Overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems: Family-Based Interventions for Resistance, Rejection, and Alienation

In recent years there has been heightened interest in the clinical and legal management of families in which children resist contact with one parent and become aligned with the other following divorce. Families affected by these dynamics require disproportionate resources and time from mental health and legal professionals, and cases require a specialized clinical approach. Traditional models of individual and family therapy are not designed to address these issues, and strategies and resources for mental health and legal professionals have been extremely limited. Overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems describes interventions for families experiencing a high conflict divorce impasse where a child is resisting contact with a parent. It examines in detail one such intervention, the Overcoming Barriers approach, involving the entire family and combining psycho-education and clinical intervention. The book is divided into two parts: Part I presents an overview of parental alienation, including clinical approaches and a critical analysis of the many challenges associated with traditional outpatient family-based interventions. Part II presents the Overcoming Barriers approach, describing core aspects of the intervention and ways to adapt its clinical techniques to outpatient practice. Overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems is geared toward mental health clinicians and legal professionals who work with families in high conflict and where a child resists visitation with a parent.

1. Introduction Leslie Drozd and Nicholas Bala Part I: Family-based Interventions: Indicators, models and clinical challenges 2: Clinical decision making in parent-child contact problem cases: Tailoring the intervention to the family's needs Barbara Fidler and Peggie Ward 3: The current status of outpatient approaches to parent-child contact problems Shely Polak and Jack Moran 4: More than words: The use of experiential therapies in the treatment of families with parent-child contact problems and parental alienation Abigail Judge and Rebecca Bailey 5: The perfect storm: High conflict family dynamics, complex therapist reactions and suggestions for clinical management Abigail Judge and Peggie Ward Part II: The Overcoming Barriers Approach 6: Overview of the Overcoming Barriers approach Peggie Ward, Robin Deutsch, and Matt Sullivan 7: Management of the camp experience: The integration of the milieu and the clinical team Carole Blane, Tyler Sullivan, Daniel Wolfson and Abigail Judge 8: "East Group": Group work with favored parents Peggie Ward 9: "West Group": Group interventions for rejected parents Matthew J. Sullivan 10: Common Ground: The Children's Group Robin Deutsch, Abigail Judge, and Barbara Fidler 11: Co-parenting, parenting and child-focused interventions Matt Sullivan, Robin Deutsch, and Peggie Ward 12: Translating the Overcoming Barriers approach to outpatient settings Barbara Fidler, Peggie Ward, and Robin Deutsch 13: Program evaluation, training and dissemination Michael Saini and Robin Deutsch 14: Conclusion Janet Johnston