LEGAL USE OF MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATIONS IN CHILD PROTECTION PROCEEDINGS

• Author: Karen S. Budd,Erika D. Felix,Anjali T. Naik‐Polan,LaShaunda P. Massey,Heather Eisele
• Date: 01 October 2004
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.174-1617.2004.tb01329.x
• Published date: 01 October 2004

LEGAL USE

OF

MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATIONS

IN CHILD PROTECTION PROCEEDINGS

An Empirical Analysis

Karen

S.

Budd, Anjali

T.

Naik-Polan, Erika

D.

Felix,

LaShaunda

P.

Massey, and Heather Eisele

The authors examine the usc

of

mental health evaluations

in

legal decision making within a large, urban juvenile

court system. The focus was on court files

in

child protection cases relating to 17

I

randomly selected mental health

evaluations completed on parents and 44 evaluations completed on children. Parent evaluations (46.7%) were much

more likely to be present

in

court files than child evaluations

(5.9%),

and evaluations conducted by in-house court

clinicians

(63.8%)

were more often present than those conducted by noncourt clinicians (37.5%). References to

evaluations

in

child welfwc, legal,

or

mental health documents varied with the type of information, subject (parent

or

child), and source

of

the evaluation. Findings ;ind/or recommendations

of

evaluations were cited in legal

or

mental

health documents

for

approximately two thirds of parent evaluations but only one third of child evaluations. Evalua-

tion lindings and/or recommendations were stated as a basi.;

for

legal decisions

in

36.2%

of court-based

parent eval-

uations,

2

1

.O%

of noncourt-based parent evaluations. and

2.3%

of

child evaluations. These results provide evidencc

ofa modest impact ofparent evaluations on legal decisions and notably less impact forchild evaluations. The authors

~ggcst directions for future research and practice

in

ordcr to incrcasc the accessibility and usefulness

of

clinical

evaluations in legal decision making.

Child maltreatment has been and remains a serious problem

in

the United States. Accord-

ing to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) National Clearinghouse

on

Child

Abuse

and

Neglect Information (2003c),

in

2001, there were approximately 3 million hot-

line

calls reporting suspected abuse and neglect regarding some

5

million children. Approxi-

mately

903,000

of these children were found

to

be victims of maltreatment. Of the victims,

19%

(17 1,570) were removed from their homes and placed

in

the state’s custody (ACF

Child

Maltreatinent

2001

Report,

2003a). Multiple and refractory family problems precipitate

child maltreatment, including poverty, drug abuse, cognitive and/or mental health conditions

of parents, and domestic conflict (Ammerman

&

Hersen,

1990;

Baumrind,

1995;

National

Research Council,

1993).

Therefore, most children who enter the state’s custody stay there

for several months or years. In 200

1,

foster care stays for children averaged 33 months, rang-

ing from less than

1

month

(4%)

to

over

5

years (17%) (ACF

National Adoption and Foster

Care Statistics,

2003b).

When the state removes

a

child from the home of a dysfunctional parent, responsibility

for the child’s physical and emotional safety transfers to the state.

In

his book

Psychological

Consultation in Parental Rights Cases,

Dyer

(

1999)

articulated the weightiness ofthe task as

Authors’ Note:

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FAMILY

COURT REVIEW, Vol

42

No,

4,

October

2004

629-640

DOI:

10.1

177/153124450426XX25

0

2004

A\\ociation

of

Family

and

Conciliation

Court5

629