German 
Schmidt, A. & Westhoff, K. (2020). Interdisciplinary child welfare: Empirical results for legal practice in the case of separation of parents. Baden-Baden: Nomos. With a foreword by Prof. Dr. Bernd von Heintschel-Heinegg (retired presiding judge of the Bavarian Supreme Court and retired presiding judge of the Munich Higher Regional Court for State Security).
This volume closes the gap between norms, jurisprudential interpretations and empirical results from the human sciences that are capable of reaching a consensus to concretise the indefinite legal concept of child welfare. The first part of the book presents the legal basis and the judgments of the Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal Court of Justice for the welfare of the child; they are the framework for the second, larger part, which presents the empirical facts from the human sciences in a comprehensible and well-structured way. The normative determination and case-related interpretation of the child’s best interests can only succeed if knowledge is used that relates to the social reality of the child, i.e. psychological, educational and sociological knowledge. The human sciences provide a value system that corresponds to the legal decision-making criteria and thus a yardstick for assessing the best interests of the child in individual cases and placing the decision-making on a fact-based basis. The human-scientific content presented here, which is used to fill the legal concept of the best interests of the child, withstands the legal point of view and can therefore be used by lawyers in order to guarantee legal security. This interdisciplinary approach of a human-scientific commentary on the legal child welfare criteria can be made available as a working aid to the following target groups: family judges, procedural counselors, contact nurses, supplementary carers, experts, mediators, youth welfare officers, lawyers, politicians, parents.