The Australian Government Attorney-General's Department has funded another project for a Multimedia Resource package to assist dispute resolution practitioners.
The need for such a package is based on the presumption that whenever it can be safely and responsibly done, the key task in assisting in the resolution of post separation parenting disputes is to support former partners to focus together on how they plan to contribute to the ongoing nurturing of and financial support for each of their children.
We know that the professional interventions that occur at the time of separation and divorce related disputes, generally impact positively or negatively on the long term outcome for children. At the same time, from the family's perspective, even good quality intervention represents but a fleeting experience during this time of enormous change in the lives of all members. Other than cases in which one or sometimes both parents are deemed to be harmful to the welfare of the child, it is the parents who will continue to play a pivotal role in each child's development.
In such cases, even when the conflict is high, the more responsibility that parents can be encouraged to take with respect to the decision-making around post-separation parenting, the more likely it is that arrangements will remain both robust and flexible.
The starting point for the multimedia package from Children in Focus was the proposition that when their own personal concerns are responded to evenly and respectfully, most separating couples are able to see beyond their fight with each other and focus on their children. Such child focused practices require empathic engagement, knowledge of oneself and one's own prejudices, an understanding of the principles of facilitative conflict resolution, knowledge of children's developmental needs and a willingness to appreciate and engage with the unique situation of this particular family.
Child Focused practices address the issue of how to keep the child (who is essentially unrepresented in traditional mediation) at the centre of negotiations. Somewhat paradoxically, child focused practices also offer a way forward when parents are primarily engaged in adult to adult relationship disputes, even though the formal agenda is about post separation parenting arrangements.
Some parents, however, cannot move from a positional representation of their children's needs. Typically, they struggle to 'hear' each other across a range of issues, often related to their own needs, and require more than child focused intervention. It was the view of the Children in Focus team that in these cases child inclusive practice is required. In addition to the skills required for child focused practice, the model of child inclusive practice requires a capacity to engage with children at developmentally appropriate levels across a range of mediums such as story, doll play and art work. It also involves engagement in a closely cooperative exercise with the mediator or conciliator, during which time the child consultant invites parents to re-engage with the world of their child or children. Child inclusive practice is not about interviewing the child in order to ascertain his/her wishes. Nor is it about adopting a stance whereby the consultant assumes knowledge of the child or children which is deemed to be superior to that of the parents.
The efficacy of child inclusive practice, compared with child focused practice is currently the subject of empirical investigation.
It was therefore the view of the Children in Focus team that education in the form of multimedia material should begin with the principles and practice that inform child focused interventions. The primary objective would be to introduce a fresh approach to the family law system; one that has the child at the centre of negotiations.
Content focus and design principles
This multimedia package consists of a DVD 'Dialogues with Separated Parents: Child Focused Dispute Resolution' (McIntosh & Moloney 2006), together with a companion handbook 'Creating Child Focused Dialogues with Separated Parents" (Moloney & McIntosh 2006).
The DVD is interactive and menu driven. It is supported by a companion handbook. The handbook and the DVD have been designed for use as an integrated package. It is aimed at experienced practitioners who work in the field of Family Dispute Resolution. Its primary purpose is to promote clinical skill development around child focused facilitated dispute resolution processes. The package will also be a useful adjunct to graduate and post-graduate training programs in related fields.
The DVD first takes viewers into a parent education group session, where we meet Joe, in the process of separating from his partner Belinda, and Amanda who separated from Matthew a while ago. Viewers can then invite themselves in to see parts of two generic dispute resolution sessions. The first involves Joe and Belinda and it is evident that this is their first such session. In the second, we see a practitioner working with Amanda and Matthew who are somewhat further along in the process.
Interwoven throughout the DVD are powerful dramatizations of these families' lives making it extremely rich, provocative training material. The companion handbook underpins the material and encourages practitioners to challenge themselves to improve their skills and achieve best practice in this important work.
The conceptual framework of the clinical demonstrations
Following the research literature on ameliorative impacts for children of parental attunement and availability through separation (McIntosh 2003), the educational and therapeutic strategies used actively target these elements of the parental state of mind.
Specific strategies are drawn from the parent education material, as researched for the booklet "Because it's for the kids", together with accumulating practice wisdom from the Children in Focus research projects and beyond.
The approach is not designed to fit into any one particular session, but to illustrate moments in the dispute resolution process where parents may need support the to place their children's experiences and needs, current and future, more squarely within their approach to settlement.
