Kenneth Lane’s service website at: http://www.contactmatters.co.uk
Kenneth Lane has been working in this field for years. See his Contact Matters website. Nick Child has not. We encountered each other through Linked In.
We thought we might share this recent exchange of views with this wider readership. Maybe we will encourage others to do more of this blogging discussion here on the alienation experience. That’s what blogs are good for!
Nick Child’s http://www.forallthat.com Summary of Child Alienation here: http://tinyURL.com/NickChildPA
Meanwhile, please chip into this discussion with your own comments in the Comment box too.
the alienation experience 
Hi Nick, Thanks for the link! Hope you are well.
I’m based in Wales, UK – promoting a concept that will positively influence social change, and benefit children.
In case its of interest, I’m pioneering an alternative approach to child conflict resolution following separation – and I now have a company page for Contact Matters if you’d like to follow it?
http://www.contactmatters.co.uk & https://www.linkedin.com/company/contact-matters
With best wishes
Kenneth
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Hi Kenneth
Thanks for linking in with me. I’ll be interested to see your new ideas for conflict resolution following separation. You may or may not accept the validity of Alienation as a field but at it’s extreme it just means a parent who for whatever reason is most unlikely to come without outside pressure to do collaborative things for their child’s benefit.
Do you think your approach can help even those extreme situations?!
Nick
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Hi Nick,
In my view there is an element of alienation in most if not all cases where parents separate – especially where there is acrimony.
I absolutely believe that the right sort of intervention is key to sparing the child – especially in high conflict situations. And in my casework experience, including my personal experience, I find once ‘responsibilities’ are understood and arrangements for time are put in place (agreed or enforced) – alienation is diminished.
I look forward to discussing this further with you.
Best wishes,
Kenneth
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Hello Kenneth
One of my several projects is to make “Alienation” be seen as the end of a broad spectrum of normal relationship patterns. So I agree that “there is an element of alienation in most if not all cases where parents separate – especially where there is acrimony.”
The factor then is how far parents can contain their acrimony better – and be helped to do that by this or the other resource or service or professional. And the priority is to try to prevent early on, or divert later on, where possible. And to build as many skills and approaches that will do that to spare the child and diminish alienation.
But whatever the resources provide or not, there will I think be some cases where the acrimony will “out” and cause harm to kids. So I agree too that that harm to children is the priority factor that is often forgotten. These will be the cases where one parent just cannot agree to even consider mediation. They will want the opposite solution even if they know their child is being harmed. They will end up in court. They will need stronger skilful measures that can see past what the child may have been influenced to say to what the child needs now and in the future.
I’m presenting to a Dutch mediators conference in September. So again, can I ask if there is a quick way I can get to understand what you feel you can offer to the more extreme alienation cases from a mediation non-court basis? Please!!
Nick
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Hey Nick, Thanks for coming back to me. …
Just to be clear, I rarely take on two parents at odds with each other – as I work primarily with the non-res parent.
If I might respond briefly…
My approach centres on a therapeutic early intervention – although it can be employed at any stage of the dispute – prior to separation; or even beyond the Court door.
Utilising a time-based approach with child-centred guidelines apportioning time as a benchmark, coupled with a ‘change’ in the manner that a client communicates with his/her former partner, results will usually flow, with resolution at mediation.
Of course, where a case reaches the Court, the ground has already laid for Cafcass/ the Courts to enable resolution to the dispute through the time-based approach at the first Hearing. After all, most if not all family applications are about the apportionment of time.
If the approach is applied for the first time at the Court stage, it can stand a needlessly protracted case on its head. It simply has to be applied.
Dr Hamish Cameron articulated this spectacularly at The Royal Society conference – “Early Interventions: A Framework for Contact” (March 2002). [Here’s the Guardian report, Oliver Cyriax’s account of what (didn’t) happen, and even more detail about how it didn’t happen]. He makes the point that, ‘Whilst the ‘adult’ relationship may end – the ‘parent’ relationship continues, for the life of the child’. It is on the basis that parents are assisted to understand that they continue to share responsibilities for their child that the foundation for agreement of arrangements for a child’s time are built.
In cases where this is applied, PA diminishes as it serves no useful purpose. However, where a dispute has become entrenched and PA has taken hold, it is imperative that; (1) the case is properly made to show the Court how PA manifests itself; (2) this is submitted both via the Court file, and Cafcass.
