent exclusions and reintegration.

Medical/Health

Medical appointments & missed medical appointments;
Presentation at Accident or Urgent Care Centre (UCC);
Health checks; developmental checks, immunisations.

Events and Incidents

Referral details and dates;
Date case transferred to a new social worker / lead professional / new team - (including 'step up to Children's Social Care or down to SAFE');
Date case closed - chronologies must be up to date at point of closure;
Police information and interventions; Merlin's received or call outs to home;
Child goes missing from home, school or care -include return dates;
Serious incidents;
Allegations against any member of the family;
Domestic abuse notifications;
Court appearances in relation to child (care proceedings) & their outcome;
Parent's offending / anti-social behaviour;
Housing – complaints from neighbours / at risk of homelessness;
Emergencies – when money is given to the family – why;
Positive events that indicate increased parenting capacity or partnership.

Managerial oversight – including Legal & Panels

Dates & details of decisions and outcomes of assessments & recommendations for next steps;
Dates and decisions from meetings or Panels e.g. Legal Planning; Permanency planning; MAPPA, MARAC or MAVES meetings;
Court orders/legal proceedings and decisions/changes in legal status;
Dates & details of managers decisions made in supervision;
This should include any decision about escalating to child in need / Child Protection or coming off a CP plan / de- escalating to early intervention.

Contacts and Visits

All home visits and statutory visits – must state the purpose & outcome of the visit;
Attempted unsuccessful contact or family cancels visit /appointments or appointments that parent/carer cuts short or changes from home to office;
Significant telephone calls;
Significant visits where concerns are highlighted.

Key stages in the Child in Need process

Date CFA started, completed & outcome;
Date of CIN Network Meetings, Reviews & outcome.

Key stages of the S47 /Child Protection process

Any child protection concerns;
Date CFA started, completed & outcome;
Date & outcome of the strategy discussion / meeting;
Date & outcome of the S47;
Date & outcome of Child Protection Conferences and Reviews; Core Groups;
CP medicals – date and outcome.

Key stages in PLO – care proceedings

Key stages of the LAC process

Date of planning meetings & their outcomes;
Date child came into or left care;
Placement changes, moves, disruptions;
Missing - date went / returned, where found, child's voice;
Date of PEP;
Date of LAC Health Assessment;
Date of LAC reviews;
Dates taken to Panel - fostering / adoption.

Other agencies

Referrals made to other services / for specialist assessments;
Information provided by other professionals e.g. teachers, health visitors etc;
Involvements & decisions of other agencies - who did what, when & the outcome;
Take up or refusal of a service.

9. Do's and Don'ts

Caption: do and don't
Do establish a habit of updating chronologies as you go along. It will sound easy on paper, but it genuinely is easier and quicker to add a few entries every few weeks than it is to trawl through and make sense of reams of forms and documents months later!	Don't copy and paste text from elsewhere on file; a chronology assembled from case recordings written for different purposes will usually be confusing, dense and overly detailed. A chronology should provide an easily understood overview, not duplicate existing records.
Do review and revisit chronologies. The nature of our work is that what has happened and what impact it has had is not always immediately clear; it is okay to add an entry based on what we currently know and then amend later if necessary.	Don't leave out important or useful information simply because it is hard to fit into the chronology format. If something is important but you are unsure of the precise date, use an approximate date and be clear this is what you have done.
Do briefly describe the source of the information; be it a police referral, telephone call from another professional, a disclosure directly from a child or your own observations.	Don't assume the reader has knowledge of our families, services or the systems we use. Be very clear and consistent in who and what you are referring to; parents might have multiple partners over time, people may change their names, services may cease operating and acronyms may fall out of use. For example, 'SAFE' will mean nothing to a colleague in another local authority but 'family support' or 'early intervention' will. Remember a chronology must make sense for years, even decades!
Do include referrals, assessments, reviews and court hearings with a brief description of their outcome. Be sure to include what we would consider the key events in our work (for example, court orders made, interventions offered) but not to the exclusion of the events any child would consider important in their lives (for example, parental separation, changing schools, illness).	Don't include entries that say only a visit, review, meeting etc. happened without any supporting information that makes clear why the reader needs to know that. Chronologies are not there to prove you have been doing your visits!
Do include positive information and events, even if this is simply the absence over time of any worrying events. For example, if we are worried about a parenting misusing alcohol and there is evidence they have not done so for several weeks, include this.

Last Updated: March 25, 2025

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