"Triage Intake Screen" developed in Connecticut to determine orders for court appointees (sometimes called "court service providers").
Triage Intake Screen supplanted traditional custody determination vehicles such as custody evaluations based on cause of breakup, parent/child fit, history of parenting and current ability to provide caregiving (pages 744, 745) with services geared to force conciliation under a generalized labelcalled "mediation." Contested custody is coined a dispute to be resolved; services are labeled "dispute resolution."
Maltreatment of partner and children as defined by the CDC (physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect).is not measured by the Triage Intake Screen, merely level of "conflict."
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Triage Intake Screen exists to target families who do not agree on a custody arrangement for orders for court services; the higher the level of disagreement, claims of one parents current or potential for child maltreatment, the more mediation-type services are assigned. This results in an internal process that selects the most egregious cases for forced conciliation using a variety of mental health and legal appointees. Once litigants attend a court service, they are required to cooperate. Failure to do so results in loss of custody. Court service providers use several methods to gain cooperation including but not limited to: coercion, demeaning, threatening, punishing,creation of fraud, suppression of evidence and obfuscation.
The Triage Intake Screen targets parents under duress, who often exhibit signs of trauma and stress due to maltreatment aimed at themselves and their children. Court services are designed to exacerbate trauma. Parent education and behavior modification has been developed to ignore legitimate concerns about harm which may occur during visitation with the offending parent. Psychological tests such as MMPI-2 may be administered on those suffering PTSD by mental health practitioners aware that symptoms of PTSD skew test results. Subsequently, those results are used to psychologically label traumatized adults, in essence using the trauma to call the subject "crazy" and therefore unfit for custody, a frequent family court litigation tactic.
Triage Intake Screen contains no assessment for disability nor a disclosure for disabled or PTSD sufferers toopt-out orrequest court service providers qualified towork with those suffering PTSD. Services occur "off-the-record" therefore the yelling, coercion, threatening, etc. occurs in a hidden environment which contributes to the escalation of symptoms. In fact, this appears to be purposeful in order to increase the trauma-induced mental illness, validating claims of crazy unfitness. Since sufferers never receive appropriate treatment, harm and symptoms are compounded.
Further information and analysis is available from: Doreen Ludwig (), author of "Motherless America: Confronting Welfare's Fatherhood Custody Program."
“Triaging Family Court Services:
The Connecticut Judicial Branch’s Family Civil Intake Screen,”
Salem, Kulak, Deutsch 2007
This article is on file at
SUMMARY
This article, Triaging Intake Screen, outlines Connecticut’s Family Court Custody Intake Screen. Relying on AFCC members(including many of whom are Connecticut court employees, judges, and lawyers), a task force was created to write an intake form that would determine what court appointees would be assigned to which cases of family court custody litigation. The Task Force relied heavily on AFCC publications, AFCC member articles, books, unpublished reports, AFCC (listserv) information gathering, and the domestic violence writings of Janet Johnston (invalidated by domestic violence industry, Bancroft, Meier), to develop and implement a state-wide intake screen to determine judicial appointee order content based on concluded level of conflict. A history of the field of family court appointment preludes an assessment of the research relied upon and an explanation of the development screen (Appendix A).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Influences and special interests involved in creating Connecticut’s Intake Screen.
- Peter Salem is AFCC’s NationalPresident. He is not a lawyer. Instead he holds degrees in political science, media and marketing, qualifications best suited to the profession of lobbyist.
- Debra Kulak is a social worker and Connecticut judicial branch regional manager (court employee). Kulak is an AFCC member and AFCC custody evaluation task force member.
- Robin Deutch is a psychologist, President AFCC Massachusetts, President-elect National AFCC; Chair of APA ethics committee; AFCC task force for parenting coordinators; wrote articles on “Managing Cases of Munchausen by Proxy” (another term for PAS. Retrieved 4/9/16 from “Children First” a father’s rights blog, advocating for use of PAS replacement diagnosis. “Factitious disorder imposed on anotheris the DSM-5 terminology for factitious disorder by proxy or Munchausen disorder by proxy. Its definition is “falsification of physical or psychological signs or symptoms, or induction of injury or disease, in another, associated with identified deception.” In some cases, that would describe the behavior of the alienating parent.”
TRIAGE INTAKE SCREEN CONFORMS TO FEDERAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE GOAL
The Triage Intake Screen treats abuse as a family dispute that needs to be resolved. Parents with dissolved or dissolving relationships, who file litigation, have histories of physical abuse, substance abuse, and/or concerns that the other parent is unfit, are rated as having varying levels of “conflict.” The greater the protective parent perceives the abuser as a detriment to a healthy and safe home environment, the higher the court rates the level of conflict.
