Judicial Responses to Social Science Research

Judicial officers who work on child custody and child protection cases learn about family processes both from their experience in hearing evidence and from reports provided by experts about published research. This century has seen a greater emphasis in Australia about both child custody and child protection courts ensuring the safeguarding of the best interests of children. Concern has been expressed that specific groups of children should not be discriminated against because of characteristics of their parents, such as a parent’s race or mental illness. This chapter reviews opinions that have been expressed by judicial officers and others, and evidence about child-oriented interventions for children called COPMI children (children whose parent has a mental illness).