62 Children s Court psychological assessments

Transcription

1 62 Children s Court psychological assessments by Patricia F Brown BA (Hons), MA (Clin Psychol), PhD Susan K Fealy M Psych (Clin), PMCPTP 62-1 Update: 57

2 EXPERT EVIDENCE Patricia F Brown Senior Technical (Child Clinical/Forensic) Specialist, Justice Department of Victoria. Director, Children s Court Clinic of Victoria. Patricia Brown has been a child forensic clinician, teacher, administrator and researcher in psychology for many years and was a principal researcher for the Starke Sentencing Committee in Victoria, researching the efficacy of reports provided to Victorian courts. The Children s Court Clinic has been a central focus in her professional life. In 1992 Dr Brown instituted a new direction for the Court Clinic, making available to the Children s Court expert opinion from various specialties of psychology and psychiatry and maintaining the independence of the Children s Court Clinic for the courts. Following this, endorsement of the Court Clinic occurred through the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission and Equal Opportunity Commission in a report (No 84, 1997) that the Children s Court Clinic in Victoria be the prototype for other such court clinics to be established in Australia. In 2001 the Children s Court Clinic in New South Wales was then established. In 2009 the Children s Court Clinic in Victoria was presented with an award by the court For the provision of outstanding service to the Children s Court of Victoria. Dr Brown s academic publications and papers have most often addressed the role and practice of psychologists in the courts. Dr Brown has presented at conferences interstate and internationally, at times as an invited speaker, the most recent invitation being in 2010 to present at the 18th Congress of the International Association of Youth and Family Judges held in Tunisia. She lectures within doctoral courses at various universities in Victoria, and supervises clinical and forensic doctoral students from a number of universities. She is a supervisor and assessor of doctorate and master theses. As a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Criminology, the University of Melbourne, she presented the Child Forensic Psychology Unit within the Doctoral Course and the Masters Course in Forensic Psychology from She has also contributed to the professional life of psychology from various boards. For example, she has been a Member of the Criminal Justice and Forensic Psychology Advisory Board, Criminology Department, University of Melbourne; the Law Foundation Reference Group on the Legal Representation of Children; the Committee for the Selection of Fellows, the Australian Psychological Society (APS); the Post Graduate Clinical Advisory Committee, Department of Psychology, Victoria University; the Project Advisory Group, Longitudinal Study of the Development of Criminal Behaviour (Australian Institute of Family Studies); the Panel for the Selection of Professor of Clinical Psychology at Victoria University; the Editorial Committee, Australian Forensic Psychologist; and a Referee for the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. Dr Brown assisted in the establishment of the Forensic Board (now College) of the APS and in the Board s first four years she was the National Chairman; she was Victorian Chairman for the following four years. Having been made a Fellow of the APS in 1994, she also received a Public Service 62-2 Expert Evidence

3 Medal, PSM, in the Australia Day Awards of 2000 for For Outstanding Service to the Children s Court Clinic. In 2002, she received the APS Ian Campbell Prize for excellence in applied clinical psychology in Australia. In 2007 she was honoured by the national College of Forensic Psychologists of the Australian Psychological Society for Distinguished Contributions to Forensic Psychology. Dr Brown may be contacted at: Children s Court Clinic 477 Little Lonsdale St MELBOURNE VIC 3000 AUSTRALIA Telephone: 61 (03) pat.brown@childrenscourt.vic.gov.au Susan K Fealy Fellow in Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, the University of Melbourne Susan Fealy has taught in the Developmental Psychiatry Course since She has worked in public child and adolescent mental health services for most of her professional career, serving as a senior clinical psychologist at the Austin Hospital from She has presented papers at regional, state, national and international conferences, mostly on the topics of evidence-based resilience and early intervention for at-risk children. In 2009 she was a guest speaker at Queensland s National Early Intervention Conference, Priority One, Early Intervention from Infancy to Youth. Her two co-authored papers appear in the Australian e-journal for the Advancement of Mental Health (2006). She was a member of this journal s editorial advisory panel from Since 2007 her main place of work has been at the Children s Court Clinic, Department of Justice, Victoria. Susan Fealy may be contacted at: Children s Court Clinic 477 Little Lonsdale St MELBOURNE VIC 3000 AUSTRALIA Telephone: 61 (03) Fax: (03) Relative contributions to the writing Since both authors have a particular interest in risk and resilience research they have shared the writing of that section. Susan Fealy has produced the section on Babies and Small Children. All else has been written by Patricia Brown. Chapter 62 PF Brown and SK Fealy Published with permission of the authors [The next text page is 62-11] 62-3 Update: 57

