Overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems: Family-Based Interventions for Resistance, Rejection, and Alienation

by Abigail M. Judge, Robin M. Deutsch

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190235208
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/03/2016
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Abigail M. Judge, PhD, is a clinical and child and family forensic psychologist. Dr. Judge maintains a private practice in Cambridge, MA, is a Forensic Consultant at the Law and Psychiatry Service at Massachusetts General Hospital, and holds an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Judge provides psychotherapy, consultation, forensic evaluation, expert witness testimony, and reunification intervention.

Robin M. Deutsch, Ph.D., ABPP, is a child and family forensic psychologist, board certified in couples and family practice. She is Director of the Center of Excellence for Children, Families and the Law at William James College in Newton, MA, where she developed the Certificate in Child and Family Forensic Issues and the Child and Family Evaluation Service. She is a founding Board member of Overcoming Barriers, was formerly an Associate Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School, and was Director of Training and Forensic Services at the Children and the Law program at Massachusetts General Hospital for over 20 years. She provides mediation, consultation, reunification intervention, expert witness testimony, and parenting coordination services, as well as training for mental health professionals, lawyers, and judges on child custody evaluation, issues related to high-conflict divorce, and parenting coordination.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
Leslie Drozd and Nicholas Bala

Part I: Family-based Interventions: Indicators, models and clinical challenges

2: Clinical decision making in parent-child contact problem cases: Tailoring the intervention to the family's needs
Barbara Fidler and Peggie Ward

3: The current status of outpatient approaches to parent-child contact problems
Shely Polak and Jack Moran

4: More than words: The use of experiential therapies in the treatment of families with parent-child contact problems and parental alienation
Abigail Judge and Rebecca Bailey

5: The perfect storm: High conflict family dynamics, complex therapist reactions and suggestions for clinical management
Abigail Judge and Peggie Ward

Part II: The Overcoming Barriers Approach

6: Overview of the Overcoming Barriers approach
Peggie Ward, Robin Deutsch, and Matt Sullivan

7: Management of the camp experience: The integration of the milieu and the clinical team
Carole Blane, Tyler Sullivan, Daniel Wolfson and Abigail Judge

8: "East Group": Group work with favored parents
Peggie Ward

9: "West Group": Group interventions for rejected parents
Matthew J. Sullivan

10: Common Ground: The Children's Group
Robin Deutsch, Abigail Judge, and Barbara Fidler

11: Co-parenting, parenting and child-focused interventions
Matt Sullivan, Robin Deutsch, and Peggie Ward

12: Translating the Overcoming Barriers approach to outpatient settings
Barbara Fidler, Peggie Ward, and Robin Deutsch

13: Program evaluation, training and dissemination
Michael Saini and Robin Deutsch

14: Conclusion
Janet Johnston

Editorial Reviews

"Judge and Deutsch have garnered a collection of outstanding thinkers and clinicians with deep and broad expertise in handling the complexities involved when a child refuses to spend time with or rejects a parent. Together, the chapters offer a sophisticated road map of conceptual, clinical, and empirical views of the problem and potential solutions. This volume focuses on an intervention that has met with success in a field littered with clinical failures; in doing so, the authors provide hope and pave the way toward new methods of improving estranged child and parent relationships."—Marsha Kline Pruett, PhD, MSL, Maconda Brown O'Connor Professor, Smith College School for Social Work

"This is a timely and thoughtful contribution to the vexing challenge of reintegrating the family when children resist contact. This cutting-edge book clearly articulates the importance of non-office-based therapeutic approaches to challenge rigidly stuck family systems. The authors describe the key elements of their ground-breaking program, provide practical techniques clinicians can use in their practice today, and provide concepts that family law attorneys and judges can use in crafting orders tomorrow. Read this book!"—Angus Strachan, PhD, Clinical Psychologist and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA

"This book is a must-read for family law lawyers and judges to understand the complex dynamics of the refuse/resist case, to learn about the resources available for the entire family, and to create a collaborative process within the legal and therapeutic systems. Building on the lessons learned from Family Camp and Intensive Weekends, these author-practitioners share cutting-edge theory and practical solutions for the cases that have us pulling our hair out with frustration."—Marjorie A. Slabach, Retired Superior Court Commissioner, San Francisco, CA

"This book is a welcome addition to the literature of divorce, law, and psychology. Chapters highlight the challenge of responding to high-conflict divorce involving children and where consistent involvement of both parents in the children's lives is conflictual or nonexistent. Nationally respected professionals address the problem as a family problem and identify interventions for the whole family. … This is an important contribution. It is sure to guide professionals and families to more healthy and satisfying relationships."—John Sargent, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, Tufts University School of Medicine

From the Publisher