Including Children’s Voices in Family Law Proceedings: Risks and Unintended Consequences

Hearing from children has become the directive in family law processes, giving them “a voice but not a choice.” This plenary will address concerns and unintended consequences associated with involving children. The presenters will examine the risks in cases with alleged abuse and in resist-refuse cases when children speak with multiple professionals. When cases involve professionals in a variety of roles, coordination between them can limit harm to children. This plenary session will consider safety risks to the children and other family members when children are encouraged to give information that reflects negatively on their parent(s). The panelists will address helping children understand how confidentiality limits are different across professional roles and legal processes. The presenters will discuss how ethical standards and laws differ based on jurisdiction, and how this impacts the type of information that professionals may elicit.

1. Should I Persist When My Child Resists?

Enforcing parenting time amid resistance poses a daunting challenge. Forcing the child's compliance risks escalation, while not enforcing may signal abandonment. Conflicting advice from professionals adds chaos. When to persist or step back hinges on various factors, demanding a nuanced approach. This workshop offers a model for decision making based on expert insights and collaborative exploration. Whether a seasoned practitioner or newcomer, attendees will depart with actionable strategies for navigating the complexities of resistance to parenting time and implementing realistic interventions for the family.

2. One Court’s Thoughtful Approach to Problematic Parenting

This workshop will explore programs to help parents work through disputes and to build stronger families. Through a multi-disciplinary approach, the Summit County Domestic Relations Court designed programs for parents to better understand the issues they are facing. Discussion includes details about the Working Together Program, the resources through family court Services with focus on evaluations regarding allocation of parental rights and responsibilities and Family Recovery Court.

3. A View from the Trenches: Practical Strategies for IPV and PCCP

From the premise that both IPV and PCCP exist, this workshop will provide practical guidance by offering particular legal and analytic strategies that can be useful for both legal and mental health practitioners. Legal strategies will consider a variety of budgetary realities and present options to support or defend against either or both phenomena. Mental health analytic frameworks will be presented in order to understand how concrete facts, observations, and data points can be used to analyze the presence or absence of one or both of the phenomena.

4. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Parent Coordination

Join the presenters in exploring the current challenges and resources available to the Parent Coordination process. Through the lens of both a legal and mental health perspective, the facilitators will lead a discussion providing valuable take aways to empower conflict resolution skills for the parties. The goal for this session is to build confidence in parent coordinators by providing language and creative intervention. The panelists will model techniques that support setting boundaries, delegating party responsibility, and assuring the child’s wellbeing is the primary focus.

5. Coercive Control: Policy and Practice in Custody Evaluations

Given its chronic nature, understanding the impact of coercive control requires a complex trauma lens. Complex trauma is the exposure to multiple or prolonged interpersonal stressors, which leads to adverse psychological and behavioral changes and vulnerability to future traumatic events. The distress may occur throughout the lifespan, resulting in psychological, emotional, and relationship difficulties. Participants will learn to identify coercive control and its impact on children and families and to assess coercive control in custody matters. Participants will also discuss the essential parameters and collaborate on a proposed model statute.

6. It Takes a Village – Fostering Community Partnerships

Judicial Track
Principal 10 of the Cady Justice Reform Initiative discusses the importance of obtaining necessary community support and partnerships. Presenters will discuss how Johnson County community partnerships and multidisciplinary collaborations have helped provide crucial intervention services, offering families a sense of choice, empowerment, and collaboration essential for effective trauma-informed care that seeks to maximize restorative practices. Participants will leave the workshop inspired and motivated to encourage and foster community partnerships and collaboration in their local communities.

7. Riddle Me This: How to Explore and Document Alternative Hypotheses in Parenting Plan Evaluations

Do you know about the importance of alternative hypotheses but find it difficult to effectively identify such hypotheses from the beginning of your work with a family? Do you then struggle with how best to document those hypotheses, your testing of those hypotheses, and your findings in your evaluation? If so, then this workshop is for you. Join two seasoned evaluators for an entertaining, yet practical, discussion about how to identify, explore, and clearly document alternative hypotheses in a way that supports best practice.

8. 15 Years of SAFeR: A Systematic Approach to Child Custody Determinations

Families who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) benefit most from responses and interventions tailored to meet their specific needs. In this workshop, participants will learn the evidence-based and systematic SAFeR Approach to screen for and assess the nature, context, and effects of IPV, as well as reflect on 15 years of SAFeR and how it continues to evolve as the gold standard, meeting survivors where they are in their lives and demanding that the legal system, and those that practice within it, rise to meet the moment.

