Offers a review of the latest literature but moreover a practical guide essential to professionals who give their expert opinions to courts in child care cases.

These are the sorts of questions that face mental health practitioners who are increasingly involved in complex child care cases which come before the courts. They have been given little guidance to date on how these assessments should be made, especially where a decision has to be taken as to whether a child has experienced significant harm. In this book senior clinicians consider the principles and practice of parenting assessments and how they guide courts' decisions about children's welfare. They describe a number of frameworks for assessment and discuss the factors which help predict the...

Lost Innocents is a follow-up to Beyond Blame: Child Abuse Tragedies Revisited (1993). In their new book, Peter Reder and Sylvia Duncan use the same process of case analysis and apply it to a more representative sample of cases. They describe the theoretical basis and method of the study and its findings, before going on to discuss their practical implications, and their opinions about the case review process itself. Finally, the authors discuss whether child abuse fatalities can be predicted or prevented.

Courts considering the future of maltreated children face complex and controversial questions, and the professional experts advising the courts must often address dilemmas which are key to the child's future but challenge the limits of current knowledge.Studies in the Assessment of Parenting brings together experts who consider difficult questions that can arise during family proceedings, and respond with practical approaches for dealing with these demanding and complex issues. A wide range of chapter topics place emphasis on considering the child's perspective whilst assessing parents who...