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Child Care in Practice
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The “Good Enough” Parent:
Implications for Child Protection
Pet er W. Choat e & Sandra Engst rom
Published online: 27 Jun 2014.
To cite this article: Pet er W. Choat e & Sandra Engst rom (2014): The “ Good Enough” Parent :
Implicat ions for Child Prot ect ion, Child Care in Pract ice, DOI: 10.1080/ 13575279.2014.915794
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Child Care in Practice, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13575279.2014.915794
The “Good Enough” Parent: Implications
for Child Protection
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Peter W. Choate & Sandra Engstrom
Child protection workers must determine under what conditions a child should be
sustained within the family system. A standard that is often referred to is “good enough”
parenting or minimal parenting competence. Research and clinical literature fails to
offer workers guidance on the practical application of this terminology. Such ambiguity
leaves families with the probability that the standard against which they will be judged
will vary from worker to worker and from community to community. The authors
argue that this leaves case management open to inconsistencies that can include
systemic biases which can work against rather than for the best interests of the child.
Courts are accepting this term as a significant factor in determining the need for
intervention and whether or not to sustain or terminate parental rights.
Keywords: Good Enough Parenting; Minimal Parenting Competence; Child Protection
Decision-making; Child Protection; Parenting Assessment
Introduction
When child protection services (CPS) become involved in a family, they must
determine whether a child should be left in parental care. If removed, under what
conditions can the child be returned safely? Legislation and policy offer frameworks
for consideration but workers are left to determine the case-by-case realties. Workers
try to determine when a parent is or is not good enough. Although the notion of good
enough appears in court decisions and the literature, its meaning remains unclear.
Families become involved with child protection for a number of reasons, which can
lead to children remaining with their families while assessments take place or coming
into care during that process. A long-term Canadian study of substantiated
maltreatment cases found several causes: exposure to interpersonal violence (34%),
emotional abuse (9%), physical abuse (20%), sexual abuse (3%) and neglect (34%).
Peter Choate is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work and Disability Studies at Mount Royal
University. Sandra Engstrom is a Doctoral Candidate in Social Work at The University of Edinburgh.
Correspondence to: Dr. Peter W. Choate, Social Work, Mount Royal University, 4815 Mount Royal Gate SW,
Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T3E 6K6. Email: pchoate@mtroyal.ca
© 2014 The Child Care in Practice Group
2
P. W. Choate & S. Engstrom
Most children will not come into care during their involvement with child protection.
In Canada, about 8% of cases will result in a change of residence for children (Public
Health Agency of Canada, 2010, p. 4).
Assessment of parenting capacity can have significant impact on a family, with
recommendations leading to family perseveration or towards termination of parental
rights. As Justice Ginsberg of the US Supreme Court notes, termination of parental
rights is a “devastatingly adverse action” (M.L.B. vs. S.L.J., 1996). Thus, there is a need
to be clear about the standard against which parents are judged.
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The Origin and Evolution of the Concept
The concept was found in the writing of British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott
(1957, 1964). He raised the idea that perfectionism should not be the basis upon
which a parent should be judged, because it is unattainable. Good enough was
sufficient to raise a child successfully. Being “good enough” also meant being allowed
to fail, from which the parent would then recover and remedy the deficit created
(Reeves, 2012, p. 48). The concept again found favour in the work of Bruno
Bettellheim (1987). He reinforced the idea that much can be achieved in guiding a
child towards adulthood without a focus on perfection.
Imperfect parenting can be good enough to raise children who will become
functional adults through a variety of parenting routes (Ramaekers, Leven, &
Vandezande, 2012). Good enough is not a way to explain away or minimise the
impact of harmful parenting. The concept was brought into child protection through
the writing of Adcock and White (1985). They posited that “Government and society
have to decide what level of parenting is unacceptable” (1985, p. 6). The issue is as
current and unresolved today as it was when they convened their seminar seeking
better definitions of acceptable parenting.
