Psychology

Practice Alerts & Guidelines

Custody Evaluations

Custody evaluations can be a high-risk practice. Very frequently someone will be dissatisfied, leading to possible disciplinary complaints. Practitioners, therefore, would be wise to take the following precautions when doing custody evaluations:

• Ensure that you are knowledgeable in the competencies needed to perform custody evaluations and be able to document these competencies; it would be useful to consult the Guidelines for Child Custody Evaluations published by the Department in 1997.
• Keep complete records of the entire process.
• Secure a signed agreement in advance that clarifies and spells out the arrangements for the evaluation, such as:
  • Financial arrangements
  • Who will be seen and number of contacts
  • Overall limits of confidentiality
  • Time frame for the evaluation, including the report
  • Who will get copies of the reports, and who is entitled to the report
  • The fact that the report is only a recommendation
• Limit the report to supportable data
• Substantiate the source of data for all comments that are made
• Inform the client of the specific limits to confidentiality when doing a custody evaluation.