Abstract: Submission #134

Abstract Child protection assessments within the context of child custody disputes are complex and challenging to deal with. A custody dispute cases often involves a lack of trust, anger, repetitive litigation, fearful parental relationships, blame projection, refusal to cooperate, allegations of abuse, and sabotaging parent-child relationships. Despite advancements in child protection assessment models since the 20th Century, social workers still face challenges in handling allegations of child maltreatment in child custody disputes, due to the inadequacy and rigor of existing child protection assessment models and tools. This study utilises a rapid review methodology that aims to identify and synthesise literature on child maltreatment assessment models which are globally available to assist social workers in cases of child custody disputes. Comprehensive searches were undertaken by applying the North-West University’s OneSearch engine. Using a rapid review approach, the empirical data extracted from quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method studies were analysed. Based on the predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, 22 studies were included in this review. The findings confirm the need of considering harmful co-parenting behaviours and attitudes that are unique yet typical in high conflict custody dispute cases. The findings further confirmed that by incorporating the harmful behavioural factors into multi-method assessment instruments, such as structured surveys, decision trees, and qualitative interviews the professional judgement, recommendations and accountability of statutory social workers are improved. The use of inconsistent definitions associated with psychological abuse or the omission of these definitions within the current scope of child protection practise is a hinderance in achieving standardised assessment results. The incorporation of assessment frameworks that are theoretically founded in social work theories such as ecological systems and ecological transactional frameworks bear higher assessment rigor to the social work profession and should ground the development of upcoming assessment instruments, in future.