Budd and Holdswoth (1996) used the term “minimal parenting competence”,
which seems to be similar to “good enough”. They note a lack of consensus on what
makes up minimal parenting competence or “good enough” parenting (1996, p. 3).
There is also a lack of consensus around key terms such as what is abusive or what
is or is not normative (DePanfilis & Girvin, 2005; Voight, Tregeagle, & Cox, 1996).
Workers need to make case decisions about when a parent is good enough despite the
lack of definitional consensus and, typically, with unreliable or incomplete data
(Munro, 1996). Definitions vary by community, culture and country (Fontes, 2005).
Some communities will accept standards that will be quite unacceptable in others,
even within the same legal jurisdictions.
This gets murkier when workers must make case decisions about the parenting
capacity (Voight et al., 1996, p. 3). Subjective decision-making is, to some extent, an
inevitable part of the process. Efforts such as the Common Assessment Framework
developed in the United Kingdom (Children’s Workforce Development Council,
2007) do not remove subjective considerations and determinations by individual
workers about what is and is not to be included (Kellett & Apps, 2009, p. 42).
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Child Care in Practice
3
Ruiz-Caseras, Trocme, and Fallon (2012, p. 472) note that little is understood about
how child protection workers assess harm and risk.
The qualitative study by Kellet and Apps (2009) did offer some guidance on
general principles that workers can include in “good enough”. They found four
factors: meeting the child’s health and developmental needs; putting children’s needs
first; providing routine and consistent care; and parental acknowledgement and
engagement with support services (2009, p. 27). Yet, as valuable as these criteria are, it
is still difficult to know how a worker is meant to judge this in anything other than a
case-by-case, somewhat subjective fashion.
“Good enough” may help to shift workers from a deficit-based perspective to a
strengths one. By emphasising what is good enough, the worker can focus on the
ways in which the family is working competently. This might create a view of what
needs to be done to enhance as opposed to focus on the deficits that would lead away
from family preservation.
There are some that argue child protection has a far greater presence in the less
powerful and more marginalised sectors of society. It has been called the Trojan
Horse (Wrennall, 2010) where, in the name of doing good, society is more closely
monitoring and interfering in the lives of the weaker. Such perspectives, while
controversial, underline the need for clarity about the terms and standards being used
in child protection so as not to turn such involvement into a form of oppression
(Lonne, Parton, Thompson, & Harris, 2009).
Predicting Risk in Parenting Capacity
The ability of mental health professionals to accurately predict future behaviours has
been the subject of significant concern. Risk assessment has been found to have
greater accuracy when actuarial methods are used (Nadelhoffer et al., 2012).
However, most risk assessments in child protection are consensus versus actuarially
based (Barber et al., 2007).
There are no actuarial tools for assessing parenting competence (White, 2005, p. 8).
Clinical judgement therefore remains the de facto approach. As Budd and Holdsworth state: “The lack of a universal criteria regarding minimal parenting adequacy
precludes establishing the construct validity of parenting assessment methods” (1996,
p. 3).
Murray and Thomson (2010, p. 137) observe that it may be better to try to
understand what the risks are and then manage them, as opposed to trying to predict
what future parenting behaviour might look like. Assessments can suggest the
possible outcomes if the risks are left unattended. There may be a myriad of
influences that occur outside the family, such as school and the community, which
may mitigate or exacerbate the impacts of the risks that may persist. Risk in the
family can arise from various sources including the child, the parent and the extended
family but also the way that child protection authorities manage the case (Vincent &
Petch, 2012, pp. 7–9). Unmanaged risk has the potential to detract from a good
enough environment, and thus it is essential that risk be assessed.
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P. W. Choate & S. Engstrom
Munro (2008, p. 76) offers a way to consider the degree of risk through a five-stage
model: what is or has been happening; what might happen; how likely are these
outcomes; how undesirable are they; and what is the overall judgment of risk? Risk
not assessed leads to unmanaged risk. This in turn can lead to the types of practice
errors that create intense public scrutiny.
