Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions

In this chapter, the authors identify central themes that unite the disparate chapters in this volume and offer suggestions for future directions. The chapters have ranged from research reviews to integrated models, based on research-supported components, detailed case applications, and general guidance and practice tools. A common uniting theme is the importance of seeking and maintaining current knowledge relevant to treatment and other interventions, including research from related fields as appropriate. Judicious application and understanding of the literature is important. Future needs include addressing the training gap among both specialized providers and other professionals, addressing resource gaps, and including in our professional guidelines the requirement that professionals who make recommendations about services have sufficient knowledge to do so. Issues in cross-disciplinary communication and training of lawyers and judges are also addressed.

Building and Managing Collaborative Teams

This chapter addresses the importance of collaborative teams in addressing the needs of court-involved families. Families may have a number of mental health and other service providers addressing complex family needs, who may unintentionally become caught up in the dynamics of family conflict if there is not adequate coordination among them. Creating and managing effective professional teams requires a highly qualified team leader, who may be a parenting coordinator or a judicial officer who has the time and expertise for detailed case management. This chapter describes issues to consider and a model for collaborating with attorneys, selecting and working with existing mental health providers, and resolving issues and conflicts that may arise among professionals and nonprofessionals engaged with the family system. It provides guidance to sensitively managing the sharing of information and to address compliance interventions to increase the effectiveness of services.

Professional Ethics in a Legal Context

This chapter discusses essential ethical issues for therapists who provide mental health services in a legal context. The application of ethical concepts in general clinical cases may change when the litigation context or the expectations of attorneys and the court enter the mix. Conversely, clinicians may need to educate legal professionals about mental health professional obligations that transcend context. Failure to navigate these issues may lead to disruption of therapy, failed treatment, harm to the family, and legal or ethical problems for clinicians. Guided by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts’ Guidelines for Court-Involved Therapy and other professional guidelines, this chapter highlights considerations for delivering ethically sound therapies for children and families involved in the courts.

Bringing the Previously Absent Father into the Family

Many fathers—married, never married, or divorced—are absent or remote from their child’s life during the early years. As circumstances change, he may become eager to get to know the child, especially as milestones come and go, or wish to parent after returning from an absence. Mothers are frequently less sanguine about such returns to the child’s life for myriad reasons. This chapter discusses the deleterious effects of father absence on child development, interventions currently in use to reintegrate the positively engaged father back into the family, examining and softening maternal gatekeeping, and the theoretical and evidence bases for such interventions. A case example will be used to demonstrate how the intervention work can be approached to maximize the child’s opportunity to have a positive relationship with his or her father while maintaining equilibrium in the mother–child dyad.

Specialized Child and Family Interventions

This chapter reviews strategies that are relevant to intervention with families involved in high conflict divorce. At the center of this approach is a steady patient approach based in constructing realistic proximate goals for treatment in the context of what typically are contentious conflicts. Accent is both on engaging common factors and specific strategies in an integrative systemic framework that may involve meetings with adults and/and children, in various configurations depending on the presenting situation. The chapter brings into this context interventions and research that do not always reach child custody professionals, as well as approaches designed specifically for this population.

Matching Parent Education Programs to Family Treatment Needs

Over the past several decades parent education has emerged as a cost-effective alternative or treatment supplement for coparenting conflict and children’s behavior problems. Parent education programs provide psychoeducation and skills development for separated and divorced families across a wide array of topics and in a variety of formats. Distinguishing between the dozens of available programs and determining which best meets each family’s needs could be daunting. This chapter provides an overview of research on coparenting education programs and identifies several critical elements and factors for consideration in selecting a program. These elements and factors include authority of program developers, evidence-informed approaches, costs, accessibility, measures of compliance, evidence of effectiveness, general and special topics, and instructional design.

Trauma and Child Custody Disputes

This chapter addresses the special considerations that must be applied when therapeutic interventions occur in the context of unresolved allegations of trauma or abuse. Evidence-informed techniques that address functional deficits being exhibited by the child, without compromising external investigation of the allegations, are discussed. Methods for maintaining or strengthening the healthy aspect of parent–child relationships, as consistent with child safety, are also discussed. This chapter considers evidence-informed techniques for addressing functional deficits exhibited by children as a result of unresolved trauma. Attention is placed on methods for resolving histories of trauma within the family law and child dependency context. This may include resolving traumatic memories with parents, dealing with situations in which more than one party is traumatized or memories do not align, and reaching child-supportive resolutions when parent–child contact requires a trauma-supportive lens.

Early Intervention with Resistance/Refusal Dynamics and Hybrid Cases

When parent–child relationships are disrupted, or a child appears to resist contact with a parent, prompt intervention may be necessary to avoid entrenched family dysfunction and deterioration in children’s functioning. Chronic exposure to unresolved parenting conflict places children at particular risk, particularly when parents or other adults are more focused on blaming one another than on resolving problems. This chapter describes application of the coping-focused, trauma-sensitive, multisystemic Child Centered Conjoint Therapy model to assist families, without compromising external investigations. Elements of this intervention include careful therapeutic assessment within a protective structure and specific therapeutic interventions to promote safety, encourage resilience and healthy coping behaviors, address parenting deficits, and promote healthy problem-solving. Structural elements include clear orders, attention to role boundaries, management of therapeutic information, and support from the court and independent children’s lawyers.

Understanding and Using Activities

Although often overlooked in the context of adult conflict, children’s recreational activities often play an important role in development and adjustment. Appropriately chosen and structured activities promote prosocial and healthy coping behavior, provide models for healthy interaction, facilitate mastery and self-esteem, and provide resources for coping with trauma and stress and resolving psychological and family dysfunction. This chapter draws on relevant research and professional literature from recreational therapy, child development, and the various social science disciplines relevant to court-involved families, providing an overview of relevant findings and concepts and a model for adapting and applying methods derived from recreational therapy to court-involved families. The chapter provides guidance for understanding, selecting, and structuring activities to support early intervention and treatment planning, as well as issues to consider in assessing whether an existing activity is being appropriately utilized for the child and family’s benefit or misused to prevent resolution of problems.

The Power of Group Dynamics

Much has been written about the power of group dynamics. This chapter reviews empirically supported groups for children and adolescents impacted by separation and divorce. Children and adolescents bewildered by the chaos associated with separation and divorce can suffer from the impact of loss, interparental conflict, and changes in family dynamics. Psychoeducational separation/divorce groups for children and adolescents can help children normalize the separation process and feel supported by peers and group facilitators. Group work has the potential to be transformative by allowing children and adolescents to share their mixed feelings related to the separation. This chapter reviews existing group approaches and shares strategies shown to be effective in helping children of all ages better understand and make sense of their new worlds. The chapter considers the importance of parallel group work for parents where feedback is provided to them about their child’s experiences. The hallmark of this family systems approach is that it enlightens parents caught up in their own conflict to be better attuned to their children’s needs and adjustment problems, thereby adding to the supportive framework for helping children and adolescents better cope with the impact of their family transitions.