A Checklist for Supervised Access and Quality Care Possession Determinations

ABSTRACT

Clinicians have historically made recommendations about the need for supervised visitation, when allegations short of actual physical violence have been raised that implicate the safety of the children, on the basis of previous critical incidents and patterns of problematic behavior by the one or both of the children's parents. These recommendations, as a result, may not have always been tailored to the best interests of the children. What is needed is a procedure that considers and documents all the factors–the child's status and special needs, the parent's physical and mental status, the parent-child relationship, the suitability of the environment, and the availability of resources to support visitation–that have an important role in deciding on the need for supervised visitation. The “Supervision Checklist,” which is based research and the experience of the author, proposed in this paper is a first step toward accomplishing this kind of differentiated perspective on supervised visitation. The Checklist is based on the five criteria mentioned above, with a large number of specifiers for each of the criteria. The clinician is asked to assign a score to most of the specifiers, with a score of zero indicating that that specifier is within normal limits, up to a score of two indicating that there is a clear need to consider some kind of intervention. Guidelines for assigning these scores are discussed in the paper. Even in the absence of comprehensive data for assigning scores, the documentation of the factors affecting the specifiers has the advantage that many of the issues and mitigating circumstances in the specific areas of concern have to be addressed.

KEYWORDS:

• Supervised possession
• supervision
• supervised access
• supervisory milieu
• supervision of child possession