Report of the Division 42 Task Force on Child Protection Evaluations¹

Ellin Bloch, Ph.D.
T. Richard Saunders, Ph.D., Chair
Lenore E. Walker, Ed.D

At its 1997 Mid-Winter Meeting, the Division of Independent Practice Board of Directors approved the statement that follows from the Task Force on Child Protection Evaluations. Many practitioners have had to deal with the reality of child physical and sexual maltreatment, including both neglect and abuse. In fact, lenore Walker chaired an APA Task Force on the topic of child abuse reporting laws several years ago, a summary of which was printed in The Independent Practitioner. Most psychologists are aware of the loose and vague standards for existing reporting laws and the haphazard and destructive process that often unfolds during the process of investigation of child abuse reports. Psychologists who conduct follow-up examinations of allegedly abusive families are especially vulnerable to being caught up in an inappropriate legal thicket.

In the middle of this controversy, at a point where independent groups are studying the child abuse and neglect reporting and follow-up procedures, the American Psychological Association Committee on Professional Practice and Standards has drafted a proposed set of "Guidelines" on this topic (COPPS, 1997). This document was put out for review by Divisions and State Psychological Associations. As frequently happens in this process, very little substantial response was received. After Division 42's experience with the comparable Child Custody Guidelines from APA, Division 42 President Dr. Stanley Moldawsky appointed a Task Force to draft the Division's response. The report which follows was unanimously approved by the Executive Committee and has now been endorsed by the Division 42 Board of Directors.

In a nutshell, the Task Force intent is that any statement on child abuse, whether from Division 42 or from any organization within APA, must take account of two things. In the first place, it must actually provide a concrete benefit for abused and neglected children. In the second place, it must not compromise the ability of psychologists as practitioners to work with these children and their families. As can be seen from our discussion below, it is the view of the Task Force that the present APA statement is wholly inadequate on both counts.

Any Division 42 member who wishes to have a copy of the APA COPPS draft can obtain one by writing to the Task Force Chair, T. Richard Saunders, Ph.D., 200 Forbes St., #303, Annapolis, MD 21401.

Statement of Task Force on Child Protection Evaluations by COPPS

The document on child protection evaluations from the Committee on Professional Practice and Standards appears to us to be drafted in essentially the same form and with the same type of intent that COPPS previously exhibited with its "Child Custody Guidelines." Perhaps as a result, the document before us has many of the same pitfalls and conceptual as well as practical anomalies and failings as the earlier document.

To the extent that this document possesses a focus, in our view it focuses on the wrong things. To the extent that it is fuzzy in stating its intentions and the audience to which it is presumably directed, that inappropriate focus is equally dangerous from the point of view of a practicing psychologist. This is true regardless of whether that psychologist works primarily or exclusively with abused or neglected children, or not. Part of the jeopardy involves exposure of practitioners to arbitrary-appearing requirements that are purely creations of COPPS, which do not have any consensus in the field of psychology. Other forms of jeopardy emerge from the possibility of misuse of the document because of the nature and tone of its statements.

Conceptual Difficulties

(1) Construct reification. Child protection evaluations have not been put forward as either a "Specialty" or as a "Proficiency" in psychology, nor is there any plan to do so to our knowledge. Why then is this document emerging now, with its statements about various ill-defined and possibly unsubstantiated obligations of the psychologist working in this area? COPPS has not presented any material in this document to show why there is a need for a set of Guidelines on this topic, apart from its vague introductory statement (p.1) that child abuse is a major problem to society ("The problems of abused and neglected children are epidemic..," p.1,2).

In addition, there are strong indications that the field of child abuse reporting and other questions related to child protection are in a state of flux. This is therefore a poorly timed effort by COPPS. Practitioners need to see what will transpire in this field before any new "Guidelines" emerge. For example, it is our understanding that the National Science Foundation is producing new information and recommendations covering child abuse and abuse reporting.

