UC Irvine

A great deal of attention has been devoted to documenting the experiences of children involved in the dependency division of the juvenile justice system (i.e., the child protection system). Such insight is critical to inform policies that profoundly affect children and families. However, the experiences of another population involved in the dependency system are equally important—namely those of the children’s parents. Their understanding and perceptions have enormous potential to affect not only their behaviors, but the decisions rendered during the case and its eventual outcome. The current study systematically examined parents’ understanding and attitudes toward the dependency system and predictors of understanding and attitudes. The study also examined how understanding related to attitudes. The study drew from distributive (fairness of legal decisions) and procedural (fairness of legal procedures) justice frameworks to identify factors that may be particularly important for parents’ satisfaction with judicial decisions and overall perceptions of the court.

One hundred and five parents (79% mothers) involved in ongoing dependency cases completed an interview at the courthouse following their hearing. Questions about understanding asked parents to define commonly used dependency terms, to answer questions about a hypothetical dependency case, and to answer specific questions about their case. Questions about attitudes asked parents to rate their feelings about dependency professionals, the dependency court, and components of distributive and procedural justice.

Findings revealed a lack of comprehensive understanding of the system, both generally and with regard to specific details of parents’ cases, particularly for African American parents. On average, parents felt somewhat satisfied about the system. Parents with greater understanding had more positive attitudes about procedural justice, but more negative attitudes about judicial decisions and the court, the latter potentially due, in part, to a lack of empowerment in meeting the demands of dependency cases. Distributive and procedural justice played a role in moderating the relations between understanding and attitudes such that parents with greater understanding felt particularly dissatisfied with the judge’s decisions and the court when distributive and procedural justice were low, respectively. Implications for parents’ dependency understanding and perceptions about distributive and procedural justice are discussed.