Description
Professionals in the mental health field commonly work with children and families in crisis. With over half of all marriages in the United States ending in divorce, mental health professionals frequently find themselves involved in these complex family structures.
Bradley Craig – Clinical & Ethical Best Practices for High-Conflict Families: Child-First Strategies for Divorce, Custody, Coparenting, and Court
Well-meaning professionals can be negatively impacted by this involvement if they are unaware of the specialized issues that come with the dynamics of these families and the potential court interaction. Worse yet, this involvement can not only have long-term damaging effects on your professional credibility, but on these children and their families as well.
Presented by Bradley S. Craig, LMSW-IPR, CFLE, author of Between Two Homes: A Coparenting Handbook, this recording offers you the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the higher standard of practice involved in working with these families while learning about current research and knowledge regarding two-home issues. This recording will also discuss resources and parenting coordination tools available to these families.
Handouts
Manual – Clinical & Ethical Best Practices for High-Conflict Families (5.75 MB) 212 Pages Available after Purchase
Outline
Behind Closed Doors – An Inside Look at High-Conflict Family Dynamics
What is coparenting?
Recognizing where the family is
The family in transition
Vulnerability of the family
Consequences for adults
Children’s adjustment
Best interest?
Parentification
Relocation
The legal system
Empowerment
Terminology
Resources and options for families
Conflict addiction
Ethical Considerations for Clinical & Forensic Roles
Dynamics of court involvement
Guidelines for practice
Therapeutic vs. forensic
Defining roles
Maintain your role
Avoiding dual roles or multiple hat issues
Treating with bias
Managing Risk From Day One
Know your family code and licensing authority
Why have a copy of orders?
What to look for in orders
Consent issues
Forms and accessibility
Intake
Defining your client
Goals
If you are the child’s therapist…
Reports
This happened vs. client reports
Who can you report on?
But I’ve been ordered to…
Child-First Strategies for High-Conflict Families
A parenting coordination model
High-conflict behavioral patterns
Labels: cooperative, high-conflict, and domestic violence
Benefits and problems related to labels
Things to recognize and tools to use
Common parenting mistakes
Cognitive work
Boundary recognition
The blame game
Sympathy vs. empathy
Cooperative vs. parallel vs. conflicted coparenting
Alienation
Estrangement
Differentiating domestic violence
Faculty
Bradley Craig, LMSW-IPR, CFLE,
BRADLEY CRAIG, LMSW-IPR, CFLE, is a social worker, family life educator, and family law mediator in the North Texas area who has specialized in helping families work through divorce, custody, and coparenting issues for over 20 years. He is the author of Between Two Homes: A Coparenting Handbook, as well as numerous educational programs, videos, and curriculums designed to educate the public about the effects of parental conflict on children and the services available to help families through coparenting issues. Mr. Craig has conducted numerous trainings regarding clinical and forensic work with high-conflict families, covering topics such as family law mediation, parenting facilitation, coparent education, and child-first interventions, and he frequently speaks for state and national conferences and serves as an expert to the media.
Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Bradley Craig maintains a private practice. He receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc.
Non-financial: Bradley Craig has no relevant non-financial relationship to disclose.