9. AFCC Peace Talks: Reflecting on Progress and Engaging Feedback

The AFCC Peace Talks, launched in 2023, have been a powerful strategy in depolarizing parent-child contact problems (PCCP) issues. The talks have fostered a culture of collaborative dialogues among experts with diverse perspectives. This interactive session will build on the plenary held in June of 2024 at the AFCC 61st Annual Conference by encouraging participants to engage with presenters and reflect on key achievements and lessons learned from the AFCC Peace Talks. Participants will play a vital role in this collaborative process, engaging in meaningful discussions, sharing their feedback and experiences in the ongoing efforts to depolarize PCCP issues. The presenters are eager to gather these diverse perspectives, recognizing their importance in enhancing future peace talks. This collaborative approach is key to fostering continuous improvement and effective depolarization in family law.

10. The Role Family Law Professionals Can Play in Reducing Firearms Violence Risk

This workshop will cover current research on how children in various communities and at different ages are experiencing violence, including family, community, and gun violence, and the role family courts and professionals can play in reducing harm. Too often these issues are siloed or addressed without adequate focus on the particular needs of diverse populations or without fully leveraging conflict resolution skills family law professionals offer. Specific tools, including a new toolkit addressing the intersection of firearms and child custody cases, and promising practices will be covered to help support professionals handling cases more effectively.

11. Navigating the Emotional Tribunal of Family Law Custody Cases: Essential Techniques and Strategies for Successful Trials

From preparation to closing arguments, this workshop highlights the most important techniques, strategies, and best practices in family law custody trials. Award-winning attorneys give guidance on navigating the unique challenges in this emotionally charged area of law, how to prevail, how to manage clients, and how to provide objectivity on sensitive matters. Given this toolkit, attorneys can effectively advocate for their clients in the courtroom and provide results that help their practice thrive.

12. Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse in the Context of Child Custody Evaluations

Judicial Track
What happens when during the course of a child custody evaluation allegations of child sexual abuse are made? Issues such as the mental health professional’s competency to conduct a child sexual abuse forensic evaluation, proper protocols to follow when evaluating allegations of child sexual abuse rising during the child custody evaluation, the issue of parental alienation, mandatory reporting laws, and the involvement of child protective services and law enforcement are some of the issues this session will address.

13. I Have the Data: Now What?

This presentation is intended for evaluators and for those who rely on parenting plan evaluations such as attorneys, judicial officers, guardians ad litem, and mediators. We will focus on what to do after the data has been collected, considering how to organize and analyze the information in order to provide reliable conclusions and helpful recommendations. The presentation will consider various biases that evaluators may or may not be aware of and how to manage those biases in providing recommendations useful to attorneys and judicial officers about parenting time, including restrictions and services to maintain family members’ safety.

14. Ethical Integration of AI in Family Court Practice

In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), offer promising opportunities to revolutionize family court proceedings. This is a workshop tailored for family law judges, lawyers, court professionals, and stakeholders, aiming to explore how AI can ethically enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, and accessibility of family court processes.

There are no handouts.

15. A New Approach to Divorce: The High Complexity Docket

This workshop will outline a new approach to court docketing and dispute resolution in cases involving domestic violence, parental contact issues, mental health issues, and substance abuse issues. The workshop will include a discussion of the framework of high complexity dockets, and the reasons for the design. Docket implementation and procedure will be set forth, as well as the metrics for monitoring the docket’s success.

Handouts will be distrubted in the room.

16. Transforming Forensic Family Law Training: Empowering Early Career Professionals

Join the presenters for a transformative workshop on modernizing forensic mental health training to attract young professionals to the field. Discover innovative business approaches to address the aging workforce and engage the next generation of professionals. Explore practical solutions for improving competency for early career professionals by examining established models, like the medical residency model, law firm model, and state-employed court clinician model.

There are no handouts at this time

17. Revisiting and Revising the Mediation Model Standards

A taskforce of AFCC and American Bar Association professionals has been examining the 2001 Model Standards for Family and Divorce Mediation and discussing updates and modifications. The panelists will review the current Model Standards, and the proposed revisions. The panelists will also discuss their work on the taskforce and its’ subcommittees, new concepts, and struggles over wording. Workshop participants will be invited to provide feedback on the draft revisions and suggest additional changes. This workshop will provide attendees with an opportunity to express their opinions on the revisions and have their voices heard.

There are no handouts at this time

18. Judicial Dilemmas in Cases Involving Adolescents

Judicial Track
This interactive session will focus on dilemmas that arise in custody cases involving adolescents, particularly when weighing their wishes in determining their best interests. Topics to be discussed include developmental tasks of adolescence, risks associated with this stage of life, what teens need from adults, contending with adolescent refusal, gauging maturity and independence, and balancing potential risks and benefits of various courses of action.