(2) Incorrect Beginning Point. The Introduction to the COPPS paper rushes pell-mell into the legal thicket of opposing interests between parents, compared to the "fundamental interest" of children in their own safety. From our point of view, this is inappropriate and badly stated. While the statements by COPPS on p.1,l.12-14, may be somewhat true or partially true in and of themselves, this whole striking of a "balance between these interests" is a horrific place to situate a psychological examination, whether that examination is of the child, the parents, other caretaking adults, the family system, or virtually anyone else.

It is a professional obligation and responsibility for psychologists to conduct thorough and complete assessments. It is not a professional obligation of psychologists to balance the legal or constitutional interests among various contending factions in a legal action. Although the potentially competing interests or balance may ultimately become important in a legal forum, the primary obligation of psychologists from our point of view should be psychological, and not legal.

(3) Correct focus. In practice, the problem in the field of child abuse and neglect concerns youngsters who are killed, permanently injured, or otherwise brutalized, either intentionally or by neglect from their parents or other guardians. This very extensive problem is not even acknowledged by COPPS beyond a casual statement. COPPS thereby gives the impression that by conducting better professional examinations, psychologists will somehow undo egregious errors that may be committed by children's would-be protectors (e.g., families, the police, courts, Social Services Department, etc).

These Guidelines need to acknowledge explicitly where responsibility does and does not lie, and that violence is not reliably predictable and therefore not within the professional purview of psychologists, without many caveats. It seems to us that the correct focus of a psychological evaluation, though not at all exclusively, is on protection of the child. Children who are involved should also be seen, not parents alone, and there should not be uncritical acceptance of second-hand reports where better data are available. Familiarity with domestic violence problems generally can be quite helpful in attempting to safeguard children.

(4) Unseemly rush. Shortly following its brief prefatory remarks, COPPS launches into what it seems from the document it really wishes to discuss, which is the conundrum of "involuntary termination of parental rights." There is absolutely no rationale in the document itself to suggest why this sub-sub heading in a bitterly contentious problem area so preoccupies COPPS. What is needed is a statement from COPPS about why it is so obsessed with this notion, rather than directing a document at child protection assessments in general, which is the presumed content of these Guidelines.

Practical Problems

(1) Poor legislation, vague legal standards. To many psychologists who work with abused or neglected children, the most frequent contact they are likely to have with the legal system concerning child protection has to do with state reporting statutes. This matter was covered by an APA Task Force some time ago. What that Task Force discovered is that the defining statutes and the triggering mechanisms for reporting abuse are often vaguely worded. Moreover, many litigants (as in divorce/visitation disputes) generate reports of abuse that are false, sometimes deliberately so. When such concepts as child neglect and emotional abuse are included, the defining statutes become even more vague and functionally useless. This obviously leaves the "investigating" clinician, whether a psychologist or not, with the pursuit of an evanescent set of behaviors, often with poorly defined means of redress stipulated.

To us as practitioners, what this means is that it has become popular to push towards professional people (in most states a whole variety of professionals, including psychologists) the responsibility for making up their own definitions of abuse and neglect, and reporting "suspicions" of those ideas to the police or to local Departments of Social Services. In other words, the responsibility for acting in behalf of children ceases to be anybody's job in particular, because the responsibility is delegated out to everyone, frequently with little or no guidance and no concern in advance by the states about the chaos that can result from this uncontrolled statutory requirement.

One result of this process has been the mammoth media-driven and popularized folklore "investigations" and subsequent "trials" that have disrupted and at times destroyed people's lives. They have also wasted a great deal of money, both personal funds as well as state funds, pursuing vague legal offenses, frequently without appropriate criteria and definitely lacking in what psychologists prize most in this area, which is an operational definition. We suggest that neither COPPS nor psychologists generally can repair this difficulty, but at least we expect that a document which presumes to put forward "guidelines" to psychologists needs at least to mention the sources of these problems, which are not generated by psychologists.

