Supervised visits - An analysis

In a fascinating article to be published in the Children and Youth Services Review, Canadian researchers Michael Saini, Melissa Van Wert, Jacob Gofman have helped to consider the differences in supervised visits depending upon why they are occurring.  As they note, child welfare visits protect the child while rebuilding the relationship with the parent. The goal is working towards reunification. In divorce, custody matters, the goal is protection of the child from a parent deemed a long term risk to the child. A common ground between both populations is that they are suffering from loss and trauma - be it through being placed in alternate care or through a parent that has left because of separation or divorce.

One significant difference that the authors note between the child protection and the custody/divorce population is, "In other words, child protection is not an exercise in the proactive service of a child’s best interests but a reactive series of steps where basic needs of a child are not served. Accordingly, child welfare cases are not, at least initially, a contest of best interests of the child as it is in a custody case"


A point raised is the issue of trying to understand the concept of the Best Interests of the Child. They note that in Canada (and very likely in virtually any jurisdiction where the best interest test exists), it is poorly defined and thus will see wide variations in court interpretation. This is a challenge for social workers. The legal literature and the social work and psychology literatures lack consensus. Thus, clinicians and judges are having to assess the test on a case by case basis trying to use precedent and the clinical literature as a guide.


Equally challenging is what constitutes good supervision practice. There is a dearth of good standards around. The authors do help by noting, "Visitation may function as a therapeutic experience, an evaluative method for assessing parental bonding, or a proactive method of enhancing poor parenting skills " This may help to give a clear goal to visits. Too often, there is a supervisor attending who is merely observing and writing down all that goes on. For parents in such cases, they typically feel under the microscope. Those visits, of well documented, could serve as a basis for better understanding what needs to be done to enhance parental skill. As the authors state, "Although monitoring the safety of these interactions is critical, supervisors should do so by actively assisting parents to engage with their children and to be attuned to the needs of their children within the supervised session."


Good visitation programs preserve the relationship with the parent and the child. If visits are frequent, they appear to also offer increased probability for return of the child to the parent's care.


When it comes to custodial disputes, the authors note that the results are mixed and should be relied upon with caution. "These preliminary findings suggest that children involved with supervised visitation experience an increase in visits with non-custodial parents over a six month period, and parents involved experience a decrease in aggression (Flory et al., 2001), and defensiveness (Tutty et al., 2006). However other research indicates that while most parents and children are satisfied with supervised visitation services, service receipt is not associated with decreases in parental hostility or increases in children’s understanding of the divorce process (Jenkins, Park, & Peterson-Badali, 1997), nor are services associated with changes in parental attitudes or child functioning (Dunn et al., 2004). Other research reports that many families utilizing supervised visitation require the services for long periods of time (Sheehan et al., 2007)."


There is an important note of caution for supervisors in custodial matters: "Neutrality and safety are paramount for these visits to effectively facilitate and maintain parent-child contact within the context of custody disputes and it is imperative that supervisors do not get caught in the tribal warfare (Johnston, Roseby, & Keuhnle, 2009) of the litigation battle between of conflicting parents."


It is good to see this article. It offers a well thought out perspective in an area with little research.

Saini, M., Van Wert, M. & Gofman, J., Parent–child su- pervised visitation within child welfare and custody dispute contexts: An exploratory comparison of two distinct models of practice, Children and Youth Services Review (2011), doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.09.011