Adjustment of Children Using Supervised Access Services: Longitudinal Outcomes, Multiple Perspectives, and Correlates

Supervised access services (SAS) allow parents who represent a risk for their children or for the other parent to maintain contact with or exchange custody of their children in the presence of a third person. Even though these services have been designed in the children's best interest, few studies have, until now, documented the evolution in the parents' and children's adjustment or in the quality of the relationships between the family members throughout the services. To better understand this evolution, a longitudinal study comprising 3 time measures was conducted with 96 parents who were beginning the services. Although the results revealed that the children's evolution was stable all throughout the service trajectory, further analyses showed that the school-age children, and more particularly the boys, experienced a high level of difficulty. Furthermore, the study showed that the parents' evaluation of their children's adjustment differed according to whether or not the parent had to see the child in a supervised context. Finally, we observed that the evolution of the children's adjustment was correlated with the parents' psychological distress, the quality of the parent-child relationship, and conflict between the parents, all processes that did not have a tendency to improve throughout the service trajectory. Public Policy Relevance Statement This study provides another demonstration of the importance of supervised access services (SAS) in the lives of these children and their families, but also and above all of the necessity of the provision and usage of complimentary psychosocial services. Regarding public policies, they should emphasize on implementing concertation mechanisms between SAS and other psychosocial and judiciary resources present in the community to offer a continuum of services to the parents and their children. Moreover, considering the fact that some parents still feel true animosity toward the other parent at the end of the SAS, the development of specialized services adapted to the peculiarities of such a clientele should be envisaged.