A procedure for assessing parents' capacity for change in child protection cases

Decisions of critical importance to families include whether children should be removed from or reunified with their natural parents. Practitioners working in the child protection field contribute to these decisions by assessing the capacity of parents to meet the needs of their children. A cross-sectional assessment of families provides important information about family functioning at one point in time, but is of limited usefulness when the results are equivocal. The assessment of a family's capacity-to-change provides additional information not possible in a cross-sectional assessment, including an evaluation of the parent's motivation and capacity to acquire parenting skills. An assessment of capacity-to-change includes: 1) carrying out a cross-sectional assessment of the parents' current functioning, 2) specifying operationally defined targets for change, 3) implementing an intervention with proven efficacy for the client group with a focus on achieving identified targets for change, and 4) the objective measurement of progress over time including evaluation of the parents' willingness to engage and cooperate with the intervention and the extent to which targets were achieved. The aim of the capacity-to-change through intervention is to determine whether a family has the potential to eventually achieve a minimal level of parenting. Presented is a detailed description of the capacity-to-change procedure and a discussion of related professional issues.