Proposed Criteria for Good-Enough Parenting in Vulnerable Families

In child protection and child custody cases, courts are asked to rule on how well a parent meets a standard of being a good-enough parent and whether a parent is fit to raise their child. However, little information has been published about standards of good-enough parenting that are required on various topics. Rulings made by Australian Family Law courts that were published on the website AustLii in the period 2006–2014 have been summarised and published by the author in a website complexfamilies.com.au . These rulings and other sources inform this chapter, and provide a basis for proposing criteria for good-enough/adequate parenting on topics identified in a Parenting Capacity Instrument that was developed by the author, and is described in Chapter  9 . This chapter both identifies topics where parenting in vulnerable families is often criticised, and proposes criteria for adequate parenting that might be recommended by therapists.