Parenting Coordinator Training - Day 1 & 2

Monday & Tuesday, September 16 & 17, 2013
Time: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm (EACH day)
UBC Robson Square (HSBC Hall), 800 Robson Street, Vancouver

Who should attend: All those wishing to offer parenting coordination as part of their client services: family lawyers, mediators, arbitrators, parenting coordinators, and mental health and collaborative professionals.

Learning level: All levels

Background
Parenting coordination is a child focused-dispute resolution process offered to separated, divorced, and divorcing parents who need assistance in child-centered issues. Parenting coordination helps the parents and their child(ren) move forward to healthier and more satisfying decisions.

This 40-hour training is suitable for mental health professionals, mediators, and lawyers. Experienced family law lawyers, counsellors, social workers, family therapists and psychologists who have special training in mediating and arbitrating parenting disputes also require 40 hours of parenting coordinator training under the Family Law Act. Attending this 5-day training will satisfy the 40-hour requirement. No previous experience or knowledge of parenting coordination is required. The training will include discussions using case vignettes, audio-visual materials, demonstrations, and role plays.

The Program
Days 1 and 2, presented by Dr. Fidler, will cover the roles and functions of the parenting coordinator, the historical context, including the status of parenting coordination in the US and Canada, professional guidelines and training requirements, current research on effectiveness and inappropriate cases, and characteristics of high conflict families. Intimate partner violence and the implications for the PC process and the key components of the PC Order or on-consent Retainer Agreement will be addressed. Using case examples, the nuts and bolts of the process, including referral, intake, and contracting, the consensus building phase, involvement of collateral sources, and an overview of the arbitration phase will be discussed.

To prepare parenting coordinators for their role as parent educator, the relevant social science literature research will be summarized. These topics include: the impact of separation/divorce on children and adolescents; consequences of parental conflict on children and adolescents and its impact on parenting and the quality of parent-child relationships; different types of parenting styles and effectiveness; impact of parent adjustment and fathering on child and adolescent adjustment; and developmental considerations for parenting time schedules for infants/toddlers, preschoolers, school-age children and adolescents.

For full details of the 5-day program, click HERE.

Law Society of BC CPD Hours: 16 hours (a minimum of TBA hours will involve aspects of professional responsibility and ethics, client care and relations, and/or practice management)

Course Instructors
Barbara Jo Fidler, PhD — Family Solutions, Toronto
Matthew J. Sullivan, PhD — Palo Alto

Planning Committee
Stephanie L. Fabbro — Hamilton Fabbro Law Corporation, Vancouver
R. Craig Neville — Watson Goepel LLP, Vancouver

Registration includes workshop materials.

CLEBC Program Coordinator
Mary Kingston, Production Manager, Programs
mkingston@cle.bc.ca

Course Instructors
Barbara Jo Fidler, PhD — Family Solutions, Toronto
Matthew J. Sullivan, PhD — Palo Alto

Planning Committee
Stephanie L. Fabbro — Hamilton Fabbro Law Corporation, Vancouver
R. Craig Neville — Watson Goepel LLP, Vancouver

About the Course Instructors

Matthew J. Sullivan, PhD is a native northern Californian, who received his AB from Stanford University and PhD in clinical community psychology from the University of Maryland in 1985. Since that time, he has been in private practice in Palo Alto, California, specializing in forensic and clinical work in the Family Courts. His full-time private practice focuses on work with high conflict shared custody situations. He serves in a variety of court-related roles, including mediator, coparent counselor, parenting coordinator, testifying expert, and consultant. He has written numerous articles and book chapters, and presented and done trainings at national and international venues on topics such as high-conflict divorce, parenting coordination, child alienation, mental health consultation in family law cases, and court-involved therapy.

Dr. Sullivan is currently serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Child Custody, and serves on the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) international board of directors and the AFCC California board of directors. He was co-chair of the AFCC task force which developed guidelines for Court-Involved Therapists and served on the AFCC Task Force on Parenting Coordination, which developed the first guidelines for Parenting Coordination practice. Dr. Sullivan served on the American Psychological and American Bar Association working group on legal and psychological interventions with children and families. He is the co-founder of Overcoming Barriers, inc., which is a non-profit organization that has developed a variety of programs for high conflict shared custody arrangements. Dr. Sullivan received the 2012 Joseph Drown award for outstanding service to children, presented by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, California chapter.

DAY 1: Monday, September 16—Dr. Barbara Fidler

Morning

Introductions and Overview

Definition, Roles and Functions

Historical Development of Parenting Coordination

• status in United States and Canada
• variations in practice
• professional standards of practice, guidelines, and training requirements

Research: Benefits and Effectiveness

Inappropriate Cases

Afternoon

High Conflict Families: Personality Disorders and Characteristics

Using Social Science to Inform Parent Education

• consequences of separation/divorce and parental conflict on children and adolescents: risk and protective factors
• child development and attachment
• parent-child contact problems
• effective parenting and co-parenting

Parenting Coordination Process

• referral, intake, and contracting
  • intimate partner violence: implications for parenting coordination

Parenting Coordination Process (cont'd)

• referral, intake, and contracting (cont'd)
  • review of key elements of the Parenting Coordination Agreement
  • role play

Afternoon

• assessment of family dynamics, parental conflict, and impasse
• consensus building and facilitation: mediation, conflict resolution, and disengagement
  • parenting plans for high conflict
  • involvement of experts and collaterals sources
• arbitration: overview of procedure and writing awards

For more details on the 5-day Agenda, click HERE.