Clinical assessment of children in child protection cases: An empirical analysis

Evaluations of children exposed to abuse or neglect are often sought from psychologists and other clinicians. Social service and juvenile court professionals need reliable, objective, and relevant assessments to help in their determination of what will best serve the needs of the minor children in such situations. The adequacy and usefulness of these types of evaluations have not been studied, but such study is needed. To that end, we systematically examined the content of 207 completed evaluations of children involved in one urban juvenile court system. The results show us some areas where changes in practice and training are needed.