Development and Validation of the Family Law DOORS

Conflicted parental separation is associated with escalating risks to wellbeing and safety for all family members. The Family Law DOORS (FL-DOORS, Detection Of Overall Risk Screen) is a three-part framework designed to assist frontline workers to identify, evaluate, and respond to these risks in separated families. The FL-DOORS system includes a 10-domain parent self-report screening measure, covering child and parent wellbeing, cultural and social risks, and safety risks experienced by and initiated by each parent. A first validation study of this screen was conducted with the first 660 separated parents to complete the measure at a frontline community agency, and found robust psychometric properties (McIntosh, Wells, & Lee, 2016). This paper presents a revalidation study of FL-DOORS screening measure with a new cohort of 5,429 separated parents, including 1,642 pairs. Our aim was to evaluate whether FL-DOORS was fit for the purpose of indicating a range of safety and wellbeing risks in separated families. We repeated internal scale reliability and concurrent and external criterion validity analyses. Original subscales were largely confirmed, and validity analyses were extended through a Multi-Trait Multi-Method (MTMM) approach. In this second larger cohort, the FL-DOORS screen was again found fit-for-purpose as an indicator of domestic violence and wellbeing risks in separated families.

Devices like laptops, touchscreens and tablets are in nearly every practitioner’s office, and every client’s pocket. People widely use these devices to enter or gather information. Yet practitioners rarely use such devices in this way during sessions at family and relationships services in Australia, preferring paper forms and notes. We also know that clients readily disclose family safety and wellbeing risks on paper forms during universal risk screening with DOORS (McIntosh, Wells & Lee, 2016); and that practitioners are under pressure to respond to such these risks quickly and efficiently. A survey with 255 clients at Relationships Australia SA who were ‘just screened’ with paper forms found 62.4% would have felt comfortable doing it on a computer. So is ‘e-screening’ – doing universal risk screening with an app on a device – both acceptable to clients and useful to practitioners in reality?

When former spouses experience distress and dispute following separation, risks to well-being and to safety are heightened for all family members. Reliable family-wide risk screening is essential. The Family Law DOORS (Detection of Overall Risk Screen) is a 3-part screening framework to assist identification, evaluation, and response to safety and well-being risks in separated families. Uniquely, the Family Law DOORS screens for victimization and perpetration risks and appraises infant and child developmental risk. The Family Law DOORS self-report screening tool is the subject of this report. Internal scale reliability and concurrent and external criterion validity for the Family Law DOORS were estimated with a community sample of 660 separated parents, including 181 mother-father pairs. Overall psychometric properties are strong and demonstrate good potential for the Family Law DOORS to support early risk detection for separating families. (PsycINFO Database Record