19. Reimagining the Best Interests of Children: Film Screening and Workshop

Ten years after the production of SPLIT, the same 12 children reflect on growing up amidst divorce in SPLIT UP: The Teen Years. This session will open with a screening of the film followed by a discussion. Facilitators will provide practical strategies to integrate these lived experiences in an effort to help parents better manage litigation, understand the impact of their decisions, develop effective co-parenting strategies, and stay focused on their teens' long-term needs.

20. An e-SAFeR Approach: Navigating Family Violence in Parenting Plans

Explore the web-based e-SAFeR, a cutting-edge tool for family law professionals to create parenting plans within the updated scope of family violence. This guide was built collaboratively on the foundation of Canada’s HELP toolkit, the RIA Risk Assessment, the Danger Assessment, and the SAFeR. This session offers practical training in using e- SAFeR to screen, assess, and address family violence, ensuring compliance with legal standards while safeguarding children's best interests. Join the presenters to enhance your capability in formulating dynamic, safe parenting plans that reflect the complexities of family violence.

There are no handouts at this time

21. Parenting Coordination and Arbitration: Monitoring for Safety and Wellbeing with Quasi-Judicial Authority

Practitioners in the neutral roles face distinct challenges when screening and assessing for safety and wellbeing in family relationships. These challenges can take on an extra layer of complexity when the practitioner’s role is quasi-judicial in nature. The presenters review the scope of some neutral roles, as well as considerations and challenges when considering the safety of their client family members. Ongoing controversies regarding the rendering of recommendations and decisions, as well as the differing perspectives of the courts on the delegation of judicial authority, will be discussed. Practical strategies for screening and assessing for safety and wellbeing in family relationships will be compared to some of the lesser-discussed guidelines presented in the AFCC’s Guidelines for Examining Intimate Partner Violence.

22. Lessons From the Trenches of Reunification

Professionals dig deep to investigate the resist/refuse dynamics to rescue the child, only for the child to say they do not need to be rescued. This presentation provides a unique perspective by interviewing an adult child of an alienation dynamic to better understand how it impacted her life, causing harmful consequences in childhood and adulthood. The panelists will discuss the professional key players and need for collaboration, red flags professionals should watch for, and how professionals can help the parents where this dynamic is present.

23. Integrating an Infant Mental Health Perspective in Family Court Practice

Court-involved infants and toddlers are at particular risk of early adversities and their effects on development. Based on a national model, the Strong Starts Court Initiative incorporates infant mental health expertise into the legal process and uses family court as a portal to meet children’s (0-3) needs in neglect cases. Participants will learn about the infant’s need for secure attachment and how to apply Strong Starts’ approach to the custody context as a preventative measure to assess and strengthen the parent-child relationship and reduce further system involvement.

24. Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Tearing Down Silos to Heal the Family Unit

Families navigating custody disputes must manage layers of complicated issues including the mental health of parents and children, financial concerns, cultural implications, family violence, trauma, and long-standing communication and control issues. In this workshop, participants will explore the roles of the many different professionals involved in addressing these challenges, how these professionals can or should collaborate to help the family, brainstorm new ways to think creatively about custody disputes, and address ethical considerations that may arise when professionals from different disciplines collaborate to help the family unit.

There are no handouts at this time

25. Advanced Issues in Child Custody Assessments

This workshop presents information not commonly considered when conducting child custody assessments. Integrating mental health and legal concepts within an evaluator's framework results in a more comprehensive and legally relevant approach to investigative activities and report writing.

26. Reunifying Families with Mental Health Issues Involved in High Conflict Divorce

Divorce can be incredibly stressful due to the multitude of changes that families experience. How do court professionals assess the safety and well-being of a child, particularly when the child has been estranged from a parent due to intimate partner violence, allegations of physical/sexual abuse, substance use, or other mental health issues? This presentation will provide creative strategies for assessing family dynamics, as well as treatment approaches to empower children/families and foster resilience.

There are no handouts at this time

27. Reframing the Paradigm: Family Court, Parenting Plans, and Domestic Violence

This session will focus on safe and appropriate parenting plans when domestic violence is present in either a parenting case and/or protection order. Presenters will discuss Ohio’s model as it answers the following questions: How do the dangerousness/lethality factors intersect with the best interest factors? How does the presence of domestic violence and the use of coercively controlling behavior detrimentally impact the meaningful allocation of parental rights and responsibilities and the enforcement of parenting time arrangements?

