Citation

Atkinson L, Butler S. Child Abuse Negl. 1996; 20(3): 185-190.

Affiliation

Family Court Clinic, Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8734548

Abstract

Parental noncompliance to court orders is associated with several factors that jeopardize safe and stable child care. We advanced three hypotheses: (1) maternal noncompliance to court-ordered assessment is associated with loss of child custody; (2) noncompliance is related to court clinic custody recommendations; and (3) noncompliance is stable across child protection and court clinic settings. Based on a sample of 56 court-referred child maltreatment cases, all hypotheses were confirmed. Results are discussed in terms of: (a) maternal noncompliance as a marker for high-risk child care; (b) our limited understanding of the phenomenal meaning of noncompliance; and (c) the dearth of empirically derived intervention methods.

Language: en