When a child dies while child protection is involved, politicians will look to the
workers as having failed the child and not properly considered the risks. The media
frenzies that surrounded the Baby Peter, Victoria Climbie and the recent Daniel Pelka
cases in the United Kingdom, the recent Phoenix Sinclair case in Canada and the
Logan Marr case in the USA are poignant examples. Such cases can tend to lead to
over-reaction by child protection authorities who seek to ensure that theirs will not be
the next case on the front pages. This changes the standard about what is good
enough. Workers have to consider the risks and then determine the balance between
over-reacting and under-reacting (Duquette, 2008; Hall & Guy, 2009).
There is an ill-defined line above which a parent is considered “good enough” and
below which the children are deemed to be put at too much risk. Yet it is this very
line that workers must try to understand in their day-to-day clinical judgements.
Kellett and Apps (2009) found that some of their professional sample was
uncomfortable with the idea of “good enough”, although they do not explain why.
They formulate “good enough parenting” as “basic care and safety, love and affection,
putting children’s needs first, providing routine and consistent care, and, when there
were difficulties experienced, acknowledgement and engagement with support
services” (2009, p. 46).
By contrast, Kellett and Apps saw risky parenting as involving the placing of
parental needs ahead of the child’s; a lack of parental control and responsibility along
with a lack of routine and order (2009, p. 46). There was not a consensus about what
these terms might mean. One might wonder why concepts such as physical, sexual
and emotional abuse where not included in the definitions of risky parenting.
Hoghughi and Speight (1998) suggested that good enough parenting consisted of
love, care and commitment; control and consistent limit setting; and facilitation of
development. Absence of these three elements tended to lead to poor outcomes in
adult life.
Budd, Clark, and Connell (2011) identified elements of minimally adequate
parenting. These include meeting the physical needs of the child, providing for
cognitive and developmental needs, and addressing and responding to emotional
needs.
What about the Environment in which the Family Operates?
It has long been a tenant of social work that clients should be seen within the context
of the environment in which they function (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). This has
particular poignancy for child protection as an overwhelming number of clients
come from disadvantaged populations, including indigenous peoples, immigrants,
and refugees, the poor, disabled and minority populations. Their parenting may be
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Child Care in Practice
5
seen as less than good enough but might be a matter of systemic or ecological
disadvantage, or both (Fontes, 2005). Parents can be judged as not good enough
because these external factors are seen as placing the child at risk. Yet, for all of these
reasons, solving these problems is beyond the power of the parents. Should families
be disrupted because of these issues? Or should the workers see the families in the
environmental context, asking how well they are managing the effects of these
external risks on the family?
While poverty, for example, places inordinate pressure on parents to find ways to
survive, this may result in non-traditional parenting that, if viewed carefully, may be
good enough. This might, for example, mean that children are left in the care of an
older sibling who could easily be seen as too young for the task, although this allows
the parent to work. When the child supports parenting for brief periods of time, this
may be tolerable. Charles, Stainton, and Marshall (2012) note that child carers should
not be seen as necessarily a bad thing, even though there may be some costs to the
child. They differentiate between children taking on a caring role and a situation
where the parent abdicates parenting which is often referred to as parentification.
Earley and Cushway (2002) have identified that children pay a high price for
parentification as they lack the emotional maturity for the task. The worker must thus
assess what is the real role that the child plays. If it is a lower level of parenting
responsibility to cover for short periods when a parent must tend to the economic
necessities of the family, then this may well be acceptable. If, on the other hand, the
parent has abdicated significant elements of that role to the child, then it is far less
likely that the environment would be good enough for the child.
There may not be a universal answer to the definition of “good enough” (Kellett &
Apps, 2009). This term encourages workers to consider the reality of how they find
the family and how that family manages to function within the environmental
demands facing it.
The Focus on the Parental Relationship
Parenting is about the bidirectional relationship between the parent and the child.
