Practice tips for managing challenges in parenting capacity assessments in child protection court

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• Author: Krissie Fernandez Smith,Phillip C. O'Donnell
• Date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12749

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Practice tips for managing challenges in

parenting capacity assessments in child

protection court

Krissie Fernandez Smith|Phillip C. O'Donnell

Cook County Juvenile Court Clinic -

Northwestern University Feinberg School

of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Correspondence

Krissie Fernandez Smith,

Email: krissie-smith@northwestern.edu

Abstract

Courts frequently rely on parenting capacity assessments to

make decisions about visitation and case progress in child pro-

tection court. Although these evaluations can provide valuable

information to courts, they often involve assessing areas of

human behavior that are not clearly defined in the literature.

For example, mental health professionals are often tasked

with identifying risk and protective factors for child maltreat-

ment while identifying factors that can impede progress

towards reunification. Although some of these factors may be

easy to identify and assess (e.g., symptoms of mental illness or

substance abuse), others may be more challenging. For exam-

ple, factors such as denial and minimization about risk factors

and maltreatment, a parent(s)’ability to protect their child(ren)

from future incidents of maltreatment, the parent(s)’potential

for change, and the consideration of what is in the best inter-

est of the child are hard to assess. This article will provide a

summary of the research in these areas, provide tips for man-

aging these areas, and highlight directions for future investiga-

tion that will help inform parenting capacity assessments in

child protection court.

KEYWORDS

child abuse and neglect, forensic evaluation, parenting

DOI: 10.1111/fcre.12749

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which

permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no

modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Authors. Family Court Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Association of Family and Conciliation

Courts.

818 Family Court Rev. 2023;61:818–831.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fcre