Child Custody Disputes within the Context of Child Welfare Investigations

Background and Purpose: Families involved in child custody disputes following divorce and separation take up an inordinate amount of professional resources, often without yielding positive results for the children involved. It has been suggested that ongoing acrimonious conflict between separating parents can challenge child protection workers charged with the responsibility of investigating repeated allegations, especially when parents vigorously deflect blame to the other parent. At present, there is little research on the unique factors of child custody disputes within child protection services. Without a clear understanding of these factors, already overburdened child protection workers may prematurely terminate their services, leaving children exposed to severe emotional harm and remaining caught in the middle of their parents' conflict.

Study objectives: In an effort to improve the ability of child protection workers to accurately identify and respond to children caught in their parents' disputes, the purpose of this study was to explore child custody disputes within the context of child protection services.

Research question: How do child maltreatment investigations in high conflict disputes differ from other investigations not involving child custody disputes?

Method: The secondary analysis used the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS-2003), the only national population-based child protection data to collect statistics on child custody disputes. The CIS-2003 captured information about children and their families as they came into contact with child welfare services over a three-month sampling period. Information was collected directly from the investigating workers and the data is based on the workers' judgment at the time of investigation. The core CIS-2003 sample of 11,562 child maltreatment investigations was used to derive estimates of the annual rates and characteristics of investigated child maltreatment by applying annualization and regionalization weights that reflected the stratified cluster sampling design. Because most variables in the CIS-2003 dataset are categorical, Pearson chi-squares was used with the sampling weight applied. Chi-square bivariate analyses were used to examine the relationship between case characteristics.

Results: Based on the 11,562 child maltreatment investigations, 11% involved a child custody dispute and in these cases, 41% of the referrals were made by the custodial or non-custodial parent compared to 8% of investigations without a child custody dispute. Cases involving a child custody dispute were more likely to be opened more than three times and they had higher rates of malicious referrals. Over one-third of all substantiated investigations involved exposure to domestic violence, followed by physical abuse, emotional maltreatment, and neglect. The estimates for sexual abuse substantiations were too low to include in the analysis Children in child custody cases had higher rates of emotional harm and more functioning issues. Parental alcohol abuse was also significantly higher.

Conclusions and Implications: The findings demonstrate that children are more likely to experience emotional harm and functioning problems in cases of child custody disputes. It is imperative that child protection systems better protect these children from negative exposures of conflict and to decrease strain on social services by finding better solutions to keep children safe after divorce and separation.