Pezzot-Pearce and Pearce (2004, p. 9) ask what is the goodness of fit between this
parent and this child? Once we understand the nature of the relationship, we can then
ask how the parent performs within that relationship. What does the parent do to
support the relationship or, in the alternative, to diminish it? As an example, a parent
may see the child as very important and worthy of encouraging but have an active
addiction that precludes the parent from behaving in a way that supports the desired
relationship.
A parent may do better in certain phases of a child’s development than others or be
more flexible with certain behaviours than others. The parent–child relationship will
change over time. What, then, is the capacity of the parent to adapt to these changes
and to utilise strategies that build on the relationship in a way that is, at least, not
harmful in a sustaining or profound way?
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P. W. Choate & S. Engstrom
What is the balance between the right of the parent to raise a child as they feel they
should versus the obligation of the state to protect a child? “Good enough” helps to
partially answer that by suggesting that what a parent does in the relationship,
regardless of their parenting orientation, should be accepted if it is good enough. This
tips the balance towards the parent versus the state, which is essential to the notion of
family preservation, a feature of much legislation. Luxton states: “Which circumstances warrant intervention and whether the intervention should encourage or
enforce certain practices is less clear” (2011, p. 15).
What, then, is the meaning of this child to the parent? Is the parent able to begin to
formulate the image of the child as a unique being that they are going to care for and
nurture or is the child seen as mechanism to make up for past traumas and losses? As
Schore (2001) and Perry and Szalavitz (2007) have shown, unresolved trauma
interrupts the capacity to build reciprocal relationships. Thus, a parent who sees the
child as a solution to their own emotional needs is unlikely to be “good enough” as
they will have a propensity to project their needs onto a child who is incapable of
meeting them. The relationship becomes reversed with the caregiver requiring care by
the very person most in need of being cared for. In essence, the parent looks to the
child to be “good enough” for them.
If there is no room for the child in the parent’s life, whatever skills the parent
possesses will be of little consequence. However, if the parent can be present in the
role, then, by contrast, the parent may be open to being taught skills that positively
shift the relationship, while also receiving support to resolve the legacy of the trauma.
What of the Needs of the Child?
At the risk of stating the obvious, children differ in their needs. They can range from
fairly undemanding to highly demanding. As noted earlier, goodness of fit matters. Is
this parent able to understand the needs of this child and have the motivation and skills
needed to respond? A parent may well be able to do this for a lower demand child but
unable to do this for a child with special behavioural, emotional or physical needs.
Parenting does not exist in the abstract but is specific to each child. CPS must
consider what the parent can offer each child in the family constellation. In those
cases where the skills may be deficient for a particular child, what might be done to
make that up? A parent motivated to do so may well be the best one to parent the
child even if they require supports over the long term.
The standard of good enough might be below where most of society would deem
desirable, but the costs associated with removal and separation are high costs that
children and parents must bear. Reeves (2012) argues that the state may not do a better
job at parenting. State care may be a poorer option for the child even when there is
deficient parenting at home. Accepting that removal of a child is first about protection
from harm in the original environment, it is also an offer by the state that the new
environment has something better. There are many reasons to suggest that may not
always be the case because state care has not resulted in better long-term outcomes
(Courtney, Dworsky, Lee, & Rapp, 2010; Courtney et al., 2011; Doyle, 2008; Minty, 1999).
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Child Care in Practice
7
A large number of children known to CPS have significant emotional and
behavioural problems that show up in schools, community, health and criminal
justice systems. The parent may be trying to support the child but also be unsure how
to effectively integrate the various services that are offered. Systems may seem to
overlap, compete and draw so much energy that the parent–child relationship is
negatively impacted by the efforts needed to manage the interventions (Ungar,
Liebenberg, Landry, & Ikeda, 2012). A “good enough” parent may be challenged with
succeeding at this but persists.
If the child’s behaviour does not improve in these circumstances, it may be the
parent who is held responsible as opposed to service failures (Unger et al., 2012). For
a parent to fulfil a “good enough” role, systems must support the efforts of the parent,
even when those efforts might fall below desired goals. Some may require long-term
supports. This is challenging when many child protection models are more focused
on shorter-term interventions. Offering supportive services to parents over a longer
term may still be more economical and emotionally beneficial than removing
children into long-term foster or group care.
