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

Learning level: All levels.

Law Society of BC CPD Hours: 40 hours (a minimum of 2 hours will involve aspects of professional responsibility and ethics, client care and relations, and/or practice management).

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, professional guidelines and training requirements, 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.

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.

Day 3, presented by Dr. Fidler, will focus on the “Voice of the Child”. She will review the social science research on the benefits and cautions of listening to the voices of children and adolescents. She will identify various ways the child’s voice can be obtained and integrated into different dispute resolution options such as child representation, mediation, assessment, parenting coordination, and judicial processes.
Note: Day 3 will also be offered online as a Live Webinar.

Days 4 and 5 will be presented by Dr. Matthew Sullivan. This part of the training will present a conceptual model of coparenting work for high conflict coparents. Disengagement through the structure of the parenting plan, and management of communication between coparents are the essential components of this parenting coordination model. He will present the nuts and bolts of constructing and management of a parallel parenting model including the use of email, shared parenting websites, and highly structured parenting coordination sessions. The presentation will address professional practice and professional risk management in this complex role.

Wine and Cheese Reception on Day 3: time and location TBA.

Pricing

For full course description and complete registration information, please link to:

http://www.cle.bc.ca/OnlineStore/productdetails.aspx?cid=950