Interviewing of Children for Family Law Matters: A Review

Abstract

Objective This study aims to provide a review of the current literature on the interviewing of children for family law matters as an up‐to‐date resource for practitioners who might be starting out in, or considering entering, the family law arena and as a guide for future research. Method This study is a literature review of publications concerning the purpose and practice of child interviews in family law matters. Specifically, this review is structured around the following questions: (a) what is sought from interviews with children for family law matters; (b) what capacity do children have to provide reliable information; and (c) how should children and how are children currently being interviewed in the family law context. Results Research on the interviewing of children for family law matters is still in its infancy, with the majority of the work concentrated on providing guidelines, principles, and suggestions for interviews without an evaluation of whether these guidelines or suggestions are being utilised or whether they are effective. Conclusions No one has yet extensively examined how child interviews for parenting disputes are being conducted. Overall, the aim of future research should therefore include investigation of: (a) how children are actually being interviewed for reports in family law proceedings; (b) what effect known interviewing techniques have in the family law context; and (c) how best practice interviewing can be developed and applied for assessments in family law proceedings.

Professionals’ Views About Child Interviews for Family Law Assessments

“…Interviewers can also reduce the risk of harm by keeping questions as open as possible while still directing children to the topics of interest, avoiding leading questions, and telling children at the commencement of the interview what will happen to the information they provide (Turoy‐Smith & Powell, ). Open questions provide the best opportunity to obtain an account of the situation in the child's own words and minimize the likelihood of errors and misunderstandings between the interviewer and the child (Powell & Snow, ).…”

“…Although every child custody case is unique, the literature on best practices in interviewing provides some key issues that should be considered. Crossman et al (), Saywitz et al (), and Turoy‐Smith and Powell () reviewed best‐practice forensic interview guidelines and discuss their applicability to child custody interviews. The authors focus on interview procedure and interview setting (e.g., interview children individually, provide an age‐appropriate environment with minimal distraction, explain what will happen to the information provided).…”

“…Despite numerous informative publications for professionals who interview children in family law matters, a prior review of the literature found that very little is known about the how of best‐practice interviewing of children in this context (Turoy‐Smith & Powell, ). Besides a few case studies (Kuehnle, ; van Nijnatten & Jongen, ), Turoy‐Smith and Powell's review found no record of guidelines being implemented, whether interviewers found guidelines to be relevant and useful to the family law context, or whether the techniques elicit reliable and useful accounts from children.…”

Probing general routines and specific episodes for decision-making purposes in the family law context.

“…Turoy-Smith and colleagues (in press; see also Crossman et al, 2002;Kuehnle, Greenberg, & Gottlieb, 2004;Saywitz et al, 2010;Powell & Lancaster, 2003) suggested that the literature on forensic interviewing of children should provide a framework for developing guidance in the family law arena. In addition to procedural aspects such as building rapport and establishing ground rules, Turoy-Smith and Powell (2016) recommended interviewers to ask about children's…”

Eliciting children’s recall regarding home life and relationships

“…As such, the recommendations for interviewing may be different in a family law matter compared to a forensic interview. There is, however, no empirical research to date that has specifically focused on interviews in the family law context (see Turoy-Smith & Powell, 2017, for a review).…”