28. Examining African American Young Adult Child Discipline Experiences

The disciplinary practices of African American parents are well documented in the social science literature. The type or choice of disciplinary methods are often influenced by the characteristics of the child, culture, and the wellbeing of the parent-child relationship. The purpose of this study was to explore the ways African American young adults had been disciplined by their parents during childhood. The findings from this investigation provide an important corrective to the presumption that African American parents are preoccupied with using child abusing discipline.

Handouts will be distrubted in the room.

29. Conducting Risk Assessments in the Context of Domestic Violence

Child safety is of paramount concern for legal and mental health and legal professionals and domestic violence, and its impact on children, puts them in harm’s way. Triage and risk assessments can be effective in family law cases for developing parenting plans that provide the court and families with targeted interventions and support. Risk factors, such as substance abuse, mental illness, and child maltreatment, may be contributing issues and need to be considered in a risk evaluation. In cases where child custody and placement is contested and domestic abuse is a factor, family court professionals must be able to recognize and account for abuse in recommendations to the court.

30. Building Bridges: Establishing a Dispute Resolution Department in Your Court

Creating a Dispute Resolution Department in family court is paramount in modern legal systems. Family disputes often involve highly sensitive matters where traditional litigation may exacerbate tensions and strain relationships. By establishing a specialized, comprehensive, multi-disciplinary department dedicated to providing multiple dispute resolution avenues, family courts can provide families a new and hopeful path forward in resolving conflict. This presentation explores the practical considerations of creating and integrating a department within a Court environment.

There are no handouts at this time

31. Developing Individualized Best Interests Frames: Scientific and Legal Sensemaking

This workshop introduces the idea of “Best Interests Frames,” a holistic model of the perspective of a party in a child custody case. The workshop will cover development of the Frames through the lens of scientific and legal sensemaking. This concept integrates research from cognitive science on sensemaking with explanatory-based reasoning models and concepts from the legal literatures, and the relative plausibility and inference to the best explanation models on evidence and judicial decision-making.

32. Navigating Parent-Child Contact Problems with a Risk Management Lens

This session will examine steps that mental health professionals can take to maximize family progress while aiming to minimize professional risk. This workshop will explore the crucial role of screening for Parent-Child Contact Problems (PCCP) dynamics. Participants will learn about the significance of screening for intimate partner violence and mental health conditions. This workshop will analyze practical solutions when a full assessment may not be feasible. The presenters will delve into a lawyer’s view regarding early screenings, and it will review tools, and application of the AFCC Court Involved Guidelines.

33. Interviewing Children and Adolescents

Interviewing children and adolescents can be an anxiety provoking experience for the parenting plan evaluator. This workshop will provide specific training in the area of interviewing children and adolescents for Parenting Plan Evaluations. Specific focus will be on the use of developmentally appropriate language, the differences between a clinical interview and an interview for the purpose of PPE, and children with special needs. Strategies for providing parents a framework for the interview to decrease anxiety and specific strategies for interviewing and building rapport with children will be explored. Children with special needs that may have a neurodiverse developmental profile will also be addressed.

34. The CCE Dialectic: How to Meet Competing Demands of the Court and the Skeptics

Join us for a workshop discussing the critical challenges facing the field of child custody evaluation. As the demand for evaluators rises, professionals face mounting critiques and reluctance to enter this specialized area of practice. This workshop will delve into the complexities of reconciling the need for more evaluators in custody evaluation practices despite professionals’ reluctance. Furthermore, we will explore and offer potential solutions to address this dilemma.

There are no handouts at this time

35. Scars of a High-Conflict Divorce

A mother and her now adult son share their story of navigating a contentious divorce and the captivating journey of healing. Learn about the child’s battle with anger, depression, and near-suicide during his teen years, while the panelists also offer invaluable insights for professionals on mitigating childhood trauma. Through personal narratives and practical guidance, this workshop highlights the critical role of divorce professionals in protecting children and promoting healthy parent-child relationships. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a young adult child of divorce – a perspective often unheard.

36. Family Transformation – Advocating for Trans-parents and Children in Family Court

Issues regarding transgender youth and adults have swept the country with some jurisdictions becoming “trans refuge” states while others have banned (or attempted to ban) gender affirming care. As the question becomes increasingly polarized, difficult questions present themselves in family court settings. This workshop will review the topics of transgender literacy; social science research around supporting transgender parents and children involved in child custody cases, and the fractured legal landscape around “trans refuge laws” and debates over gender-affirming care.

Sorry this workshop is canceled