Forest View Hospital offers the following CEUs and patient-focused seminars:

Not If, But When: Providing Effective Counseling in Cases with Families Experiencing High Conflict Divorce

Wednesday, May 15, 2024 from 8:30-10:30 a.m.
Presenters: Randy Flood, MA, LLP and Zach Flood, MA, LLP, are Forensic Evaluators and Counselors at Fountain Hill Center for Counseling and Consultation with over 35 years of combined experience in the field of providing professional services to families in high conflict divorce and litigation. They are both Members of the Association of Family Conciliation Courts (AFCC) and Family Court Counseling Professionals of West Michigan (FCCP).

Unfortunately, whether you want to or not, there is a high likelihood that you will find yourself involved as a professional with divorced families in high conflict even in the throes of children and/or parents complaining about or resisting and refusing court ordered parenting time. Unfortunately, well-intentioned counselors unwittingly find themselves providing unhelpful and sometimes unethical professional services in these cases due to their complexities. These cases can sometimes be misleading and family members and their attorneys can be convincing in their efforts to involve you as professional advocates.

This workshop will focus on the specialized field of family court counseling, specifically discussing the spectrum of parent-child contact problems (PCCPs) where children are exhibiting resist and refuse dynamics (RRDs) against court ordered parenting time. We will discuss parent-child estrangement dynamics of children who are abused and neglected, how protective and abusive parents respond, and how we as mental health professionals are trained and often equipped to effectively respond to these cases.

In contrast, we will discuss the other end of the spectrum where children are complaining, manifesting fear, and demonstrating RRDs to parenting time. However, due to what is described as a parental alienation dynamic, children will speciously exhibit fear and RRDs toward a targeted parent, who is a “good enough” parent, while the favored parent presents as caring and protective. This training will focus mainly on parental alienation dynamics since addressing this family problem is often counterintuitive to how we are generally trained and consequently, how we conceptualize cases, and instinctively intervene. The goal of this workshop is to help you become more aware of the spectrum of these dynamics so you can become more phenomenologically aware, clinically astute, and more effective in navigating these cases including when to make appropriate referrals.

REGISTER

Forest View Hospital’s professional staff are ready to help find the best treatment options for you or your loved one. Call 616-942-9610 for a no-cost, confidential assessment 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you need immediate medical assistance, contact 911 or seek the nearest emergency room.