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.

Part A - Integrating What We Know: Coping, Adjustment, and the Legal Context

Chapter 1: Shifting Our Perspective - Focusing on Coping and Adjustment
Lyn 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 Needs
John 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 Disputes
Michael 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 Teams
Matthew 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