This requires professionals to be willing to accept that mistakes will occur in an
effort to meet the needs of the child. Some mistakes will be repeated. Is the parent
able to limit the harm that arises when those mistakes occur either through their own
efforts or by reaching out to formal or informal networks to support the needs of the
child? Relapse into old behaviour patterns is a normal part of the change process
(DiClemente & Velasquez, 2002). Can the parent recognise the patterns even though
it may take successive interventions for any indication of sustained change? A parent
who is prepared to engage in change may be “good enough” as opposed to one with a
similar problem unwilling to work on the issues. A “good enough” parent may, in
essence, be one who is willing to accept their limitations, seek help to change what
they can and accept supports for those areas that will remain deficient. How they
frame the needs of the child and their motivation to keep working on meeting those
needs speaks to efforts towards or sustaining good enough.
Determining Good Enough
What should be considered to determine whether a parent is “good enough”? The
elements might include the following, but vary across communities:
. Physical care: this includes the provision of reasonable housing, clothing, food and
other forms of the basics of life as well as appropriate medical and dental care as
available (Budd et al., 2011).
. Community safety: the safety of the neighbourhood may not be good but is
beyond the capacity of the parent to solve. The question might then be better
framed as what the parent does to manage the risk to the child (Jarrett, 1999;
Pinderhughes, Nix, Foster & Jones, 2007).
. Family safety: interpersonal violence (physical, emotional, sexual) is a prevalent
issue within child protection. A child who can count on the family residence as a
8
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P. W. Choate & S. Engstrom
place of relative refuge is in quite a different one from the child who must worry
about what level of violence will be visited upon their home on any given day. A
child chronically exposed to inter-personal violence may be under high levels of
stress. This can lead to lifelong impacts (Felitti et al., 1998; Whitfield, Anda, Dube,
& Felitti, 2003). Can the parent take steps to protect the child?
Substance abuse and addiction: this may be the most frequent problem seen by
child protection workers in many jurisdictions (Child Welfare Information
Gateway, 2009; Forrester, 2000; Fuller & Wells, 2003; Maluccio & Ainsworth,
2003). Addicted parents tend to have a primary relationship with the drug. Even if
there is a non-using parent in the home, there may be many challenges trying to
protect children from the exposure to the addictive behaviours (Barnard, 2007).
Non-using family members may model enabling behaviours or make significant
and relatively successful efforts to protect their children from the effects of the
substance abuse (Barnard, 2003, 2005). There is not a homogeneous experience for
children from substance-abusing parents, meaning that the degree of harm can
have quite a range from quite mild up to quite significant (Adamson & Temple,
2012). There are also parents who expose their children to dangerous environments arising from drug manufacturing and related criminal activity (Choate,
Harland, & McKenzie, 2012). In “good enough”, the parent comes to realise the
impact of the substance abuse and is sufficiently open to take steps to address it.
Bruns, Pullmann Weathers, Wirschem, and Murphy (2012) show that carefully
designed interventions can have a strong positive effect on family reunification
and preservation. Yet children from these families are more likely to stay in care
versus children of parents with other challenges.
Mental and physical health of the parent: both of these operate to impact the capacity
of the parent to focus on the needs of the child. In what ways does the parent choose
to manage their mental health and with what supports (Boursnell, 2012)?
Making space for the child: the parent recognises that their life has changed as a result
of having a child and accommodates this reality in a way that favours the development
of the child. The child is also seen as a unique person in need of support, guidance and
direction with their own place in the world (Budd et al., 2011). Thus the child has a
healthy meaning to the parent and not one where the child is being used by the parent
to solve their own histories and traumas (Reder & Duncan, 1995).
Nurturing: this includes the basics of being emotionally and physically available
for the child at a basic level. Nurturing can also mean spending time with the
child, although the working poor may have limited hours for that as they pursue
survival (Budd et al., 2011).
