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The chapter examines the role of parents in the welfare and upbringing of children, including parents’ own history and mental health and how and when psychologists might be asked to prepare a report on parenting and parent capacity. The chapter describes the changing demands as the baby grows and eventually becomes an adolescent, along with possible interventions at various ages, with attachment as a helpful overarching theory, both in the parent’s history and the current environment of the child. The importance of cultural expectations, genetics and environment are examined. Materials and measures are suggested as helpful in the reliable and valid assessment of parenting and a framework for the preparation of a report on parenting is described.
Requests for examination of parental capacity are likely to come from members of the legal professions. Assessment of parenting is a complex task that may require training and expertise in child development, attachment, parental and child psychopathology, measures and methods, structured and unstructured observation, questionnaires and scales. The use of formal tests is one area in which psychologists are in a unique position to assist the court. A simple task like asking the child to write or, if too young, to describe three good things about mum and three things they don't like about mum, and the same task repeated with dad as the subject, may show whether the child can be discriminating in forming views based on his or her own experience. In making recommendations, psychologists should be careful to stay within the remit of their task, which is to evaluate the possible options for child care and contact.
There are three main areas in which consideration of parenting programmes are of forensic interest. These are firstly in the area of child protection, where a parent has been found to be responsible for the neglect or abuse of a child; secondly where the child has offended and failures in parenting are seen to have contributed to the child's problems; and thirdly as part of an assessment of parenting, which could include the parent's capacity to change. Parenting programmes define what makes an effective parenting intervention. The role of parenting programmes alone in the treatment of delinquency is less clear than the implementation of programmes that work with the child or young person as well as the family, school and community systems that surround him or her. Group settings have been found to be congenial for parents, though not necessarily more effective in achieving a positive outcome for children.
Edited by
Michael Göpfert, Webb House Democratic Therapeutic Community, Crewe,Jeni Webster, 5 Boroughs Partnership, Warrington,Mary V. Seeman, University of Toronto
Some of the evidence that parental depression has adverse effects on children comes from studies where one or sometimes both parents have bipolar disorders, which is a vastly different picture from a more typical postnatal depression, treated, or as often not treated, in the community. If both partners are depressed they are not available to offer support to each other, and the risk to children increases, with neither parent available to compensate for the difficulties of the other. Poor interaction and maternal depression are not coterminous although they do overlap to a degree. Treatment for postnatal depression is effective, but the needs of the child require special attention and only in rare cases are infant mental health services developed. Effective intervention for parents and children requires the co-ordination of primary and secondary care services across the age range, in combinations that may lie outside the usual multidisciplinary boundaries.