A Comprehensive Guide to Child Custody Evaluations Mental Health and Legal Perspectives
written by Dr. Joanna Bunker Rohrbaugh who is not only a trauma specialist but is also forensic psychologist and a clinical supervisor for outpatient programs that assist victims of violence. In addition to holding a B.A. and Ph.D. in Personality and Developmental Psychology she has also been on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School for well over 20 years. Dr. Rohrbaugh serves as a divorce coach and child expert in two-way law cases. Her family forensic knowledge and personal experience includes adoption, visitation, domestic violence, custody, physical, sexual and mental child abuse, PTSD, termination of parental rights, and substance abuse. In addition, this author’s experience includes developing guidelines for writing parenting plans, evaluation reports, and orders for evaluations, as well as, procedures for performing custody evaluations using the latest information on psychological testing, home observations, and child interviews. To round out Dr. Rohrbaugh’s experience and practice she does forensic consultations, child custody evaluations, and parent bonding evaluations.
A Comprehensive Guide to Child Custody Evaluations Mental Health and Legal Perspectives is a guide to assessing evaluation reports, as well as, legal and ethical standards. This handbook provides up to date information on special issues that are research based on medical problems, child sexual abuse, family arrangements, parental abduction, and estrangement. This book is a great resource for providing support to those who need it most.
A Comprehensive Guide to Child Custody Evaluations Mental Health and Legal Perspectives Buyer Quotes
Indispensable Book
“A Comprehensive Guide to Child Custody Evaluations” is outstanding! It does it all. This is the book for you if you are: 1. just getting involved with child custody cases or have dealt with these cases for years, 2. appointed by courts to do a custody evaluations, 3. an attorney involved in divorce cases where child custody is involved, 4. a judge dealing with these cases, 5. a litigant, or 6. in any school situation that deals with students and their parents in conflicts over the custody of their children. Dr. Joanna Rohrbaugh clearly sets out the roles each participant plays–judge, attorney, parent, evaluator– in these disputes and makes clear each participant’s obligations both legally and ethically. The language Dr. Rohrbaugh uses is clear as a bell and avoids legalese. If you click on the “Search inside this Book” to the left top of the listing page, you can download the first chapter and see how readable the text is. I found the book to be user friendly, and it comes with a CD with all sorts of useful down-loadable forms.
“A Comprehensive Guide” is just that, comprehensive. Every subject you can imagine is here. The book is well documented using the latest statistics as well as a vast reading list for anyone needing more information on any particular subject. Again, click on “Search inside this Book” and you will see the extensive Table of Contents and the index. All through the book, Rohrbaugh uses “boxes” with bullet points to make information immediately understandable (you can see one on page 23 of the Introduction).
The text helps you every step of the way. For instance, one difficult part of these cases is knowing where to begin. Chapter 12, “Conducting and Reviewing Evaluations,” for example, starts with an explanation as to how to screen referrals from the first phone call an evaluator receives from the court. All the information then is summarized in Box 42 by bullets such as this partial example:
*Conflict of interest?
*Attorneys–character, competence, professional style
*Private case–ability to pay? Need for adjusted rates?
*State-pay case–sufficient hours pre-approved?
The steps Dr. Rohrbaugh takes you through and the types of issues you need to consider, are so detailed that a review like this can hardly scratch the surface. What you will find, as you study the book, is that she touches on nearly everything you need to consider in evaluating a child’s home situation and makes clear how to write the evaulation, how to communicate with other professionals involved with the case, how to deal with diversity in family structures, how to deal with mental illness in parents, etc. I might mention, too, that Dr. Rohrbaugh lists the various types of payment an evaluator receives…she is very explicit which is a great help!
In many ways, the best part about this book is the clarity Dr. Rohrbaugh brings to the highly complex world of custody battles. She explains the “how to,” but her narrative also explains the “why” and untangles for us how the courts and custody battles got to where they are. Dr. Rohrbaugh’s common sense approach along with her deep expertise in the field, makes this book a necessity to anyone involved in court ordered child custody cases.”
This is a Comprehensive Guide
“This guide is a great addition to the libraries of legal and mental health practitioners involved in child custody matters. It is also a terrific resource for professionals in training to become child custody evaluators. As an experienced evaluator, I would not necessarily recommend this guide clients — just as I would not generally recommend they flip through the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) to diagnose or treat themselves. There are other resources available to help educate parents and ameliorate anxiety they may feel about the evaluation process. Every family is different, every child custody matter is different and so has to be every evaluation. This “comprehensive” guide illustrates many of the tools and considerations available, but it is not intended to be the definitive “how to” manual. The book cannot be substituted for years of legal/clinical training and experience that serve as the foundation to child custody evaluation and related pratice.”
Overall rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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Source of Buyer Reviews and Description: Amazon.com
