Dr Bryan Tully
expert witness psychologist

The Parental Awareness Rating ("PARENT") Scale

The scale is designed to emulate the assessment procedures of a variety of parental awareness, perception, problem solving and custody evaluation scales developed in the U.S.A. There are a number of problems with those scales as they are presently required to be used, and in addition, this British scale is purposely designed for use with clients of Local Authority or voluntary organisations' social services departments.

The chief developments which this scale exhibits as compared with earlier, mostly American scales, are the following:

A much more straightforward method of administration, so that the procedure can be carried out by a suitable professional with the minimum of specialised training in the scale per se.

The language is deliberately designed to be as clear and straightforward as necessary so as to be useful and fair for parents who bring their children up in an English speaking society, but whose first language may not be English, whose culture of origin may not be UK British, or who may possess limited intelligence, or have been disadvantaged in their educational opportunities or achievements, or any combination of these factors. Clients with these characteristics are highly represented among those receiving service from, and/or are subject to legal proceedings in connection with Local Authority social services departments, or other organisations (such as the NSPCC) recognised as providing similar services.

The scoring protocol, whilst straightforward, is designed to go one step further than the American scales. They are designed to be used for psychometric and comparative purposes. Validation research demonstrates a reasonable distribution of scores and predicts social work assessments and outcomes when a long established history is available.

The PARENT scale is designed to make manifest benchmark scoring which would indicate good parenting capacity, minimal or mixed standard parental capacity with prospects for at least modest but worthwhile improvements, given appropriate support or skills learning opportunities, and poor or alarming lack of capacity which might indicate clear risk to children in such parents' care, and/or unlikely prospects for improvement, being irremediably impaired, untreatable or dangerous. The second benefit which such a scale scoring procedure provides, is that parents or other relatives can be compared, and changes over time in various areas can be easily plotted. Interventions can therefore be better focused and evaluated.

The scale generally covers the required positive issues in parental awareness, so that an impairment or deficiency is manifested in a lack of such positively sought for responses. However some parents' lack of parental capacity is reflected in their inappropriate, risky or dangerous beliefs and behaviours. These are important to address when children are believed to be possibly at risk, and the issue is not simply one of which parent is "better" as might be wrangled over in civil custody and divorce suits. Therefore, the PARENT scale provides for coding of such responses and these go to make up a score on a special "Alert" scale.

The PARENT scale does not assume a parent is one sex or the other or necessarily living with the child's other parent, or any spouse, or partner. The scale can be used with single and dual parent families.

The PARENT scale should be used as part of an overall assessment including reviews of properly documented case records. Direct observation of a parent and child together can contribute valuable information especially where there is a clear assessment purpose or hypothesis. It is particularly recommended to be used with the Department of Health "Framework for the assessment of Children in Need and their Families", wherein are found guide questions to assess family members and the appreciation of children's needs, but the examination of parental capacity per se is very limited, although this may be the critical issue which has prompted the assessment in the first place.

The PARENT Scale is available for £100 + £17.50 VAT. It can be delivered by e-mail or on floppy disk. Purchase entails acceptance of the licensing agreement which follows.




Parental Awareness Rating scale (PARENT) Agreement.

This Agreement governs your use of the PARENT software and contents hereafter referred to as "the product". Please read the following terms carefully before using the product. Use of the product will be taken to mean you accept the Agreement.

Grant of License

Dr B Tully, of PO Box 13132, London SW13 0ZL, U.K. grants you, and you accept a limited licence subject to the terms and conditions contained herein, to use the product on a single computer or it's replacement, or as hard copy to administer to a single individual, at any one time, by yourself or someone specifically designated by you for that particular single administration. If you wish further administrations to be carried out at the same time or by other designated people, then you should purchase further copies of the product.

You may not permanently or temporarily transfer or sub-license your rights of use under this Agreement, without the specific permission of Dr B Tully.

You acknowledge that the rights to the product and all related materials or updates are the sole and exclusive property of Dr B Tully. You may not permanently merge, alter or adapt this product save to edit a specific copy to be used for a specific occasion, whether on the computer or as hard copy. By accepting this Agreement you do not become the owner of the product but you have a licence to use the product in accordance with this Agreement.

You agree to use your best efforts and to take all reasonable steps to protect the product from unauthorised use, or illegal breach of copyright or illicit distribution. You may not rent, loan, lease or license this product in any way.

All intellectual property in the product is protected by UK copyright laws, other applicable laws and international treaty provisions. Dr Tully retains all rights not expressly granted.

Dr Tully warrants that the product itself conforms to its applicable use as advertised. If within a 90 day period any deficiency is found, the product will be replaced without charge. You agree that regardless of any form of claim, Dr Tully's liability shall not exceed the amount paid by you for the product. Dr Tully shall not be responsible for any direct, indirect or consequential damages arising from your use of the product. You agree to indemnify Dr Tully against any such claim.

If any of the terms of this agreement are broken, Dr Tully retains the right to terminate the Agreement and to require the return of the product and any copies. No copies may be retained by you in these circumstances.

Any user of the product should be a suitably qualified professional who possesses the required competency to carry out the kind of assessments for which the product was designed. If there are any doubts, the user or potential user should check with Dr Tully or their appropriate professional body and any codes of practice which apply. Failure to do so or to keep all terms within this Agreement could expose a user to a beach of professional ethics.