Solomon's Sword: A Practical Guide to Conducting Child Custody Evaluations (JOSSEY BASS SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE SERIES)

"This book offers comprehensive guidance on conducting custody evaluations that will help mental health practitioners provide responsible, thorough, and insightful assessments of child custody issues and ensure that the child's true needs are fairly represented in court. The authors describe step-by-step how to go through all phases of an effective evaluation--from setting up the initial agreement for performing the evaluation to organizing the results in a final written report. They present specific information-gathering strategies to ensure that assessments are grounded in fact and not simply based on personal judgement. They show, for example, how to conduct interviews and administer questionnaires that will ilicit insightful information, and they identify the types of child-parent behaviors and interactions to look for during interviews, direct observations, and home visits. They describe how to assess these findings and present them to judges and lawyers in a report that is concise and unbiased. And they discuss how to defend the evaluation in court, explaining how to handle a range of common problems faced by expert witnesses, such as challenges by opposing attorneys. They provide a variety of special materials that will help mental health practitioners in every phase of the evaluation process--including an overview of child custody practices in all fifty states, sample written evaluation, a procedural checklist on performing evaluations, and more." --From the inside cover of Solomon's Sword.