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Analyzing Child Custody Reports
This article is the first installment of a four-part series offering a model for attorneys to use when faced with the task of deconstructing a forensic custody assessment. Family law attorneys are familiar with that difficult moment when a child custody evaluation (CCE) by a mental health professional arrives at the courthouse with a “Conclusions” section that drops like a bomb on their client's case, suggesting that all may be lost. In other cases, a report's conclusions could not be more wonderful for their client, but it becomes apparent that the assessment was so poorly done that it will be easily dismantled on cross-examination. Either circumstance requires a thorough analysis of the forensic work-product to determine how to counsel the parent-litigant about the next step in his or her case.
A small body of literature suggests some of the areas most important to consider when analyzing a child custody report. It includes articles by Austin, Kirkpatrick, & Flens, (2011, Family Court Review' and by Gould, Kirkpatrick, Austin, & Martindale (2004, J Child Custody). More recently, the Custody Assessment Analysis System, or CAAS, provided a comprehensive system for the pre-trial analysis of CCEs by attorneys (Wittmann, 2013, MatLaw Corp.). The CAAS is grounded in the published parameters and guidelines of the forensic field, key forensic and psychological treatises, and research on clinical judgment. The inspection of an evaluator's report, focusing on the factors outlined below, produces a “red-flag” analysis: a catalog of deficiencies or threats to reliability that appear to characterize a particular assessment.
Simultaneous attention to the strengths in a particular report can also be quite instructive, by revealing ways in which it may be sturdy and unlikely to yield under attack. The CAAS model suggests four broad dimensions or lenses for such an analysis, dimensions that will structure the discussion in our four installments: Management of Professional Relationships, Data Adequacy, Technique Adequacy, and Reasoning Adequacy. The first of these dimensions is the focus of this installment.
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