The Office of Child Support Enforcement, Access/Visitation program report “Strategic Planning Guide” tells States to form planning groups, commissions or task forces, to get non-custodial parents (mostly fathers) custody. The federal reporting form “Access Program Survey Guidance” tells States to increase custody and “not focus on” (ignore) abuse and other detrimental parenting behaviors, specifically: sexual abuse of the child, alcoholism, drug addiction, battering, domestic violence and anger. States are told to achieve that goal by issuing judicial orders for court appointees and services such as mediation, counseling, enforcement of parenting plans (custody orders), supervised visits. The Triage Intake Screen is designed to match services with litigating parents; parents who have filed contested custody motions.
ABUSE AS A FACTOR IN CUSTODY DETERMINATIONS
The United States Congress recognized inherent harm to children whose parents perpetrate domestic violence on their partners when both the Senate and the House of Representatives unanimously passed House Concurrent Resolution 172 in October of 1990, which recommended to States that "credible evidence of physical abuse of a spouse should create a statutory presumption that it is detrimental to the child to be placed in the custody of the abusive spouse." H. Con. Res. 172, 101st Cong., 2d Sess., 136 Cong. Rec. H8280-02 (1990). In passing this resolution, Congress made a legislative finding that "even children who do not directly witness spousal abuse are affected by the climate of violence in their homes and experience shock, fear, guilt, long-lasting impairment of self-esteem, and impairment of developmental and socialization skills." H. Con. Res. 172.
In thefollowing years, States passed various statutes offering protection against child custody awards to abusers. Charts delineating statutes are available at:
Statutorily, Connecticut offers limited protection from awards of custody to abusers. The only reference to domestic violence as a detrimental parenting behavior is contained in § 17a-106b “The state of Connecticut finds that family violence can result in abuse and neglect of the children living in the household where such violence occurs and that the prevention of child abuse and neglect depends on coordination of domestic violence and child protective services. The Commissioner of Children and Families outside providers after initial investigation and assurance of safety…” Connecticut has ceded protection from abuse in custody litigation to Child Protective Services. The limitations of domestic violence groups to address child abuse are not discussed in this Triage Intake Screen analysis.
A legislature that failed to address protection from abuse in custody statutes offered a ripe environment for entrenchment of AFCC membership. AFCC has roots in the father’s rights movement, promoting an agenda ofmaximizingcustody awards for fathers regardless of their parental caregiving history, fitness or ability. AFCC members have built a family court industry which ignores the existence, and effects of, abuse on children, supplanting protection and autonomy for targets of the abuse with calls for conciliation. That objective is achieved through a myriad of court services (parenting education and mediation) and court services providers (custody evaluators, counselors, supervised visit centers). According to fathers’ rights organization Children’s Rights Council (CRC), Connecticut has a presumption of joint legal custody upon agreement of the parents, although there is no shared parenting statute.
These factors made Connecticut predisposed to implement a screening process that would minimize the effects of abuse and abusers toward their children and childrearing duties. AFCC views Connecticut as an “innovator and leader”in the field (page 8).
The lack of official acknowledgement of the detriment of abuse permitted AFCC members and court employees to design an intake screen that would merely measure ability to communicate, cooperate and agree, and to rate those resistant to parenting alongside an abusive and unfit ex-partner, as the problem in calculating family dispute.
The Triage Intake Screen terms abuse a “family dispute” that can be resolved; it relegates abuse to a non-issue in custody determinations, thereby,it encourages the suppression of evidence and harm caused to the child by actual and the potential of a parent to have abusive, detrimental and neglectful behaviors and character traits that would legally deem that parent unfit for custody. The only parent unfit for custody is the parent who is uncooperative.
ASSIGNMENT OF THIRD-PARTY QUASI-JUDICIAL OFFICERS
Triaging Intake Screen begins with a historical look at judicial assessment tools. Traditionally, non-legal, mental health trained appointees were used in an information-gathering capacity by judges assumed to be “too busy” to conduct in depth judicial hearings and trials over contested custody litigation. As most contested custody litigation originated at the time of divorce or separation, the cause of the dissolution was a primary component of custody evaluations. However, courts have turned away fromthe “cause” of divorce breakup and“custody evaluations that emphasized the identification of parenting abilities and assessment of primary parent-child relationships” (page 4). Doing so permits courts and appointees todiscount abuse and other behaviors that negatively influence parenting, and conversely, behaviors that positively influence parenting.
The American Psychological Association created guidelines for custody evaluations which include verifying facts (evidence) by way of collateral witnesses and assessment of parenting ability and the parent/child “fit.” Adherence to these accepted guidelines is deemed ethical. Stepping outside of the industry standard is unethical. However, Triage Intake Screen has decided to base parenting ability solely on whether parents can cooperate and communicate.
