Live running memo 16: Reminder of completion and transfer of initial and post assessment questionnaires
Updated 12 November 2021
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reducing-parental-conflict-provider-guidance/live-running-memo-16-reminder-of-completion-and-transfer-of-rpc-initial-assessment-and-post-assessment-questionnaires-to-dwp
Introduction
Dear provider and local authority,
The Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) Programme’s approach is to continuously review the ongoing delivery to improve the provision. During the current coronavirus (COVID-19) period the completion of the Initial Assessment Questionnaires (IAQs) and Post Assessment Questionnaires (PAQs) cannot be performed in the standard face to face manner.
In order to ensure that these documents are completed accurately and the data collected transferred securely, providers are reminded that they must:
- support parents to complete the IAQ’s and PAQ’s
- send the completed document or documents securely to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in CSV format so that the data can be automatically ingested into the Evaluation Database without the need for manual entry by DWP, because this threatens data integrity and confidentiality
Summary and action
Accurate completion and transfer of the data gathered via the IAQs and PAQs is crucial to DWP’s evaluation of the impact of the RPC interventions on reducing parental conflict and improving children’s outcomes. With take-up of the eight interventions roughly a third of what was expected, it is essential that as many parents as possible complete these questionnaires or we risk not being able to make any robust conclusions about the support you are delivering.
Once parents have completed the documents it is essential that they are sent to DWP in the correct CSV file format so that they can be auto ingested into the DWP RPC Evaluation Database.
Currently the DWP Referral Team are receiving the IAQ and PAQs in other formats (for example, PDF) and are having to rekey the data into a CSV file before this data can be added to the Evaluation Database.
This extra process step adds three risks or complications to the end-to-end process:
- data being incorrectly transposed into the database, potentially leading to incorrect evaluation results
- huge resource implications for the DWP RPC Referral Team, as they are not resourced to perform this rekeying task
- a backlog of IAQ and PAQ data, which is preventing the programme from monitoring progress in real time, and delaying analysis of the outcome data and preventing us from offering indicative results to senior officials
With immediate effect where Providers send the IAQ or PAQ to the DWP Referral team the document will be rejected and a request made for the data to be returned in the correct format:
- IAQ’s must be completed during the Initial Assessment (as per Provider Guidance)
- PAQ’s must be completed after the final intervention either as the last part of the final intervention or during a further telephone or online interaction with the parent
When completing IAQ’s and PAQ’s, Providers must record the data directly into the original CSV file and should make sure that the file is not converted to any other format before it is transferred to DWP.
Further information and contact details
This process will be reviewed in 3 months’ time.
If you have any queries about this live running memo please contact your Performance Manager in the first instance.