Parenting Disputes After Separation and Divorce: Who Needs a Family Lawyer?

Australia's family law system continues to be plagued by serious delays. This article acknowledges the need for legal interventions in post‐separation parenting disputes in which individuals may be at risk, or in cases of genuine emergency. The article next contrasts cases involving significant risk or urgency with the many ‘ordinary’ (even if sometimes complex) post‐separation disputes over parenting in which these circumstances are not present. I argue that in such cases, legal advice, legally informed dispute processes, and court hearings are remnants from earlier attitudes to separation and divorce. These interventions are expensive, frequently destructive of ongoing parental relationships, and at their heart, inappropriate for considering the needs of children. They also divert time and resources from the critical investigative and legal decision‐making processes needed in urgent or risk‐related cases. I propose that legal narratives in ‘ordinary’ post‐separation parenting disputes be replaced by narratives focused on the main drivers of these disputes, which are invariably expressed in terms of relationship difficulties. Such narratives are amenable to facilitative, therapeutic, and systemic interventions aimed at achieving self‐determined resolutions. They contrast markedly with narratives reflecting common law notion of normative resolutions derived from the application of legal precedent. Key issues in the first section of the article are then teased out via the reflections of an imaginary separated parent in an ‘ordinary,’ albeit difficult and emotionally intense, dispute about how to care for the children. In the final section, I offer brief clinical and systemic reflections on past practice and on future narratives focused on individual self‐determination.     

Examining the Effects of a Service-Trained Facility Dog on Stress in Children Undergoing Forensic Interview for Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse

Disclosure of child sexual abuse can be a stressful experience for the child. Gaining a better understanding of how best to serve the child, while preserving the quality of their disclosure, is an ever-evolving process. The data to answer this question come from 51 children aged 4–16 (M = 9.1, SD = 3.5), who were referred to a child advocacy center in Virginia for a forensic interview (FI) following allegations of sexual abuse. A repeated measures design was conducted to examine how the presence of a service-trained facility dog (e.g. animal-assisted intervention (AAI) may serve as a mode of lowering stress levels in children during their FIs. Children were randomized to one of the two FI conditions: experimental condition (service-trained facility dog present-AAI) or control condition (service-trained facility dog not present- standard forensic interview). Stress biomarkers salivary cortisol, alpha-amylase, immunoglobulin A (IgA), heart rate, and blood pressure, and Immunoglobulin A were collected before and after the FI. Self-report data were also collected. Results supported a significant decrease in heart rate for those in the experimental condition (p = .0086) vs the control condition (p = .4986). Regression models revealed a significant decrease in systolic and diastolic blood pressure in the experimental condition (p = .03285) and (p = .04381), respectively. Statistically significant changes in alpha-amylase and IgA were also found in relation to disclosure and type of offense. The results of this study support the stress reducing effects of a service-trained facility dog for children undergoing FI for allegations of child sexual abuse.     

Linking family engagement with a rights perspective: macro factors influencing practice

While child welfare practitioners in many countries are struggling to develop methods of effective family engagement, they operate within different national and cultural contexts that influence, both positively and negatively, the ability to engage with families. Increasingly, international comparisons are necessary to further understanding of the development of social work practice. This is particularly necessary because most countries utilize international frameworks (such as the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child) to provide guidance in the development of policies, programs, and interventions. Each country (and locality) struggles to advance practice to be more effective and humane. Our paper offers a comparative analysis focused on family-oriented and rights-based frameworks of different countries. Based on a review of current national policies and a review of the literature regarding family-based practices, we examine similarities and differences among four countries: the United Kingdom, Sweden, the United States, and South Korea. These countries were selected because they have some similarities (advanced industrialized democracies, professional social work, and formal child protection systems) but have some differences in their social welfare systems (policies, specific practices, and socio-cultural context). These differences can be utilized to advance understanding regarding the promise and potential for family engagement strategies. We then discuss the utility of this comparison for theory-building in the arena of child-care practice and conclude by identifying the challenges and limitations of this work.     

When children’s testimonies are used as evidence: how children’s accounts may impact child custodial decisions

Abstract

In child custody cases, children oftentimes provide allegations of experienced trauma against one of their parents. Such allegations can happen before any investigative interviews (e.g., by the police or child protective services) have taken place. A central theme here concerns how to appraise such allegations and make certain that children’s accounts are taken seriously. In the current special issue, the focus is on new work on the functioning of children’s memory and its relation to trauma or work on children’s suggestibility and memory when they are traumatized. Specifically, key experts in the field of children’s memory provided contributions on: (1) the impact of interviewer support and rapport building on children’s testimonies, (2) the role of parental alienation in children’s testimonial accuracy, and (3) different types of false memories in children’s memory reports.     