Using external networks: consideration is given to the ways in which both the
family and the child are connected to and utilise resources that may be available in
the community and school. This also allows the child to develop other relationships that can model strengths in different ways and to develop resiliency in the
face of adversity (Jenner & McCarthy, 1995; O’Dougherty-Wright, Masten, &
Narayana, 2012).
Child Care in Practice
9
. Capacity to change: using the Stages of Change model (Prochaska, DiClemente, &
Norcross, 1992), consideration is given to past efforts and current motivation.
Recognition is given to relapse into old behaviour being part of the change process.
Is the parent willing to then re-engage change?
This list cannot be exhaustive, because each case will bring unique challenges. What it
does do is offer a literature-based review of what seems to be a connected sense of the
elements that may constitute good enough parenting.
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Avoiding an Ethnocentric and Oppressive Views of Good Enough
Swain and Cameron (2003) speak of assumptions made that disabled clients are, of
necessity, less capable as parents and therefore are not good enough. This may lead
workers to see parents as inadequate rather than explore their strengths and capacity,
and thus a deficits perspective would predominate (2003, p. 167).
Fontes (2005, p. 64) suggests that child protection may have an ethnocentric view
of what constitutes acceptable parenting, which would impose a dominant cultural
view on minority populations. Cultural behaviours of the “minority” may be different
without being unacceptable. The challenge is to understand what is being done and
then determine whether the parenting strategy is beneficial or harmful to the
development of the child. Wrennall (2010) presents a cogent argument that CPS has
come to serve more of a surveillance force within vulnerable populations. If true, then
the judgment of “good enough” risks ethnocentric and oppressive perspectives.
There can also be the reverse risk of a culturally preferential bias. Not all practices
from other cultures are acceptable. As Speizer, Goodwin, Samandari, Kim, and Clyde
(2008) report, there are harsh, punitive parenting styles that can exist in some
countries which have come to be seen as normative to that culture. The parenting
practice must be seen for what it is. If harmful, is the parent open to a new practice
that can be beneficial to the child? A presumptive bias to be avoided is that, because
the parents saw it as normal in their country of origin, they will carry on with it.
Child protection has received much criticism from Aboriginal communities in
Canada, the USA and Australia for bias and a failure to understand the roles of
traditional ways (Morissette, 1994; Voight et al., 1996, p. 1). But the criticism goes
further, suggesting that the dominant culture has engaged in a variety of oppressive
practices that creates a community disadvantage (Blackstock, 2009). A Canadian
experience illustrates the point. From the late nineteenth century through to 1996
when the last residential school closed, over 150,000 Aboriginal children were removed
from their families and placed in these schools operated on behalf of the government
by various religious denominations. In these schools, children were subject to a variety
of abuse (physical, sexual, emotional) as well as deprivation. A significant number died.
Of those that survived, they returned to their communities highly traumatised
(Fournier & Crey, 1997, p. 49; Milloy, 1999, pp. 91–92). Intergenerational parenting
practice transmission was lost for several generations. Children grew up not knowing
what a normative, supportive parenting role looked like and were poorly prepared for
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P. W. Choate & S. Engstrom
the role when they found themselves with children. In addition, the traumas—both
individually and collectively—were unresolved, further hampering the capacity to
parent. This has lead to high numbers of Aboriginal children being involved in the
Canadian child protection system (Trocme, Knoke, & Blackstock, 2004). Can a parent
who has lived in and struggled to survive these larger scale, community traumas be
good enough? Should the standard be different in communities recovering from these
intergenerational, population-based traumas? Blackstock, Trocme, and Bennett (2004)
raise the spectre that CPS interventions must address the broader community issues as
opposed to being just family focused, while finding ways to keep children safe.
Parents with mental health disorders can be judged as so affected by the disorder
that they are perceived as unable to parent effectively (Benjet, Azar, & KuerstenHogan, 2003; Manning & Gregoire, 2006; Nicholson, Sweeney, & Geller, 1998a, 1998b;
Risley-Curtiss, Stromwall, Hunt, & Teska, 2004). Reder, Duncan, and Lucey (2003)
note that most parents with mental health disorders do manage to successfully raise
their children. Despite the disorder, they are, in essence, good enough at the task.
