Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Children and Youth Services Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth Feeling the pressure to take sides: A survey of child protection workers' experiences about responding to allegations of child maltreatment within the context of child custody disputes Michael Saini a, ⁎ , Tara Black a , Elisabeth Godbout b , Sevil Deljavan a a University of Toronto, Canada b Laval University, Canada ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Child protection Child custody disputes High conflict Assessment ABSTRACT Families involved in high conflict child custody disputes pose unique challenges for child protection services. Little is known about the struggles faced by child protection workers when responding to complaints made by acrimonious ex-partners within the context of child custody disputes. This paper reports on an exploratory cross- sectional online survey of child protection service providers (n = 208) from five child protection agencies. Results show that the majority of workers expressed feeling higher levels of stress when dealing with families involved in child custody disputes, attributed to repeat allegations and counter allegations, the ongoing acri- mony between the parents, pressure from the parents and legal professionals to take sides in the dispute and a lack of protocols to work with families involved in high conflict. The lack of specialized training to work with parents stuck in high conflict and the demands placed on workers, already struggling with large caseloads, contributed to workers feeling overwhelmed and ineffective when working with families entrenched in child custody disputes. Implications are discussed including the need for early identification of high conflict cases, specialized services to address the unique needs of families involved in child custody disputes and increased collaboration between child protection services and external service agencies. 1. Introduction 1.1. Background Child protection services are increasingly faced with the challenge of responding to allegations and counter allegations of child maltreat- ment made by acrimonious parents within the context of child custody disputes (Black et al., 2016; Houston, Bala, & Saini, 2017). Results from a secondary data analysis of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect from 112 child welfare sites across Canada found that approximately 12.4%, or 29,218 investigations of the esti- mated 235,842 child maltreatment investigations in 2008, involved a child custody dispute (Black et al., 2016). They found that 41% of child maltreatment allegations within the context of child custody disputes were made by the custodial or non-custodial parent compared to only 8% of allegations made by parents not involved in a child custody dispute. Families involved in child custody disputes following separation and divorce can take up an inordinate amount of professional resources, often without yielding positive results for the children involved (Bala, Birnbaum, & Martinson, 2010). While not all child custody disputes involve families entrenched in high conflict litigation (Polak & Saini, 2018), child custody disputes are typically characterized by ongoing animosity between disputing parents who make repeated allegations of child maltreatment to gain tactical advantages in the family law liti- gation process (Brown, 2003; Houston et al., 2017; Saini, Black, Fallon, & Marshall, 2013). Saini et al. (2013) note that ongoing bitter conflict between separating parents can be taxing on child protection workers who are charged with the responsibility of investigating repeated al- legations, especially when parents vigorously deflect blame to the other parent and make counter allegations. Deciphering repeated allegations can be especially demanding on child protection workers who must allocate a significant portion of each day interacting with distressed and volatile parents who remain stuck in https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.11.044 Received 13 March 2018; Received in revised form 20 November 2018; Accepted 21 November 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Factor-Inwentash Chair of Law and Social Work, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, 246 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON M5S 1A1, Canada. E-mail addresses: michael.saini@utoronto.ca (M. Saini), tara.black@utoronto.ca (T. Black), elisabeth.godbout.1@ulaval.ca (E. Godbout), s.deljavan@utoronto.ca (S. Deljavan). Children and Youth Services Review 96 (2019) 127–133 Available online 22 November 2018 0190-7409/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T