Jill Goldson: Child inclusion a vital step in settling family break-ups

Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier commented recently on the tragic trend of homicides and suicides which have occurred in conjunction with Family Court proceedings.

Children, too, are unable to afford the psychological price of court processes which so drastically compromise their parents' emotional wellbeing.

While most children who are caught up in such situations will not experience the loss of a parent through suicide or murder, compelling evidence from research points to the damage routinely done to them as a result of prolonged and intractable parental conflict.

Research from La Trobe University in Melbourne has cited that one in four children involved in acrimonious parental separation will go on to suffer a formal mental health diagnosis.

Psychologists are describing this as a public health issue. Local and international studies, examining risk factors for suicide in young people, name acrimonious parental separation and divorce as a significant variable in mood disorders and suicides in young people.

After significant lobbying and submissions, we at last have a provision in New Zealand family law (Care of Children Amendment Act 2008), which allows children to be part of their parents' counselling when there is a dispute about their everyday care arrangements.

Local and international current research evidence, generated by this targeted dispute resolution process, is available. This abundance of evidence indicates the overwhelmingly therapeutic outcomes of professionally conducted child-inclusive intervention for the rearranged family.

The inclusion of children in counselling with their parents, in appropriate situations (without extreme antagonism or violence), results in a steep increase in parental agreements, a reduction in conflict, enhanced child-parent communication and reduction in child-adverse symptoms.

As a result of this intervention, the mental health of the family in transition is substantially improved. The practice draws on a combination of family psychology and counselling mediation skills.

When delivered professionally, it is a distinctive dispute resolution skill with a therapeutic outcome. It is neither counselling nor mediation, nor is it therapy per se, and it properly belongs as a family law provision.

Families who have separated are facing a major crisis. They do not want therapy together. They want help to access skills allowing them to find their own solutions to family problems and to move away from processes which tend to exacerbate their grief and that of their children. Unfortunately, this provision is yet to be enacted as funding has not been made available.

Changes in family structure are endemic in contemporary society; a response which will enhance the navigational skills necessary for transition is overdue. Adversarial processes do not access those skills.

Parents who are alerted to the impact of their conflict on their children, by means of access to their children's views, are substantially helped to co-operate and to manage their conflict.

No legally won solution can compare with the outcome of one parent recognising the position of the other in relation to their children. Likewise, children whose parents have separated need to retain ongoing meaningful relationships with each parent. To be caught between warring parents is an impossible place for a child.

Children who are not told what is happening and whose feelings are not taken into account by adults suffer ongoing distress. Many children affected by parental separation yearn for an opportunity to make sense of their situation by being part of the negotiation process concerning the rearrangement of their family.

The Family Court already provides relationship counselling; to supplement this provision with child inclusion makes much sense. Not only will the incalculable cost of distressed children and their parents be reduced, but the immense financial resources spent on prolonged dispute resolution and defended hearings will be reduced.

It is to be hoped our politicians recognise how urgent the need is for this provision to be enacted.

A process considered effective and just by the families themselves, with outcomes which remove the need for court, is a clear mandate for policy implementation.

* Jill Goldson is the director of the Family Matters Centre, Westmere, which specialises in counselling and mediation for the family in transition.