CHILD PROTECTION MEDIATION: A 25-YEAR PERSPECTIVE

This article reviews the creation, development, and growth of child protection mediation (CPM) in the United States. Starting with a few pilot projects in the 1970s, CPM has grown throughout the country. The article traces child protection's development through the publication of the Resource Guidelines and Model Courts and then discusses what the necessary ingredients for a mediation program are. Mediation is then discussed from a judicial perspective. Barriers to mediation are listed, followed by a discussion of special issues that arise when developing and maintaining CPM programs. The article concludes with the observation that CPM is now recognized as a best practice by most judges and court improvement professionals and that it continues to grow.     

GOING TO COURT AS A LAST RESORT: ESTABLISHING A DUTY FOR ATTORNEYS IN DIVORCE PROCEEDINGS TO DISCUSS ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION WITH THEIR CLIENTS

This Note advocates for the creation of a uniform ethical requirement that all attorneys in divorce proceedings involving children inform their clients about alternative dispute resolution (ADR), particularly mediation and collaborative law. By emphasizing cooperation and negotiation among the divorcing parents, both mediation and collaborative law offer these would-be litigants the opportunity to move forward with their parental duties long after the divorce is finalized. Using the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct as a template, this ethical requirement will ensure that clients are fully informed of the availability of ADR and of the chance to forgo potentially unnecessary litigation. Ultimately, the implementation of an ethical requirement holds the potential to minimize the impact of divorce on children by facilitating the process of moving forward for the family as a whole.     

RESPONDING TO THE CALL FOR CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATORS TO JUSTIFY THE REASON FOR THEIR PROFESSIONAL EXISTENCE: SOME THOUGHTS ON KELLY AND RAMSEY (2009)

Kelly and Ramsey (2009 ) propose that it is time to examine the costs and benefits courts and participants derive from child custody evaluations. A structure for a research program was suggested. This article endorses this call for such an examination on the system that provides for forensic mental health evaluations for custody disputes. There is a need to examine the costs and benefits of various types of approaches that are emerging, including the comprehensive evaluation and brief, focused evaluations. This article suggests that there is a need for forensic quality control of the work product that is produced by evaluators. Courts are cognizant of the need to encourage settlement between parties, but they also need to be accurate in making judicial determinations that will be in the best interests of children. Quality evaluations are a cornerstone in working toward this goal. Kelly and Ramsey are mindful of the need for evaluations to facilitate settlement, but also to get it right for the court on accurate predictions about children's developmental outcomes.     

Housing Decisions Among Homeless Families Involved in the Child Welfare System

The present study embedded a qualitative substudy within a randomized controlled trial of housing services for child welfare-involved families to examine housing decisions made in the face of homelessness and child protection. Participants included a representative sample of caregivers (n = 19) randomized to receive the Family Unification Program—a permanent housing intervention for inadequately housed families under investigation for child abuse or neglect—or child welfare services as usual. Qualitative interviews 12 months after randomization assessed housing decision-making processes involved in keeping families safe and stable. Results indicated a push–pull dynamic that constrained housing choices regardless of whether permanent housing was made available. Caregiver housing decisions were constrained by time limitations, affordability, and access to services, whereas child and family safety was perceived as less important. Findings emphasize the need for housing-informed child welfare services to ensure the long-term safety of children in families experiencing homelessness.     

Professionals’ Experiences With and Perceptions of Children Exposed to Severe and Homicidal Violence in Sweden

The present study aimed to examine professionals’ experiences, perceptions, and knowledge regarding violence-exposed children in order to clarify the status and opportunities these children have in the Swedish legal system. A questionnaire was distributed to 63 professionals, representing police, prosecutors, social personnel, and treatment personnel. Findings revealed several problems that hindered effective work. Routines and guidelines were lacking and knowledge gaps regarding these children were found among all professions. Perceptions that children remember and tell were widely held, although conditions enabling sufficient reports are seldom met. Results can be used to guide necessary changes in national routines and guidelines to ensure recovery and maintaining of societal rights of this group of psychologically abused victims.     

Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife: A Reassessment

Abstract

The Pastor’s Wife (1914) may seem at first reading simply another depiction of a woman struggling for liberation in the decades following the work of Thomas Hardy and Henrik Ibsen, being the story of how Ingeborg Bullivant escapes from an English patriarchal home, only to find herself trapped in another one in Germany. The novel, however, marks a turning point in Elizabeth von Arnim’s career; it is a novel that looks back to previous themes while anticipating those to come. It demonstrates, with comedy and bitterness, themes of alienation and exile; satirizes German codes and class; and provides a lyrical Romantic vision of the natural world. It also presents the married woman as a prisoner in a way that anticipates Vera (1921). The novel can also stand alone as an underrated classic that plays an important part in the history of English literature. Published at the beginning of high modernism, it shows, unlike the work of some canonized writers of the time, a fusion of realism and modernism. This essay argues that the novel is a proto-feminist work that is radical in its portrayal of women’s experience and influenced by literary naturalism in its childbirth scenes, but pessimistic about possibilities for change. The essay shows how the novel is modernist in its depiction of the alienated experience of the city; uses nineteenth-century realism in its narrative structure and comedy; and yet is forward-looking in its use of endings. A book that begins as a comedy but ends as a tragedy, The Pastor’s Wife deserves equal recognition with the work of H. G. Wells and E. M. Forster, writers with whom von Arnim was connected and by whom she was influenced.     

Chapter 8. Listening to At-Risk Youth

Abstract

In this chapter I describe the micro “risk society” of Limerick City and St. Augustine's Youth Encounter Project in terms of the social and cultural background of the interviewees, their perceived family and community identity, and their wider socialisation influences. The project is situated down one of the notorious Limerick lanes made famous in a deftly realized and beautifully written story of a boy coming of age during the 1930s and 1940s in Catholic Ireland, Angela's Ashes, and has been a safe haven for children and youth since 1977. In this chapter I present direct quotations from my young interviewees organised around the risk concept in their own dialect and inflections.

Past and present students of St. Augustine's are viewed in the context of family, school, and community whilst considering three broad questions: What are the important risk factors associated with each setting? What factors at the individual level are associated with resilient outcomes? What mechanisms at the social ecological level promote resilience in individuals?     

The Development of a Parent Support Group as a Means of Initiating Family Involvement in a Residential Program

SUMMARY

Working with the families of children in residential care is critical to the success of the placement. For a variety of reasons, parents of adolescents in one residential setting were not receiving adequate services during placement. A parent support and education group was designed and implemented to provide opportunities for parents to access support, learn new parenting skills and, ultimately, optimize their relationships with their children. The responses of both parents and staff to this program were favorable. The group is now a regular component of the organization's range of services, and served as a springboard to enhance family involvement in other program areas.     

One Small Step at a Time: Implementing Continuous Quality Improvement in Child and Youth Mental Health Services

Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is increasingly being adopted by health care, including child and youth mental health services. As part of the commitment to ongoing quality improvement, child and youth mental health teams in the Fraser region in British Columbia undertook CQI projects over a one year period (2007–2008). The projects covered a range of domains and service features and staff gained experience in developing projects. Patience, management support and ongoing dialogue were key elements in the implementation of CQI. Three projects are highlighted to illustrate how teams developed their own unique projects and the outcomes.     

Child Protection Intervention in Domestic Violence: An Illustrative Case Narrative

This is a case study, written from the point of view of child protection caseworkers, about their work with one family. They draw on practices originating in solution-focused and brief therapy, response-based theory, and relationship-based practice. The goal is to implement practices that (a) hold the perpetrator accountable rather than the victim, (b) attempt to avoid putting the mother in a position of having to choose between partner and children, (c) capitalize on child protection's unusual mandate in order to provide support for the mother, and (d) position the professional as a supportive ally of the mother and children instead of relying on the investigative stance. The case is an instance of how these goals and principles are operationalized. Examples of their choices include holding the perpetrator accountable instead of the mother, (a) focusing on what the mother is already doing to protect the children rather than what she is not doing, (b) placing the Ministry of Children and Family Development between the perpetrator and the victim, (c) avoiding forcing the mother to choose between her children and her partner, and (d) attending to the qualities of the relationship with the mother.