Latterly, given the lack of training or even awareness of PA, it is sometimes incumbent upon the parent to train those upon whom they are supposed to rely.
(NB There’s a very handy checklist in a FLJ article, ‘The Emerging Problem of Parental Alienation’ by Barristers Willbourne & Cull that affords the NRP the opportunity to show how this manifests itself in his/ her own case – with article attached) This has proved highly effective in a growing number of cases, (including my own 18 years ago) as it is crafted by UK barristers for a UK law journal.
Of course, therapeutic intervention is woefully underexplored by the Courts, but I am encouraged having been given to understand that some headway is being made.
It has to be said, that I do not consider myself to be in any way an ‘expert’ in PA but I find that the EI approach, if properly engaged by the client, will usually lead to a reduction or even virtually eliminate it altogether.
I deal with client practicalities focused on timely conflict resolution. It boils down to the simple fact that once arrangements are established by agreement or by Order – with responsibilities understood – then there seems little point in PA at all. Also, by presenting papers including PA information, and discussing it, this can significantly impact the alienator, as it is no longer a ‘secret’ affair.
For helping children in more entrenched cases involving PA you might want to speak to professionals such as Dr Sue Whitcombe or Karen Woodall who have been doing some wonderful work in this field here in the UK. However, given your speciality – I imagine that you most likely are already in contact with them.
If you have anything that you feel would help me in my endeavours working with clients where children are impacted by PA, please share as I would be very grateful to receive it!
Nipping PA in the bud is key to rescuing children’s futures!
I hope this is helpful.
With best wishes,
Kenneth
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Many thanks for your full reply, Kenneth.
I continue to agree fully with your approach … as far as one can understand it without more detail about who comes and what you get them to do.
Do you think Family Mediation should learn to do more – with one of the parents – of what you do?
I certainly believe that a systematic system (i.e. one that reliably catches everyone who needs it whatever your post code and predicament – not on the horizon yet), one that is based on early intervention, should pretty much prevent PA happening at all.
I can believe that a select group (who come to you) are helped. I can imagine that many who do not come to the likes of you – including the more determined intractable cases – are not caught early or even late. So I’m always wanting to know what we in the UK are going to do about them, how we ensure a more reliable system across the board.
Yes, I know Hamish, Karen and Sue personally. All of us belong to the international PA Study Group http://pasg.info.
We had a lunch meeting with Bill Bernet and 6 of us (including a local family lawyer, and Ian Maxwell, the FNFS coordinator) when Bill visited Edinburgh (Karen unable to be there). We are now going to set up a PASG UK branch.
You could join both quite easily, and I will add you to my email list if that’s ok to keep you in that loop.
There was also talk of having an event (in Scotland at least where there has been a small surge of legal movement through Ian’s work) – although I don’t rate events much, since they excite people for as long as a few days, leaving nothing much changed. In other words, the event on its own is no use without something more sustained around and after it.
Nick
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Hi Nick,
That’s really good to hear. It is such fundamentally important work. I have met Hamish on a number of occasions but we have not spoken for a while.
It is a great shame that the Early Interventions (EI) approach launched by Hamish at the Royal Society has not become mainstream, as many of the difficulties facing parents today would be more readily overcome, benefiting children.
EI is such an exciting initiative. I hear from a number of clients sometimes 10-15 years later – who get back in touch to thank me, and let me know how their lives have moved on, how their children have since fared, and how the work we did made a difference.
Potential clients who contact me fall mainly into three groups. If you imagine a pyramid on 3 levels:
1. The large base group, who express an interest, but say its not for them; or, they have to ‘fix the system’ first; or, are too disillusioned or stuck; etc.
2. The smaller middle layer, who are more interested – but will go away and explore other avenues; or stay with their solicitor; then return perhaps 6 or 9 months later, having dug themselves further in.
3. The top tip are keen to start, and motivated to work toward resolution, whatever it takes. These are mostly professional/ managerial/ military/ or, those who have served in the forces.
Its changing children’s lives, case by case – but if EI were mainstream it would be accessible by those at level 1 & 2 to achieve resolution within existing services. This could start now – by taking a leaf out of the Scandinavians book! Putting a framework in statute, would most likely lead to an uptake in mediation/ collaborative law services; and a diminished Court list. Therapeutic services are woefully unexplored here in the UK, yet this could also be turned round as part of EI/ utilised by referral in more entrenched cases involving PA.