Similar arguments can be made for mental handicaps (Choate, 2013; Jacobsen,
Miller, & Kirkwood, 1997; Tymchuk & Feldman, 1991). McConnell, Feldman, Aunos,
and Prasad (2010, p. 1) report that the population base of cognitively impaired parents
ranges between 2.6% and 5.4% of the Canadian population but up to 50% of their
children will be removed from parental care. There is some research that suggests the
differences between mentally handicapped parents and other parents may not be
dramatically different (Feldman, 2002). Considered objectively, these parents may
indeed be good enough, especially when considered within their support networks.
Can parents with these disadvantages be seen as good enough? Are there sufficient
resources within the community and extended family systems to support children
born into these circumstances? From a socio-political perspective, this matters greatly
as further removals of children from disadvantaged populations may only serve to
entrench intergenerational problems rather than lead to solutions.
One might argue that both the environmental and presumptive bias issues should
not override the core issue which the worker must decide. Is this parent good enough for
this child? If the environmental issues were managed, however, the parent might well
be. Should the parent be denied the opportunity to parent their child because of these
environmental issues? Perhaps this question might better be stated as whether or not
this parent can be good enough within the environment in which they must function.
There is also a more subtle presumptive bias, which is that there is one or at least a
dominant correct form of parenting. In western countries, the individualistic view is a
more powerful cultural force. This can translate into a belief that the parents should,
ultimately, be able to make it on their own (Fontes, 2005; Ramaekers et al., 2012). Yet
many cultures might see parenting as a larger family system responsibility with other
generations or players acting to support or at times, even supplanting the efforts of
the biological parents. Extended family can be a source of support and may be a
reasonable choice for alternate care (Berrick, 1998). In some cultural contexts we may
Child Care in Practice 11
need to assess not only the parents but the larger support system to determine
whether the situation is “good enough”.
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Discussion
To some extent, setting a standard of good enough parenting that can be utilised by
many assessors and across many jurisdictions is an exercise in futility. Each worker must
think about the issues as they present in each case. What is the community standard in
which the family must operate? In what way does local legislation direct intervention?
What are the specific needs of this family and this child? The list might well be longer.
What this means, of course, is that all assessment of parenting takes place in a context.
“Good enough” is a clinical judgement (Keddell, 2011). It appears to be done without
any formal, cohesive or commonly accepted definition or understanding about what it
fully means. Yet it has become a common standard, as seen in a multitude of court cases,
which adds pressure for a clearer understanding (see, e.g., “A Local Authority”, 2011; B,
2009; Children’s Aid Society of Pictou County, A.J.G., & J.A.G., 2009; DR, 2011; DS vs.
KS, 2011; “In the Matter of N”, 2012; “In the Matter of N (Freeing Order Application)”,
2005; M.A., London Borough of Camden, R.B., & T & O A-B, 2012; Minister of
Community Services vs. A.D. & J.C., 2004; N.M., 2005; Nova Scotia vs. A.S., 2007;
Scottish Borders Council against RT, 2009; T.L., The London Borough of Hammersmith, & Fuller 2011; Winnipeg Child and Family Services, Z.D.V., K.J.W., & S.V., 2000).
On the other hand, there is a need for a longer dialogue about how assessments
approach determining at what point a parent fails to be good enough for their child.
It may be the point where the parent’s behaviours are damaging and not recoverable
(Reeves, 2012). The costs of removing children from homes are very high—
emotionally, socially and financially. Thus, it should be done when there is clear
evidence of its need. Assessment should reach a conclusion that the child just cannot
be sustained in that home—it is just not “good enough” for the child and it is highly
improbable it ever will be. Thus, the costs to the child of being sustained in the family
significantly exceed the costs of removal in the given case.
Further discussion is clearly needed.
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