Description
In recent years there has been heightened interest in the clinical and legal management of families in which children resist contact with one parent and become aligned with the other following divorce. Families affected by these dynamics require disproportionate resources and time from mental health and legal professionals, and cases require a specialized clinical approach. Traditional models of individual and family therapy are not designed to address these issues, and strategies and resources for mental health and legal professionals have been extremely limited.Overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems describes interventions for families experiencing a high conflict divorce impasse where a child is resisting contact with a parent. It examines in detail one such intervention, the Overcoming Barriers approach, involving the entire family and combining psycho-education and clinical intervention. The book is divided into two parts: Part I presents an overview of parental alienation, including clinical approaches and a critical analysis of the many challenges associated with traditional outpatient family-based interventions. Part II presents the Overcoming Barriers approach, describing core aspects of the intervention and ways to adapt its clinical techniques to outpatient practice. Overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems is geared toward mental health clinicians and legal professionals who work with families in high conflict and where a child resists visitation with a parent.
Table of Contents
1. IntroductionLeslie Drozd and Nicholas BalaPart I: Family-based Interventions: Indicators, models and clinical challenges2: Clinical decision making in parent-child contact problem cases: Tailoring the intervention to the family's needsBarbara Fidler and Peggie Ward3: The current status of outpatient approaches to parent-child contact problemsShely Polak and Jack Moran4: More than words: The use of experiential therapies in the treatment of families with parent-child contact problems and parental alienationAbigail Judge and Rebecca Bailey5: The perfect storm: High conflict family dynamics, complex therapist reactions and suggestions for clinical managementAbigail Judge and Peggie WardPart II: The Overcoming Barriers Approach 6: Overview of the Overcoming Barriers approachPeggie Ward, Robin Deutsch, and Matt Sullivan7: Management of the camp experience: The integration of the milieu and the clinical teamCarole Blane, Tyler Sullivan, Daniel Wolfson and Abigail Judge8: "East Group": Group work with favored parentsPeggie Ward9: "West Group": Group interventions for rejected parentsMatthew J. Sullivan10: Common Ground: The Children's GroupRobin Deutsch, Abigail Judge, and Barbara Fidler11: Co-parenting, parenting and child-focused interventionsMatt Sullivan, Robin Deutsch, and Peggie Ward12: Translating the Overcoming Barriers approach to outpatient settingsBarbara Fidler, Peggie Ward, and Robin Deutsch13: Program evaluation, training and disseminationMichael Saini and Robin Deutsch14: ConclusionJanet Johnston
