Court-ordered assessment: impact of maternal noncompliance in child maltreatment cases.
Parental noncompliance to court orders is associated with several factors that jeopardize safe and stable child care. We advanced three hypotheses: (1) maternal noncompliance to court-ordered assessment is associated with loss of child custody; (2) noncompliance is related to court clinic custody recommendations; and (3) noncompliance is stable across child protection and court clinic settings. Based on a sample of 56 court-referred child maltreatment cases, all hypotheses were confirmed. Results are discussed in terms of: (a) maternal noncompliance as a marker for high-risk child care; (b) our limited understanding of the phenomenal meaning of noncompliance; and (c) the dearth of empirically derived intervention methods.
Atkinson
L
L
Family Court Clinic, Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Butler
S
S
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002655:Child Custody / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008425:Maternal Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric