Psychological assessments of young people in family courts: relationality, experience, representation and the principle of “do no harm”

This paper considers the conduct of psychological assessments of young people in family courts and research into those professional practices. It extends the potentially progressive construct of reflective practice (Family Justice Council / British Psychological Society, 2016) by attending to issues of relationality, experience and representation which are not routinely prioritized in some assessment and training models and, significantly, it instantiates Harre’s claim for ‘qualitative psychology as science’ (2004:1). The responsibility of psychologists conducting assessments of young people in family courts in England and Wales is to work in the “best interests of the child” (Unicef, 1989, DoH, 1989). It is argued that some assessment practices are better able than others to attend both to scientific and ethical issues since assessment practices do not merely report truths about a young person but construct the young person and the psychologist in a dynamic causal bind. Narrative methodology is utilized in a fictional case vignette, firstly, to highlight the problematics of dominant epistemologies in psychology and secondly, to demonstrate the importance to scientific formulation of ontological possibilities in the dyad between practitioner and young person. The paper has implications for all psychologists who conduct assessments or research in or legal contexts.