April 2023

• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Author: Barbara A. Babb,Marsha Kline Pruett
• Date: 01 April 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12701

EDITORIAL NOTE

April 2023

Welcome, readers, to the April 2023 issue of Family Court Review and to spring in the northern hemisphere. We hope

you and your loved ones have remained safe and healthy, given that the pandemic does not seem to quit and is

becoming almost a “normal”part of life. We are excited to announce that, thanks to the cooperation of our Wiley

editors, this issue of FCR is our annual free access issue. To read these important articles, visit https://www.afccnet.

org/Member-Center/Family-Court-Review and click the box that says “Sample Issue.”

We are extremely grateful to guest editors Vicki Lens, Jana Singer, and Tricia Stephens, who have painstakingly

and artfully curated a unique group of authors, including “the voices of those most affected,”to contribute to this

special issue on race and the child welfare system. By way of background, in the United States, child protection laws

authorize state agencies to remove children from their homes due to allegations of abuse or neglect and to place

children in kinship care or foster care. Thereafter, the state is obligated to provide appropriate services to the family

to facilitate safe reunification of the child with the family. If reunification is impossible to achieve within certain time

standards, the state must create an alternative permanent placement for the child, often involving the termination of

parental rights. As the guest editors state in their introduction, “racism in child welfare is an open secret,”and the

system itself “shatters the bonds of Black families,”according to prominent scholar Dorothy Roberts, one of the

special issue authors, who refers to the child welfare system as the “family policing system.”The guest editors, who

introduce each of the contributions, state that the articles in this special issue “offer both a strong critique of our

current family regulation system and a vision for remaking the system into one that supports rather than surveils

marginalized families and that combats, rather than contributes to racial oppression.”They urge you, our readers, “to

participate in that remaking project,”and they offer suggestions about how to become appropriate and active

change agents.

Three articles, each with multiple authors, follow the special issue articles. In “The family law detection of overall

risk screen (FL-DOORS): Utility as a repeated measure for assessing change in family violence risk over time,”

authors Anna Booth, Brad Wright, Heather Pearce, Claire Ralfs, and Jennifer McIntosh discuss a standardized screen-

ing framework applicable to family safety risks. The authors' findings highlight the value of this tool relative to risk

monitoring and early screening. The second article, “The use of parental alienation constructs by family justice sys-

tem professionals: A survey of belief systems and practice implications,”by Marsha Kline Pruett, Janet Johnston,

Michael Saini, Matt Sullivan, and Peter Salem, details the results of the authors' study of a large sample of family law

professionals' opinions and beliefs about various issues related to parent–child contact problems. “A survey of

mothers' experiences of shared parenting and domestic violence,”by Beth Archer-Kuhn, Michael Saini, Dora Tam,

Judith Hughes, and Diane Trudgill, the third article, reports on a study of mothers' experiences of domestic violence

within the context of shared parenting arrangements in three Canadian provinces.

To conclude our April 2023 issue, we offer three student notes. Nicole Hecker, author of “The need for a federal

mandate requiring insurance companies to pay for fertility treatments,”urges the adoption of a federal law requiring

insurance companies to pay for fertility treatments “to allow struggling infertile families an opportunity to repro-

duce.”She notes that thirty-one states currently have no such requirement. In “Preventing child opioid addiction

through over-the-counter medications,”Ashley Akl discusses the recent phenomenon of doctors administering

DOI: 10.1111/fcre.12701

© 2023 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts.

Family Court Rev. 2023;61:223–224. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fcre 223