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5 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION... [62.10] TIME EXPENDITURE... [62.100] THE PRELIMINARIES... [62.200] THE NATURE OF THE CLINICAL FORENSIC INQUIRY... [62.300] THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES: PROTECTION LAW... [62.400] THE SPECIFIC INQUIRY... [62.500] The clinical interviews... [62.510] Whom to invite... [62.520] Motivational problems affecting interviews... [62.530] Confidentiality... [62.540] The keeping of notes and times for interviews... [62.550] THE CONSIDERATION OF RISK AND RESILIENCE IN ASSESSMENTS... [62.600] THE ASSESSMENT OF BABIES AND SMALL CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS IN PROTECTIVE MATTERS... [62.700] Key clinical constructs... [62.710] Assessment of the child... [62.720] Assessment of parents: safety first... [62.730] The capacity to parent safely... [62.740] Impulse control... [62.750] Safety and couple dynamics... [62.760] The protective factors... [62.770] Stability of functioning... [62.780] The availability of and capacity to use informal social support and services... [62.790] Mentalising... [62.800] Assessment of the parent-child relationship, including the attachment of the child and parent to each other, via observation across a whole day of interview... [62.810] Observation of parent child interaction informed by knowledge of normal developmental stages... [62.820] THE ASSESSMENT OF ADOLESCENTS IN CRIMINAL MATTERS... [62.900] Areas to question... [62.905] Potential for suicide... [62.910] Doli Incapax (the rebuttable presumption of an incapacity for crime)... [62.920] Fitness to plead... [62.930] Recommendations in criminal matters... [62.940] THE PLACE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS IN ASSESSMENTS FOR THE CHILDREN S COURT... [ ] Useful psychological tests... [ ] When the cognitive capacity of an adult or of a juvenile is in question... [ ] Fitness to plead... [ ] When a non-verbal test is needed... [ ] When the developmental level of a small child is in question... [ ] When the relationship between parents and small children is at issue... [ ] Personalities of parents... [ ] Violence risk... [ ] Risk of violence in young boys and adolescents... [ ] Parenting stress... [ ] The child s perception of and emotional responses to family... [ ] Where the personality and emotional status of an adolescent needs clarifying... [ ] WHEN IS AN ASSESSMENT COMPLETE?... [ ] THE WRITING OF THE REPORT... [ ] Contact with other agencies... [ ] The essential features of the content Sufficiency... [ ] Describing real people... [ ] Update: 57

6 EXPERT EVIDENCE Learnedness... [ ] Balance and not succumbing to bias... [ ] Avoiding expressions of certainty... [ ] Keeping to behavioural detail... [ ] Compassion and conveying the dignity of persons... [ ] The structure of a report... [ ] APPENDIX Examples of Protection Matter Cases Intellectually disabled mother with small infant... [ ] Substance-abusing parents and family violence... [ ] Physical abuse of an Infant... [ ] Sexual abuse by a father... [ ] BIBLIOGRAPHY General Index of Psychological Tests Cited in the Text [The next text page is ] Expert Evidence

7 INTRODUCTION [62.10] This chapter is a practitioner-focussed account of assessment for the Children s Court, where the good of the child must always be given primacy. To be allowed into the world of a family, to be entrusted with their thoughts and fears and to witness through their eyes their history is at once a privilege and a heavy load for forensic clinicians, who become more often than not observers of grief and deprivation. These are clinicians charged to give a professional account of the negative sometimes destructive elements as well as the nurturing aspects in what has unfolded before them, substantiated as much as possible by other sources. The court needs to be informed as scrupulously and as scientifically as research knowledge will allow, but kindness in the reporting and respect for those interviewed, regardless of what brought them to the court, need above all to be conveyed in interviews and in writing for the court. As psychologists increase their knowledge through research and the expansion of theories of maladjustment, there is a danger of aberrant behaviour (described in increasingly scientific language) becoming the sole focus. To inform the decision maker properly about where problem behaviours fit in the life of a family or a person, the person should leap from the pages in full humanness, a balance of positive attributes and achievements, protective factors and resiliency needing to be put forward together with risk and what has gone awry. Only then can an informed judgment be made by the court and help brought to bear for lives under stress so that children can be properly protected. The primary message is to be respectfully engaging of clients, provide balance in the story and the portraits presented to the court, be kind in what is written, while being always factually honest; let the clients come alive in pen pictures, infused with your learning, and be child-centred (a vast concept) an approach that will test the clinician s humanity and knowledge of life. The aim of this chapter is to set out and explain a thorough assessment process in a child and adolescent forensic setting. For other commentary on report writing see Allnutt and Chaplow (2000); Bow and Quinnell (2002), Brown and Dean (2002); Budd, Poindexter, Felix and Naik-Polan (2001) and Christy, Douglas, Otto and Petrila (2004). In what follows there is an examination of the general nature of the clinical inquiry; the rights of children and families in protection law; and in criminal matters the legal specification of content in reports and the dispositions possible for young persons on criminal charges. These clinical and legal aspects together form a structure for what happens in the assessment and reporting. Framing the interviews also will be a knowledge of the literature on risk and resilience which has special importance for Children s Court work. Issues in relation to interviewing and the place of psychological tests are examined. There is discussion of small child and parent assessments and the clinical information that informs these. Assessment of adolescents is then discussed. There is a section on the writing of reports, including some essential features of content and structure and in the Appendix brief case examples of protection matters are given. [The next text page is ] Update: 57

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