Profiling mother and father reports of safety risks in a postseparation cohort.

Abstract

Objective: When separated parents are in dispute, safety risks escalate for both parents and their children. Risk screening in family law services is typically rare or limited to a unidimensional appraisal of domestic violence victimization risk for women. Systematic attention to proximal and contextual patterns has been largely neglected to date. Method: We report findings from a large risk screening project in a statewide organization offering postseparation services. Universal screening occurred at intake with the Family Law Detection of Overall Risk Screen (McIntosh & Ralfs, 2012), a validated 10-domain tool for identification, evaluation, and response to both victimization and perpetration safety risks, and infant and child developmental risk. The cohort comprised 7,994 parents. Patterns of modifiable risk were examined for three risk variables: child safety, parent safety, and risk of perpetrating harm. Results: Varying profiles of risk across the Family Law Detection of Overall Risk Screen scales were evident in predicting each safety variable. The strongest predictors of all three safety variables were endorsement of another safety risk, and parent report that the other parent was not coping. No consistent differences were found in the prediction of mother and father reports of risk. Conclusion: We address the potential clinical utility of the findings and their policy implications.

Practicing Best Practice: A 10‐Year Retrospective on Universal Risk Screening in a Mediation and Counseling Organization

“…De Maio et al, 2013; McIntosh, Tan, Levendosky, & Holtzworth‐Munroe, 2019). Repeated research confirms that IPV is highly gendered and is highly correlated with other risks to adult and child mental health, parenting stress, drug and alcohol concerns, and life stressors (McIntosh et al, 2021). These family safety and wellbeing risks are further accentuated around the time of family separation.…”

“…Family DOORS was designed for the post‐separation family law context and broadened to counseling services. Its ‘fitness for purpose’ was evaluated in analyses with two large cohorts of separating parents, which have mapped agreement levels between former couples, validated its safety scales against external risk criteria, validated wellbeing scales against gold standard child and adult mental health measures, and confirmed efficacy in detection of risk patterns (McIntosh, Lee, & Ralfs, 2016; McIntosh, Tan, Greenwood, Lee, & Holtzworth‐Munroe, 2021; Wells et al, 2018). These two studies about Family DOORS overcome the challenges in other studies which often rely on smaller, self‐selected samples, with gender imbalance, non‐paired data, and lack of external criterion validation (e.g.…”

“…In short, ‘risks run in herds’ through vulnerable families, and may stampede through families during and after separation (e.g. McIntosh et al, 2021).…”