« Previous | Contents | Next »
Listen
CODE OF PRACTICE TO FACILITATE THE PROVISION OF THERAPEUTIC SUPPORT TO CHILD WITNESSES IN COURT PROCEEDINGS
BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES FOR THE PROVISION OF THERAPEUTIC SUPPORT TO CHILD WITNESSES INVOLVED IN COURT PROCEEDINGS
BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES
42 This section outlines best practice guidelines for the provision of therapeutic support prior to, and during court proceedings. The guidelines are in place to reduce concerns about the reliability of any new disclosures arising during therapeutic support as well as concerns about the contamination of evidence through questioning around the allegations forming the basis of the charge or ground of referral.
43 Many of the points made below are based on existing good practice, also contained in the Child Witness Support Guidance Pack, in particular, the Interviewing Child Witnesses in Scotland (2003), and Questioning Children in Court (2003) documents.
Communication and Questioning Techniques
44 Regardless of the type of therapeutic intervention or approach, it is essential that therapeutic support providers use questioning techniques that do not influence what the child says or contaminate the evidence. Training in psychotherapy and counselling skills involves learning to ask open-ended questions and this practice is maintained on an ongoing basis.
45 Free narratives, when children give their own uninterrupted account of an experience, are the most reliable source of accurate and untainted information. When the child mentions a topic of concern, free narrative can be obtained by saying to the child "Would you like to talk about this?". This question should be followed by a pause to allow the child to formulate their response. However, young children find free narrative more difficult than older children due to their developmental stage and may be less likely to spontaneously provide information. If this is the case and the therapeutic support provider believes it would be beneficial to explore the child's concern further, facilitative prompts with appropriately timed pauses can be used.
Example: Facilitative prompts
- A neutral acknowledgement ("uh huh")
- A "Would you like to tell me more"
- Repeat back the child's last comment (Child: "My dad was cross. And then I got scared" (Pause) Interviewer: "You got scared.")
46 Eliciting a spontaneous account from young children can be difficult at times and therapeutic support providers may need to ask questions to encourage the child to expand on what has been said and to clarify ambiguities. Questions should ideally be built around what the child has said in the free narrative. There are four main types of questions: open-ended, specific, closed and leading.
47 Open-ended questions invite the child to give a detailed response and do not pressurise or lead the child into providing a particular answer.
Example: Open - ended questions
( Child: "I get upset a lot")
"What things make you upset?"
(Wait for response)
"What do you do when that happens?"
(Wait for response)
48 Specific questions probe for clarification of something the child has previously mentioned.
Example: Specific questions
- What was it that made you scared?
- What was your Dad cross about?
49 Closed questions provide the child with a limited number of options usually "yes", "no", or "don't know". Such questions can produce less accurate information because children are less likely to say, "I don't know" to a closed question and are more likely to guess the answer they should give. Sometimes a child will provide a response to a yes/no question or choose one of two alternatives simply to please the therapeutic support provider. This can result in the child not being able to express what they really feel.
Example: Closed questions
- Was anyone else in the house at the time?
- Did you tell anyone you were scared?
50 Leading questions suggest the response required. In the examples provided below, the therapeutic support provider is assuming that the child's father often gets cross and that the child was scared because her Dad was cross. Such questions can put pressure on the child to go along with what the therapeutic support provider is suggesting. Leading questions should be avoided in order to prevent this happening and to ensure that a child's report does not get contaminated with a suggestion made by the therapeutic support provider.
Example: Leading and misleading questions
- Does your Dad often get cross with you?
- Did you feel scared because your Dad was cross?
51 A distinction can be made between leading questions and misleading questions. Leading questions can lead a child to give a correct response if they are based on information that the child has provided. For example, if a child has said that her Dad gets cross with her, the question asking does this often happen could result in a correct answer. However, misleading questions often lead a child to give an incorrect response. For example, the question did you feel scared could be misleading if the child has not reported how they felt. If the child did not feel scared because her Dad was cross, an affirmative response to the question would be a false response. The problem of using such questions is that the therapeutic support provider rarely knows the answer to the question and therefore cannot be sure whether they have asked a leading or a misleading question.