(2) Family issues. COPPS insists on using such language as the clinical term "at risk" to describe children in abusive or neglectful families. Yet there is no provision in the Guidelines draft for assessment of the family or social environment in which the child is placed. Factors that are likely to contribute to abuse or neglect, such as chronic substance abuse or chemical dependency generally; domestic violence; developmental status or needs of the child; financial stability; and health status of the family members are not addressed. All of these may contribute to abusive or neglectful conditions in a home. Often, psychologists are unknowingly given partial or incomplete information with which to work during the course of an evaluation, often for very practical reasons. Moreover, serious questions about 5th and 6th Amendment complications to potential defendants often make the circumstances of an examination even more highly problematic. There is little evidence in these Guidelines of an awareness of how these considerations can affect the evaluation process.

(3) Terminological difficulties. The draft Guidelines from COPPS repeatedly use language that begs for definition. In particular, we need to know as practitioners what these terms mean in the context that COPPS uses them. Some of the terms that need definition are more or less clinical ones, such as COPPS' use of the term "at risk," and evaluation of the "functioning" of various individuals and "rehabilitation."

Of much greater consequence, however, is the failure of COPPS to define those numerous terms in this document that are to us nothing more than subjective value judgments and invitations to the unscrupulous to attack honest and responsible practitioners. Among these is the Committee's use of such words as "objective" and "impartial," to describe examinations, and the outlandish statement that COPPS thinks that psychologists are supposed to contribute to the "fairness" of an evaluation. We want to know, fairness to whom? To the child? To the parents? To the alleged abuser(s)?

APA Board and Committee members need to come to terms with the fact that in the forensic setting, psychologists as consultants, whether they are evaluators or not, are not often called upon to be either objective or impartial, much less "fair," to whomever it is that is being spoken of in the Guidelines. That is, psychologists and other practitioners as consultants may very well be engaged to make a particular point at trial or during the course of an investigation. They may also review the professional work of others and provide a factual or substantive basis or opinion basis for contradictory or alternative views on a given issue. To us, these are all perfectly legitimate uses of professional expertise, and it is not up to an APA Committee to prevent this kind of legitimate professional activity on the part of psychologists.

The fact that, especially post hoc, some individual or individuals may find a psychologist's statements unfair, partial, or subjective is a problem to that perceiver. These matters should be weighed appropriately by the Court at the time, based on the totality of the evidence available to it, not on the basis of any post hoc analysis. Most psychologists can distinguish a primarily clinical evaluation from a primarily forensic one. However, the reality is that as a case develops, these distinctions become blurred by considerations outside the scope of the original examination. Psychologists are not in charge of this process, and should not be faulted because of it.

(4) Disclaimer. COPPS needs to define what it means by its statement in the introductory paragraph that the proposed "Guidelines" in this draft are "aspirational" and "build upon" the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. We think that these Guidelines need to make explicit what is merely left implied, which is that this document should never be used to adjudicate a case against a psychologist before a State Board of Examiners or an Ethics Committee, either of a state or APA. Like the custody Guidelines, the writing in this document suggests a set of "rules" that can or should be followed. There simply is no consensus on these issues, and no "rules" are possible.

Whoever's aspirations are represented in this document, they are not the aspirations of practitioners or people who are concerned about child protection. Their intended use should be spelled out completely, and the fact that they are not in any way a constituent component of the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct needs to be made graphically apparent to any reader.

Our experience with the Child Custody Guidelines is that exactly this kind of confusion has arisen repeatedly, and that the Child Custody Guidelines document has been used over and over again to create artificial difficulties for psychologist witnesses and examiners, frequently for unscrupulous purposes. APA should make it clear that its Board and Committee structure is not to be used for these undermining purposes, nor should its Board and Committee structure be used to promote vague and empirically undocumented "guidelines for proficiency" in professional conduct of child protection evaluations.

Jeff McKee
Saturday, April 25, 1998