Category: Parential Alienation-Child Abuse

Oh boy, the APA has proposed new Guidelines for Child Custody Evaluations in Family Law Proceedings.

They are inviting “public comment” on a website they set up, I’ve got some comments.

They’re only allowing five comments in their five little boxes before they ratify the Guidelines and pass them.

Five’s not enough, there’s way more things wrong than just five. So I’ll be providing them with their five little box-comments, and then I’m doing a line-by-line analysis I’ll be posting to my website.

That’s going to be my first Comment – “See my line-by-line Commentary posted to my website.” Then I’ll give them my four most important critiques:

2) Violation to Principle D Justice

3) Violation to Standards 2.04 and 9.01 and failure in their duty to protect.

4) No inter-rater reliability, so they are not valid assessments of anything.

5) Harm to the client parent and child

If I’m the APA, I’d be worried about a class-action lawsuit with these Guidelines being the smoking gun for their collusion with and cover-up of unethical and negligent malpractice in the industry and practice of child custody evaluations.

And holy cow, if any child custody evaluator follows the Guidelines, they will become immensely vulnerable to a malpractice lawsuit on multiple counts. So that’s going to be kind of a problem for them.

I’m obviously available to testify in a malpractice or class-action lawsuit. I’m not a lawyer, I’m a psychologist, the lawyers need to do what lawyers do. My line-by-line Commentary on the proposed Guidelines for Child Custody Evaluations in Family Law Proceedings is likely to be helpful with that.

In the next day or two, I’ll be posting my little box-comments here on my Public Facebook page. Feel free to use any or all of my comments as your own in your comments to the APA.

Here we go, cowabunga baby.

There is a reason for the APA ethics code. Because unethical practice hurts people, like here.

If you believe the shared delusion, you are part of the shared delusion, you are part of the pathology. When that pathology is child abuse, you, the mental health person are part of the child abuse – you, the mental health person are the child abuser.

If you are a mental health person who is colluding with the psychological abuse of the child, you need to lose your license to practice.

Google ignorance: lack of information or knowledge

Google incompetence: inability to do something successfully; ineptitude.

Google negligence: failure to take proper care in doing something. Law: failure to use reasonable care, resulting in damage or injury to another.

It’s not my license on the line.

Listen to this from the Guidelines: “These guidelines endeavor to provide aspirational direction to those psychologists who are asked to perform child custody evaluations.”

“endeavor” – you either provide or you don’t… they try.

“aspirational direction” – absolutely nothing – these Guidelines provide absolutely nothing – wait – they endeavor to provide absolutely nothing. That’s their goal, we’ll see if they achieve providing “aspirational direction” to child custody evaluators who don’t know what they’re doing; i.e., are incompetent by definition of the English language.

From the Guidelines: “Many training programs offer at least limited forensic exposure to family law, and psychologists are asked to perform child custody evaluations with varying levels of supervised experience in this area.”

Oh good, that’s probably so reassuring to parents, your child custody evaluator may have at least limited training exposure to what they’re doing, with varying levels of supervised experience actually conducting assessments of family conflict.

So for all the child custody evaluators who are incompetent and don’t know what you’re doing, good news. A secret “Working Group” of forensic psychologists are providing you with “aspirational direction.”

Whew. Boy, I’m sure glad these child custody evaluators with at least some limited training and experience in assessing family conflict now have “aspirational direction” in conducting assessments they only have minimal training to conduct.

Oh my goodness, and what about all the child custody evaluators who do NOT have at least limited exposure to assessing court-involved family conflict? I guess the “aspirational direction” provided by the APA for their ignorance and incompetence will help tremendously.

Thanks APA for your endeavor to provide “aspirational direction” (absolutely nothing) for ignorant child custody evaluators in the conduct of child custody evaluations.

From the Guidelines: “These Guidelines provide general recommendations for psychologists who seek to increase their awareness, knowledge, and skills in performing child custody evaluations.”

Are the Guidelines providing “general recommendations” or aspirational direction? Why would competent child custody evaluators need “general recommendations.”

General recommendations: 1) do the right thing, make accurate decisions, don’t be biased. There, all solved. Things are so much better now. I guess that child custody evaluators just start doing evaluations without these aspirational directions, so they get lost and confused about what they’re doing.

It’s so useful to have these aspirational general recommendations for the ignorant child custody evaluators who only have limited (or no) training and experience in assessing family conflict.

Stay tuned – the Dr. Childress Five Comments to the Guidelines for Child Custody Evaluations in Family Law Proceedings are on their way here to my Public Facebook page – share to your heart’s content.

Followed by a line-by-line Commentary from Dr. Childress posted to my website.

It’s time.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857