Article archive / February 2022
Originally published: . Volume 13, No. 2. Source pages: 11.
In Louisiana, where the 2020 median household income was $50,935 (Statistica), a full child custody evaluation meeting the model standards of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) is out of reach of most families. Equally pressing, there are very few professionals in the state willing or able to provide them. Many parishes have no evaluators, and judges and attorneys are sending families from all over the state for evaluations to a handful of professionals. Determining “the best interest of the child” after parents separate is often a difficult task. The MMPI results are often considered in a full child custody evaluation, but adversarial attorneys weaponized the full report to focus on pathologies, and the mental health professional was often called as an expert witness in a war of parent-bashing which had nothing to do with the best interest of anybody, especially the child. No wonder most professionals stayed away from forensic work. One less expensive alternative is to “catch the family upstream.” Courts should use mental health professionals early in the separation process, before litigation is even possible. Using problem-solving approaches instead of adversarial ones, courts could triage cases into the appropriate resolution approach and facilitate resolution by using unbundled volunteer attorneys, mediators and settlement judges. Courts can resolve 80% of contested divorce and custody cases with this early intervention as shown by Stacey Marz, in “Faster and as Satisfying: An Evaluation of Alaska’s Early Resolution Triage Program,” Family Court Review. Also, courts can employ mental health professionals within the Court (as with the parenting coordinators in the 22nd JDC (St. Tammany Parish). However, according to Family Court Judge Patti Oppenheim (22nd JDC), there is still a tremendous shortage of parenting coordinators and custody evaluators in agencies or private practice. But more appealing to most psychologists, LCSWs, and LPCs is to provide a "Honda" version of a child custody evaluation which focuses on psychosocial, not legal issues and remains realistic regarding the resources at hand. In 2007, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts created a Task Force to craft and publish Guidelines for Brief Focused Assessment (BFA). The BFA is meant to be a much more narrowly focused assessment of “parenting time and responsibility” disputes. THE BFA also helps the problems of access to services and costs.
Benjamin Garber, author of Developmental Psychology for Family Law Professionals: Theory, Application and The Best Interests of the Child, stresses, ”Family law questions are about relationships, not individuals. They are about dynamics, not diagnoses.” This speaks to our professional ethics and plays to our strengths: to help families––not add to their distress––by using our knowledge of attachment theory, family systems, developmental needs of individuals and families, and parenting competencies rather than intrapsychic data.
The difference between a full-scale child custody evaluation (CCE) and a BFA is that the brief model requires a narrow focus of inquiry. Judges can ask psychologists and other mental health professionals to focus on problems such as: • Is it advisable for children to move with one parent out of state? • Is it in a child’s best interest to be introduced to a heretofore uninvolved parent? • Should a parenting plan be changed from a 50/50 arrangement to some other time- sharing arrangement? By focusing on parenting competencies and relationship strengths and deficits, mental health professionals can answer these questions without relying on psychological testing. The briefer model requires fewer hours of interviews and therefore costs less. It is still a multifactorial approach but avoids pathologizing individuals, emphasizing instead parenting attunement and skills and children’s qualitative experiences with parents. A good example of a practical BFA model comes from LaCrosse County Wisconsin, where Family Court employs an assessment team which renders an assessment based on state statutes and Dr. Bruce Perry’s Six Core Strengths: attachment, attunement, self- regulation, affiliation, tolerance and respect. (Personal communication with Program Manager, Lisa Goings Stablier, 1/15/22). This would be an excellent model for Louisiana practitioners to adopt. It speaks perfectly to the skills of social workers and LPCs who have knowledge of genograms, attachment issues, and family systems and who might previously have believed that forensic evaluations were beyond their expertise. A Brief Focused Assessment is appropriate for many Louisiana families because it is a Honda, not a Lamborghini: practical, reliable, and within budget. And the AFCC will release a 2022 update of the 2006 Model Standards of Practice for Child Custody Evaluation later this year. Anyone providing a BFA should of course be fully trained in child custody assessment. For the first time, the AFCC will offer a live webinar program: “The Fundamentals of Conducting Child Custody Evaluations,” March 15- 17 and March 23-35. The training team consists of four nationally-acclaimed experts: Robin Deutsch, PhD, ABPP, April Harris-Britt, PhD, Sol P. Rappaport, PhD, ABPP, and Arnold T. Shienvold, PhD. On February 8, I will also be offering a one-hour webinar for AFCC illustrating the short model I’ve used for many years. Those interested, can find more information about these training opportunities at www.afccnet.org
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