This tool was designed by Dr Leon Polnay and Dr O P Srivastava (Bedfordshire and Luton Community NHS Trust and Luton Borough Council) to be used with parents and carers to reduce neglect.
This model was adopted not so much for its hierarchical nature but for its comprehensiveness. It is based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
The Graded Care Profile (GCP) gives an objective measure of care of a child by a carer and a qualitative grading for actual care delivered to a child, taking account of commitment and effort shown by the carer. Personal attributes of the carer, social environment or attributes of the child are not accounted for unless actual care is observed to be affected by them. So, if a child is provided with good food, good clothes and a safe house the GCP will score higher irrespective of the financial situation.
A version of the GCP for Children With Disabilities has been developed, to support you in your work to tackle neglect across this group of children.
The purpose of using the profile is to clarify areas of concern in order to plan appropriate single agency or inter-agency intervention.