The DVD and handbook focus on building conversations and settlement processes that are centred on mindful consideration of the needs of children affected by their parents' dispute. In both the DVD and the transcripts there are multiple moments within dispute resolution processes in which parents need support to focus or re-focus on their children's experiences and needs.
The approach of the group facilitator and the two mediators cannot be formulaic. Rather, responses aim to be iterative, empathic, and simultaneously attentive to both process and content. Thus, at different times, we see all three practitioners:
- Following
- Leading
- Containing
- Waiting
- Informing
- Advocating for the child(ren)
- Directing the process.
The responses vary. Though the style inevitably reflects the personality of the practitioner and the purpose of any given response, the work is always informed by the objective of reinforcing or moving back to the children's needs.
Thus it is important to recognise that child focused work with medium to high conflict separating parents cannot be reduced to a predetermined set of prescribed competencies. Research into outcomes and cost effectiveness (e.g. Zsambok & Klein 1997) demonstrates that the specification of competencies in structured and unstructured complex tasks require very different approaches. According to Zsambok and Klein, good practice in structured tasks, in emotionally neutral domains of practice, calls for prior specification of average level competencies. This has been shown to produce fair and safe quality of performance.
On the other hand, unstructured complex tasks require a capacity simultaneously to 'think through' and 'think ahead'. They require flexible adaptation to uncertain, and, at times, emotionally charged and ambiguous situations. Henggler and Sheidow (2002) argue that these qualities are not found in practitioners who demonstrate an average set of pre-determined competencies. Rather, in their research into areas such as juvenile justice work, they show how practitioners with less than high level skills and training contribute to a process of cascading errors. They conclude that as the stakes become higher and the complexity of the working environment increases (as it does in high conflict family law disputes), specification of competencies must be based on the highest levels of performance.
More general research into judgement and decision-making confirms this finding. For example, Goldstein and Hogarth (1997) and Connolly, Arkes and Hammond (2000) show how errors in complex situations are a result of under-preparedness in the cognitive and the emotional domains, and that, with respect to problems of human interaction, even seemingly 'straightforward' cases are frequently at risk of being mishandled.*
What the DVD and Handbook do not cover
The work does not set out to cover general group intervention theory and practice, nor standard mediation, conciliation or counselling processes with separated parents. It assumes comfort and experience in these areas and goes on to demonstrate, in a concentrated manner, some core approaches to establishing, maintaining and returning to a child focus with parents whose conflict has seriously diverted them from pursuing a developmental agenda for their children.
Family dispute resolution practitioners will recognise that the child focused group education and the child focused mediations depicted occur after formal intake procedures have occurred. Intake procedures are not covered because the core levels of professional development which are pre-supposed include awareness of the issues and practices that determine client capacity to engage with each other in a family dispute resolution process. In particular, the essential knowledge of intake-related risk assessment strategies around the key issues of violence, abuse and mental health is assumed.
The authors acknowledge, therefore, that although the child focused interventions illustrated are designed to be effective with high conflict couples, the model has limitations. Like all facilitated processes, this model is limited by the presence of significant power differences, mental health issues, and/or by other questions that go to the capacity of individuals to represent themselves adequately in the presence of their former partners.
Finally, the material does not illustrate final outcomes and couples are not followed through to an 'agreement' phase. Rather, the following processes are emphasised:
- Parents are introduced to new ways of thinking about resolution and settlement in the group education phase.
- All dialogues are acknowledging and respectful of adult relationship difficulties, yet remain primarily informed by a focus on the children's needs.
- Through the activation or re-activation of a parental state of mind, couples are supported in moving to (or back to) higher ground as parents.
When these changes have been established, at least to some degree, the detailed negotiations that often need to take place can be more realistically supported by a greater sense of conviction on the part of each parent and a greater sense of commitment to their parenting roles. It is always important, in our view, for the child focused practitioner to be aware of, '... what each parent can contribute to the child, not reflexively
assume that contact with both parents is essential or that one parent can be discarded. This is a child-centered take of a parental-rights approach' (Johnston in press).
Copies of the DVD/handbook can be obtained by contacting:
Family Pathways Branch
Civil Justice Division
Australian Government Attorney-General's Department
National Circuit
Barton
Canberra ACT 2600
*Thanks to Sophie Holmes for drawing our attention to this literature. Sophie's PhD research is in the area of worker competencies, especially in problematic and conflictual family situations.
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