“This proliferation of dispute resolution processes has resulted in an exciting range of opportunities for service providers and users alike. What has not developed alongside these services is a clear set of criteria to help determine the optimal fit between clients and the services that best meet their needs” (page 6).
The industry sees contested custody as an opportunity for service providers to profit from the problems of others; contention and abuse generate their profits. “Research indicates that a majority of couples succeed in moving beyond the anger, conflict and depression associated with divorce within two to three years following separation, as many as 1/3rd of divorcing couples report significant conflict over children many years later“ (page 6). While viewing these cases as opportunity, the authors express concern “these cases often lead to burnout and stress among court counselors (page 8).”
Johnston terms family abuse “failed divorces.” According to Johnston, “high conflict parents are identified by high rates of litigation, high degrees of anger and distrust, incidents of verbal abuse, intermittent physical aggression, and ongoing difficulty communicating about and cooperating over the care of their children. These children bear an acutely heightened risk of repeating the cycle of conflicted and abusive relationships as they grow up and try to form families of their own.” Johnston fails to see the continuation of abuse and its effects even after dissolution.
Further proof of AFCC’s intentional discounting of abuse is shown byits adoption of father’s rights propaganda that abuse is an allegation fabricated by mothers and that, women are equally abusive. “Current allegations of child abuse and neglect that are denied are shown to have some basis in fact in ¼ to ½ of cases” (page 20). “Reports of ongoing domestic violence indicate a need to distinguish between abusive relationships and common couple violence to assess the impact of domestic violence on parenting and the effects on the child of witnessing parental violence and to assess the degree of fear and dangerousness” (page 21). The Southern Poverty Law Center discounts this relied-upon misinformation (
Likewise, Triage Intake Screen admits problems stem from abusive behaviors yetomits that abuse caused the breakup and that abusers rarely change their behavior unless held to high standards of accountability. Triage Intake Screen maintains an increase of incidents and reporting of domestic violence, child abuse and neglect and chemical dependency adds significant complications to the dispute resolution process (page 7).
Triage Intake Screenconcedes litigants may have been coached. “Political interests often gender related, surface. Prompted by organizations or books that provide guidance to separating and divorcing couples that may produce (conflict) rather than help resolve conflict. These include groups representing fathers’ rights, victim advocates and mothers without custody” (page 7). Victim advocates, assumed to represent abused women and children, are characterizedas creating conflict instead of offering protection. Meanwhile, fathers’ rights groups are equated with groups that protect. The mention of “mothers without custody” could stem from protective parent organizations such as the Leadership Counsel, who educate the public on the use of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) as a tactic to evade evidence of father’s sexual abuse of the child. Ironically, AFCC does not refer to itself and its members as a political interest group.
Triage Intake Screen replacesstandard court service progression. Instead of starting with a basic parent education class (level 1), cases deemed high conflict would go right to level 3, Parent Coordination. Instead of a traditional custody evaluation based on accepted APA guidelines, the screen permits “issue-focused” evaluations. AFCC terms issue-focused evaluations “hybrid” services, since evaluators combine dispute resolution with evaluation, creating a fertile field for overlooking abuse. For example, if there is child sexual abuse a court appointee would be assigned to determine the validity and/or encourage the parent resistant to the abuser having custody to cooperate and resolve the dispute. The emphasis is not on protecting the child from further harm but continuing access for the abuser.
Service progression can giveabusees time to heal and the abuser a forum where his abuse can be documented and his failure to mediate and act in the best interests of the child can be recorded. The Triage Intake Screen immediately ups the ante and the level of third party intervention in decision-making for the sole purpose of forcing coparenting. Contrary to its claim, appointment of court service providers does not offer the family self-determination;it continues litigation and court service fees.
A distortion of traditional court services was already underway even before the institutionalization of Triage Intake Screen. “Mediators altered the process to incorporate an information-gathering function, including GALS (court appointed child’s attorney),information from other sources [not defined], and the mediator’s own expertise. [This] enabled counselors to use their clinical judgment to reach agreement replacing custody evaluation” (page 13).
Family Relations Counselors
Triage Intake Screen is used by court employees of Connecticut’s Family Services Unit, called Family Relations Counselors. “The counselor can be more directive than a mediator, can obtain collateral information and make recommendations… attorneys and GALs may be instrumental.” If no agreement is reached a report is sent to the court. The counselor can court order an issue-focused evaluation (page 14); for instance determine if sexual abuse of child, substance abuse, occurred.) “Family relations counselors facilitate negotiations and provide information on child development, child custody, access and parenting matters, child support, property division and other financial matters.” They are court employees acting as mid-level judges, other States may employ themunder job descriptions of hearing masters/officers (Pennsylvania) or states attorneys (Texas).