Evidence-Informed Interventions for Court-Involved Families

Lyn R. Greenberg, PhD, ABPP, provides parenting coordination, consultation, treatment and intervention services to court-involved children and families, as well as forensic expert and consultation services to attorneys and training/consultation services to mental health professionals. Speciality areas include interventions for complex child custody cases, including those involving children with special needs. She is a recipient of the AFCC Meyer Elkin's Award for this work. She served on the AFCC task force on Court Involved Therapists, co-edited the journal of Child Custody special issue on court-involved therapy, and has been recognized by the Society of Family Psychology for her work. She has been widely published on issues related to separation and divorce, child custody, ethics, child abuse, and treatment and other interventions for court involved and high conflict families. She presents and provides professional training both locally, nationally, and internationally. Dr. Barbara J. Fidler, PhD, CPsych, AccFM, FDRP PC is a clinical developmental psychologist. She has worked with high conflict separation/divorce providing various dispute resolution services for over 34 years. She provides professional consultations and trainings to judges, lawyers, mediators and mental health professionals.Dr. Fidler is co-author of four books: two on child custody assessments and two on parent-child contact problems. She has authored many book chapters and journal articles, including three chapters in the recently published, Overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems: Family-Based Interventions for Resistance, Rejection, and Alienation (2017). Dr. Fidler has been actively involved in the development and training of parenting coordination and sits on the AFCC Taskforce charged with updating the practice guidelines.Michael A. Saini, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto and holds the endowed Factor-Inwentash Chair in Law and Social Work and the Co-Director of the Combined J.D. and M.S.W. program. He is a Board Member of the Association of Family Conciliation and the Courts and an editorial board member for the Family Court Review and the Journal of Divorce and Remarriage. He provides risk management consultation for working with families involved in high conflict child custody disputes, he leads parent groups for separated families, he provides parent coaching, and for the past 18 years, he has been conducting custody evaluations and assisting children's counsel for the Office of the Children's Lawyer, Ministry of the Attorney General in Ontario.He has over 100 publications, including books, book chapters, government reports, systematic reviews and peer-reviewed journal articles. His publications have focused on access to justice, child custody disputes, interparental conflict, intimate partner violence, alienation, cultural dynamics of separated families, supervised visitation, virtual visitation, child protection services and parent competencies post separation and divorce.

Family psychodynamics and interventions have ever been the square peg striving to fit in the round hole of the legal system. This book will be a boon to the family law judge who, required to do the right thing, is bound by the rules of evidence and the rule of law. These are often not amenable to ascertaining and fixing relationship problems that lie at the hearts of children and families of divorce. The authors employ evidentiary nexes to narrow the gap between our disciplines and provide specific tools to benefit families of divorce, equip family law professionals, and enlighten the finder of fact, that is, the family law judicial officer.

• Part A - Integrating What We Know: Coping, Adjustment, and the Legal Context Chapter 1: Shifting Our Perspective - Focusing on Coping and AdjustmentLyn R. Greenberg Chapter 2: The Role of the Courts in Supporting Therapeutic Interventions Nicholas Bala and Hon. Marjorie A. Slabach Part B - Therapeutic Approaches and Strategies Chapter 3: Specialized Child and Family Interventions Jay Lebow Chapter 4: Matching Parent Education Programs to Family Treatment NeedsJohn A. Moran, David Weinstock, and Kolette Butler Chapter 5: Parenting Coordination: Structures and Possibilities Barbara J. Fidler and Lyn R. Greenberg Chapter 6: The Power of Group Dynamics: Strategies for Supporting Children and Adolescents in Groups Post Separation and Divorce Jeff Mintz, Michael Saini, and Shely Polak Chapter 7: Understanding and Using Activities David R. Austin and Lyn R. Greenberg Part C - Special Issues in Intervention with Children and Families Chapter 8: Early intervention with Resistance Refusal Dynamics and Hybrid Cases Lyn R. Greenberg, Hon. Robert Schnider (Ret.), and Julie Jackson Chapter 9: "How am I supposed to treat these cases?" Working with families struggling with entrenched parent-child contact problems: A hybrid case.Barbara Fidler, Robin Deutsch, and Shely Polak Chapter 10: Trauma and Child Custody Disputes: Screening, Assessment, and Interventions Leslie Drozd, Michael Saini, and Kristina Vellucci-Cook Chapter 11: Bringing the Previously Absent Father into the Family Kyle D. Pruett., Marsha Kline-Pruett, and Robin Deutsch Chapter 12 - Treating Children Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence within the Context of Child Custody DisputesMichael Saini, Elisa Romano, Kelly Weegar, Sarah Zak , and Elena Gallitto Chapter 13 - The Special Needs Child After Separation or Divorce: Involving Both Parents in Treatment and Intervention Planning Daniel B. Pickar and Robert L. Kaufman, Part D - Best Practices and Future Directions Chapter 14: Building and Managing Collaborative TeamsMatthew J. Sullivan Chapter 15: Professional Ethics in a Legal Context Paul C. Berman and Katherine W. Killeen Chapter 16: Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions Lyn R. Greenberg, Barbara J. Fidler, Michael Saini, Hon. Robert Schnider and Ashley-Lauren Reyes