Interviewing Children

The process of asking a child questions can sometimes be a frightening and mystifying experience for the child, and often for the interviewer as well. This text offers practitioners an understanding of children's language abilities at different development stages, and gives clear guidelines on strategies that professionals might adopt to facilitate their interviewing of children. Rather than focusing in detail on the wider issues of deception, suggestibility and reliability, the authors examine the process of communication with children in the interview situation. Giving guidelines on how interviewers can help children to "tell their story" in an unbiased and non-leading fashion. The book's format closely follows the three phases of the interview structure advised in the "Memorandum of Good Practice" - the Home Office guidelines used by professionals when interviewing children. Each chapter is self-contained, allowing professionals to focus on one particular phase if they wish, and also includes a checklist of important "do's and don't's".