Are children better witnesses than adolescents? Developmental trends in different false memory paradigms

Abstract

The current study compared older children’s (11/12-year-olds) and adolescents’ (14/15-year-olds) vulnerability to false memory creation using two different methods (i.e., the Deese/Roediger-McDermott [DRM] and memory conformity paradigms) involving neutral and negative stimuli. In line with previous research, a developmental reversal effect was found for the DRM paradigm, which means that when employing this method children displayed lower false memory levels than adolescents. However, when using the memory conformity paradigm, the opposite pattern was found, with adolescents forming fewer false memories than children. This indicates that in a co-witness context, adolescents are less prone to memory errors than children. The emotional valence of the stimuli used in both paradigms did not notably affect the production of false memories. There was no statistically significant correlation between false memories as measured by the DRM and the memory conformity paradigms. Altogether, the current study indicates that there is no single type of false memory as different experimental paradigms evoke different types of erroneous recollections. Additionally, our study corroborates past findings in the literature concerning the issue of developmental reversal, strengthening the idea that under certain circumstances children might indeed be better witnesses than adolescents.     

Social work and hospitality: An oral history of Edith Stolzenberg

ABSTRACT

Edith Richman Stolzenberg (1913–2004) was the first woman to be hired as a social worker in Hartford Public High School in Hartford, Connecticut. In a career that spanned 60 years and much of 20th-century social welfare history, she was motivated by the social justice tradition of her Jewish upbringing and the religious value of hospitality to advocate for children and families. As we enter a harsh new era for social services, this oral history explores the radical possibilities for integrating social work goals and religious values.     

Reconfigured Everyday Lives of Children from Divorced-Parent Families in Singapore

With the termination of a marriage, children involved inevitably experience dramatic changes in different facets of their lives. This article makes use of narrative accounts of divorced single parents to investigate how their marital dissolution has impacted and changed their children's lives. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 25 Singaporean divorced parents. Within the policy and social context of Singapore society, I highlight transformations in three specific aspects of the children's lives: one, the reconfigurations of familial relationships and formation of a new family unit; two, the creation of and adaptation to new family practices and routine; three, the adoption of new social identity following parental divorce. This article hopes to present a more nuanced understanding of the divorce experience by emphasizing both the precarious and productive aspects in the children's lives, contra to the existing divorce literature that typically focuses on the former.     

Left Behind by Parents in China: Internal Migration and Adolescents’ Well-Being

This study investigates how growing up as a left-behind child due to parents’ labor migration in China is associated with adolescents’ cognitive and socioemotional development, based on data from the China Family Panel Studies. We find that adolescents do worst when both parents are absent in all developmental indicators we examined: short-term and long-term word recall tests, numeracy test, self-concept, and self-expectation of educational attainment. However, the differences between left-behind children and those in rural two-parent families are not statistically significant. Left-behind adolescents do have significantly lower well-being than those in urban two-parent families. These differences can largely be accounted for by father's education, family spending on the adolescent's education, quality of parenting, and the social support available to an adolescent. The gap in Chinese adolescents' development is, thus, not so much related directly to how many parents one grows up with as it is to whether one grows up in a rural or urban environment.     

From the Mouths of Mothers: Can Drama Facilitate Reflective Learning for Social Workers?

This article explores and evaluates a cross-disciplinary small-scale project using applied theatre in social work education. The aim was to provide an ‘Affective Encounter’ where students could practice empathic engagement, understanding of the needs of children who have been sexually abused and their protective parents/carers and engage in the complexities of working with family members who may be resistant. The workshop took place five times over a period of three years and was attended by children and families social workers on a one year post-qualifying graduate diploma course. While the use of verbatim theatre does not offer a guarantee of factual truth, it provided the students with some performed moments of personal testimony which was taken word-for-word from mothers whose children had been sexually abused. This allowed the social workers to hear the marginalised narratives of the protective mothers and to practice without a negative impact on the service user. The evaluation identified from self-report the development of emotional and practical skills and knowledge of available resources. This paper focuses on the emotional skills reported and two emerging themes are discussed: learning for humane practice, and the use of this pedagogical approach to encourage affective reflection.