Deciding Children’s Futures: An Expert Guide to Assessments for Safeguarding and Promoting Children’s Welfare in the Family Court

The second edition of Deciding Children’s Futures addresses the thorny task of assessing parents and children who belong to struggling families where there are issues of neglect or significant harm, and when separating parents are contesting arrangements for the care of their children in the family court.

This practitioner’s guide discusses how to create relationships and pose questions that breach natural parental defences to understand their histories, anxieties, and needs. Drawing on practice knowledge, theory, and research findings, it integrates the accounts of parents and children with safeguarding imperatives and government guidance, to enable informed decisions that positively impact children’s futures. Chapters address issues such as drug and alcohol misuse, mental health difficulties and learning disabilities, Fabricated or Induced Illness (FII) abuse, and alienation of children, and encourage readers to consider the impact of their own values, histories, and beliefs on the assessment process. This edition is completely updated to reflect all the factors that have impacted assessments for the family court, including updates to case law and procedure rules, devolution of governments, and updates to DSM and ICD diagnostic categories.

Providing a comprehensive understanding of assessment for the family court, this user-friendly volume will be of great interest to expert witnesses, social workers, mental health professionals, solicitors, and anyone working in the family court system.

Joyce Scaife is a clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience as an expert witness carrying out assessments for the family court. She is former Director of Clinical Practice at the University of Sheffield.