Guidelines for interviewing children during child custody evaluations

Abstract

This paper offers a brief review of the current literaturerelated to the interviewing of children during child custody evaluations. In particular, the paper highlights several key issues and concerns, and provides a series of recommendations for professionals working in this area. These recommendations (which apply to children aged 3 to 12 years) are organised under the following headings: (a) establish rapport using broad open-ended questions, (b) make the purpose and ground rules of the interview clear to the child, (c) allow the child's perspective be heard without expecting an outright custody preference, (d) demonstrate a willingness to consider all reasonable perspectives or hypotheses about what has occurred, (e) try not to exacerbate the child's stress or guilt, (f) pursue all possible explanations for a child's report, irrespective of whether there are clear signs of "coaching" or contamination, (g) obtain appropriate training in the use of forensic interviewing techniques, and (h) engage in research on the impact of children's participation in custody cases.

What criteria do police officers use to measure the success of an interview with a child?

“…Indeed, police interviewers emphasise the integral role of colleagues and superiors in providing an exemplar for interviewing children (Wright et al, in press). However, difficulties in adhering to open-ended questions is a global problem among all forensic professionals (Mildren, 1997;Powell, Fisher, & Hughes-Scholes, 2005a, Powell & Lancaster, 2003. A lack of good ''role models'' and quality supervision in forensic interviewing could explain (at least in part) the apparent low importance of these questions in determining the outcome of an interview.…”

The Effect of Rapport Building in Police Interrogations: Can Rapport Improve the Diagnosticity of Confession Evidence?

“…Studies that examined the effect of rapport on children have consistently found that building rapport increases the amount of accurate information children provide and decreases their suggestibility to misinformation (Goodman & Bottoms, 1993;Powell & Lancaster, 2003;Wood et al, 1996). On the contrary, research on adult witness accuracy has painted a less clear picture of how rapport affects recall accuracy.…”

The use of ground rules in investigative interviews with children: A synthesis and call for research

“…We included only those studies in which some children but not others were delivered a rule and its efficacy was tested. We omitted less-frequently employed rules (e.g., that the child may use any words s/he chooses; see Powell & Lancaster, 2003, for this and other examples) and a variety of other "preparatory" tasks that are beyond the scope of this review, including source-monitoring instructions (e.g., Poole & Lindsay, 2001) and narrative practice (Roberts, Brubacher, Powell, & Price, 2011).…”

“…These were identified as (a) information about interviewer naiveté (Lyon, 2010;Powell & Lancaster, 2003;Saywitz & Camparo, 2014); (b) instructions to correct the interviewer when a mistake had been made (Anderson, 2014;Lamb et al, 2007;Lyon, 2010;Saywitz & Camparo, 2014); (c) a caution that sometimes questions may be repeated (Powell & Lancaster, 2003;Saywitz, Geiselman, & Bornstein, 1992); and instructions to tell the interviewer when the child (d) does not understand (Anderson, 2014;Lamb et al, 2007;Lyon, 2010;Powell & Lancaster, 2003;Saywitz & Camparo, 2014) and (e) does not know the answer (Anderson, 2014;Lamb et al, 2007;Lyon, 2010;Powell & Lancaster, 2003;Saywitz et al, 1992;Saywitz & Camparo, 2014). We then sought research associated with these rules by searching PsychInfo and Google Scholar for "ground rules," "interview instructions" and words used during delivery of the rules ("naïve," "I wasn't there," "make a mistake," "correct me," "questions [may be] repeated," "don't know," "don't understand").…”