52 If it is necessary to ask a child a question about the topic of concern then an open-ended question is advised. So, in the example above, an open-ended question would ask the child how they feel when their Dad gets cross. Research has clearly established that people tend to provide the most accurate answers (i.e., where the proportion of correct information is highest) to open questions.
53 Open-ended questions are typically asking the child what they can remember, while closed questions are assuming the child can remember and are therefore placing more demands on the child to give a response. Not only do open-ended questions result in more detailed and accurate responses, they are least likely to be challenged in court.
54 Repeating questions is not advisable as the child may come to believe that their first answer was wrong, and consequently alter their response to something they think the therapeutic support provider wants to hear.
55 Using the right type of questions is essential in relation to responding to a child recounting a traumatic/abusive event, interpreting, or hypothesis testing.
Recounting of Traumatic/Abusive Event
56 Many children will never recount details of the abuse or trauma and the purpose of therapeutic support is to help them process their feelings about what happened rather than the details of the event. Although it may not be critical for a child to remember and talk about a traumatic or abusive event for therapeutic support to be effective, some children will want to, or indeed need to, talk about what has happened to them. Therapeutic support providers should use their clinical judgment to decide whether or not to engage the child in trauma or abuse specific interventions. However, they should be aware of the potential risks of contaminating the child's evidence at all times.
57 If a child does recount an event, the therapeutic support provider should be careful to ask open-ended, non-leading questions. Poor questioning techniques, used during the process of discussing a memory with the child, are likely to undermine the credibility of the child if they are subsequently called as a witness in a court proceeding because they can permanently distort the child's memory for the event. Extensive research has shown that our memories are fragile and subject to influence (Loftus, 2004).
58 Sometimes when recounting an abusive or traumatic experience the child wants the therapeutic support provider to explain to them why it has happened to them. This is a situation where a child is expecting an interpretation from the therapeutic support provider. At this stage it is fine for the therapeutic support provider to listen and acknowledge what the child is saying but they should be cautious not to present their view of the situation as this could contaminate the child's memory.
59 Children often blame themselves for what happened to them. Whilst it is important for therapeutic support providers not to present their view of the situation, the child should be reassured that they are not to blame. An example of how this can be done is given below.
Example: Discussing blame
"So it sounds as if you think you are to blame. But I don't think it's your fault. I think the job of a grown-up is to look after a child. Grown-ups shouldn't do anything that harms children."
The following case study illustrates how blame was discussed with an
8-year-old girl.
Case study: Discussing blame
When working with an 8-year-old girl, the therapeutic support provider explored the child's current anxieties. The girl indicated that she had been to blame for what had happened to her.
The therapeutic support provider talked to the girl about the fact that grown-ups are responsible for what they do. She explained that it is hard for children to go against adult wishes or to say when they feel uncomfortable or upset. The therapeutic support provider then gave an example of an adult telling a child to do something, using dollhouse figures. The girl could then easily see that the adult figures were bigger in size and had greater authority.
Working in this visual, distanced way helped the girl realise that children have little power over adults' actions and little power to change things.
Interpreting
60 Rather than making an interpretation of a child's non-verbal behaviour which is direct or specific (e.g. "Are you sitting in the corner because you're scared I'll hurt you like your Dad did?"), therapeutic support providers should ask the child why they are displaying certain non-verbal behaviours using open-ended questions, or offer cautious interpretations which are broad and do not overlap with specific allegations or assumptions.
Hypothesis Testing
61 Therapeutic support providers often use hypothesis testing to help inform their formulation, which in turn informs the intervention chosen. However, hypothesis testing should not be used to explore hypotheses about what happened during an abusive or traumatic event. One of the problems of hypothesis testing or relying on one's own hunches or theories when questioning a child about what happened is that of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is 'the seeking or interpreting of information that supports one's beliefs or expectations. This can involve both seeking information that confirms a belief, whilst at the same time not seeking, or even avoiding, information that disconfirms the belief (Nickerson, 1998).' This has the potential to distort memory and/or lead a child to selectively remember or report some details and not others. This is particularly important in a therapeutic context where there are demands and pressures to resolve issues and find an explanation for why things have gone wrong. The child in this situation is likely to see a power differential between themselves and the therapeutic support provider, however informal the context is.
« Previous | Contents | Next »