A Parenting Coordinator is an expert at helping parents communicate in a business-like manner while they tackle the difficult task of raising children after divorce. Children are often casualties while mom and dad fight over child custody. Your child may be at the forefront of a contentious custody divorce case or other family conflict, but they have rights as well. Parenting Coordinators put your children’s best interests first and ensure protection of those rights during and after custody divorce proceedings.
Parenting Coordinators Help Resolve Family Conflict
When families are experiencing a high degree of conflict, appointing a Parenting Coordinator may be a useful alternative to repeated court appearances. It is the Parenting Coordinator’s job to work with the parents to help them resolve their own disputes through communications skills and education about the healthy psychological development of their children. The Parenting Coordinator serves as a mediator and an arbitrator should mediation fail to be successful.The Parenting Coordinator’s focus is on helping the parents to communicate effectively and to establish a parenting relationship in which they can work together in a business-like manner without the need of a judge or their attorneys. Parents will be assigned a 12 hour Online Parenting Without Conflict Course. When Parents complete the course, the Parenting Coordinator will work with the parties to develop a co-parenting support plan. Then the Parent will complete a joint project to share with their child. The final co-parenting meeting will be with both parents and the child.
Parenting Coordinators Help to Solve Family Issues
Parenting Coordinators are often asked to address custody disputes related to holiday and special event scheduling, transportation disputes, disputes over the child’s activities and the costs of extra-curricular activities. Other common disputes brought to a Parenting Coordinator involve school placement, medical decisions, teenager communication and discipline disputes, as well as a broad range of other issues that arise when co-parenting step children. Parent Coordinators work on resolving the outstanding issues related to your children by helping both parties to find common ground.
Disclosure of Information
Parent coordination is not confidential. The usual confidentiality guidelines as applied to protected health information do not apply. Parenting Coordinators communicate with the court and with all attorneys involved in your case as necessary. Parenting Coordinators also communicate with therapists, teachers, physicians, law enforcement officials and other professionals who have relevant information about parent or child functioning. As part of this process, parents must sign all releases necessary to obtain information from these professionals.
Appointments
The general format in this office for parent coordination services is meeting with each parent separately for an initial one-hour visit, followed by appointments with each of the children. Based on the individual issues of the family, the Parenting Coordinator will sometimes meet jointly with the parents. In order to be effective, the parent coordination process must be carefully neutral. Other services in addition to appointments may include email monitoring, monitoring of drug and alcohol tests, or coordination with other services for the children, such as therapy, educational, and/or medical needs. Services are available Monday through Thursday by appointment.
Summary
Parent coordination provides a positive structure for resolving conflicts, monitoring the progress of parenting time and teaching parents more about cooperative communication. The above outlined structure is an attempt to describe the basic format of the parenting coordination, but the actual process is much more fluid and responsive to your individual family’s needs. The process attempts to help parents focus on their children and the future in positive cooperative ways.
For information regarding fees and appointments, click here.
Resources
12 Hour Online Co-Parenting without Conflict Course (discounted rate)
Note: Once you create an account, the discount will be reflected on the
payment page. For support issues, please contact 866-504-2883.