Forensic Assessment Of Parental Skills: What They Are And How They Are Evaluated

In separation and divorce procedures where there are minors, it is usually common practice request the intervention of a Forensic Psychology professional to explore the Parental Capacities of the parents

But… What are they specifically? How is parental capacity or incapacity determined? How is it objective?

The importance of the family context in physical and psychological development

Despite the diversity of definitions that the family construct has, most authors agree that it becomes the core where most of the learning occurs through the relationships established between the systems that make it up , that is, the parental system and the filial system. Just as the main objective of this last system is to develop, the parental system must ensure the correct maturation of the children, accompanying them during their individuation process.

However, for such accompaniment to be given correctly, It is not enough to satisfy basic needs such as food or hygiene but it is necessary for parents to have specific capabilities and skills that manage to contain their children’s anxieties and also satisfy their nutritional, educational, socialization and protection needs, that is:

Parental Competence

To carry out the task of effectively responding to all these needs, Parents must be able to bond correctly with their children being able to mentalize their emotional states, appear sensitive and accessible and get involved in their emotional attention.

Likewise, they must know how to apply positive discipline, guiding and acting as guides for the little ones, while promoting learning and offering guarantees of physical, emotional and social safety. They must be competent.

In this way, then, Parental Competence is the compendium of personal abilities and skills that, when applied correctly, They promote multidimensional care, protection and education of children, ensuring their healthy physical, cognitive, social, emotional and personal development

Thus, the use of the characteristic cognitive, emotional, psychological and social style of the parents in each situation will result in their competence to exercise parenting that may be healthy or ineffective depending on the quality of such particularities.

How is this competence evaluated?

Taking into account that parents have received specific care from their own parents, when carrying out the evaluation of parental capabilities, both the idiosyncratic characteristics of each parent and the your personal history in relation to the ties established in your family of origin

To do this, an anamnestic interview is carried out that collects information about the educational styles received in childhood, the attachment relationships experienced in the family nucleus of origin, the evolutionary history of the person evaluated and the most relevant episodes of their life trajectory. . Of course, depending on what the forensic professional deems appropriate in each case, they will delve deeper into bonding, educational, psychopathological, health-related aspects, etc.

In addition to this vital analysis, An exhaustive psychological examination will have to be carried out to know the emotional state of the caregivers as well as the personal characteristics and/or psychopathologies that may exist, allowing us to determine if they can negatively interfere when exercising parenting.

The importance of objectivity

As a peculiarity of the forensic field, it should be noted that, just as in the clinical-care field, knowledge of the ontogeny of the individual and their personal characteristics through the clinical interview could be sufficient, For the forensic evaluation of parental capacity, it is required that what is stated be objectified so that another professional, if necessary, could replicate the examination carried out.

For this reason, psychometric instruments of proven reliability and validity are administered that will evaluate parenting through different indicators such as the level of knowledge that parents have about how to act in the face of certain critical events that occur in the daily care of their children, their abilities to propose and use effective solutions appropriate to each situation, their ability to recognize the children’s feelings in different contexts and the communicative potential towards them, adjusting their expressions to the level of understanding of the minors.

Although parental skills are of maximum relevance given the impact they have on the development and well-being of minors, in separations and divorces where there is a high level of conflict between adults It is common for such skills and abilities to be seriously altered

Furthermore, the confrontation between the two can end up overshadowing and blurring the relevance of parental competence, even calling into question the ability of the parents as a means to obtain some type of benefit in relation to the care and custody of children. children.

All of this makes it vitally important to highlight the importance of the forensic psychological evaluation of Parental Capacities, helping to differentiate the roles that adults play in the parental system and in the marital system