Where EI has been tested, the benefits are self evident. I wonder how it might be established mainstream? Its staggering that this was not installed over a decade ago.
Regards,
Kenneth
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Again, thanks Kenneth. And again, I absolutely agree with all you say.
Including that it is staggering that things have not been put in place years ago. Some measures are really very simple and obvious – but always there is that inertia:
1. people need to know quite a bit about what happens when things are allowed to get really bad,
2. or else they don’t realise how serious it is and won’t be motivated to make changes,
3. so that they see why early intervention is important, and
4. that it is a lot simpler than the complicated entrenchment of the bad cases …
5. but those cases make everyone feel that it is too hard and multi-agency to do anything!!
My “50 counter-intuitives” in PA is my newest attempt to explain some of the reasons for the failure to get to grips with this.
Click on Follow by email to get each new blogpost. Got more powerful thinking lined up already!!
Nick
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Nick, In Points 1- 5 you have hit the nail on the head!
Kenneth
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Hello Kenneth
When I started out on this (just a few years ago) I thought Alienation was just a matter of getting people to recognise the pattern and the term for it, and learning from the established field about it. Now I see that it is not so simple.
Even though there may be some simple things to do to improve things, as we’ve said – that sense of the overwhelming complexity of a much wider system, a whole society even, can lead to entrenched defeatism in the face of the huge size of the problem. Or it leads to isolated individual efforts – earnest ones, or often failed ones – because they have to be joined up better at all levels, including government, law, professions, training and budgeting.
My own isolated individual passion is for small changes in routine family court custom and practice that would set things going on a better basis for all cases. That could prevent all but the worst cases happening at all. Hamish Cameron is still strong on the proactive court model as he was in 2002. There is not enough on this in our blog here – naturally our attention is drawn to the tragedies as they unfold. While families need to be picked out of the river downstream, it is more important that we stop so many being thrown in upstream. The 2002 Early Intervention plan seemed to be joined up thinking, but it still failed to get going (as you said, and as those linked reports document).
It’s all been going for wearying decades longer than I know about. One unanswerable question is how to keep up constructive hope and thinking?
How have you kept your morale and your service up, Kenneth?!
And another question no one can answer really is: Who – what group or network of people now – is trying to get to grips with all of this? It seems like ‘everyone’ is – and ‘everyone’ has their own firm but different view of what needs to be done. Plus, often energy seems to be spent blocking those whose views you don’t like – a kind of proactive UN-joined up thinking process!
These unanswerable questions is enough for you for now. I’ll save some answerable ones for after you respond to this one!
Nick
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Sorry for the delay in coming back Nick. You raise many interesting questions, and I’m not sure that I have the answer.
Without doubt, anyone working in this field involving parent & child issues has to look after themselves. I am very fortunate both to have the support of my family and friends, and also for the broad life experience I have enjoyed. Of course, getting the work-life balance is key, and I especially enjoy family time as well as taking time out with my dogs on long walks. I find it clears the mind and recharges the batteries!
Of course, the 2002 Early Intervention program represented joined up thinking, providing a filter for litigation that was child-centred – and could readily be slotted into existing systems with the advantage of being self funding. Although Cafcass Chairman, Sir Anthony Hewson was on board with EI, he apparently faced considerable opposition at every managerial level of CAFCASS. This was all the more surprising given that Cafcass purports to be about the ‘child’s best interests’ yet has nothing similar in place by way of substitution.
It seems that, in rejecting Early Interventions, Cafcass threw out the baby with the bath water!
At this time, serious reform seems almost without momentum, and has perhaps lost its way. And yes, there is evidently a lack of synergy among groups and professionals, whilst the Court Service fiddles – idly distracted by the notion of pushing the child to the fore, seemingly without considering dire ramifications that PA can have on a child’s mental health and well being in both the short and longterm. It gravely concerns me that, by continuing on this course there is a real possibility that children will be placed in the invidious position of opting out of being parented. And that will not do.
In my humble experience, I find that in the majority of cases (including my own case), timely effective conflict resolution diminishes PA. EI offers such a way forward.
Thus, perhaps its time to rebrand EI – selling its benefits to children & families to both Government and senior members of the Family Division. There is the potential for significant cost savings, with broader social and economic benefits through timely conflict resolution, in cases that favour such.
EI sits well with the new ‘presumption of parental involvement’. A delegation of enlightened professionals could perhaps pitch EI to Ministers/ the Judiciary.
Is the answer to be found via EI?
What do you think?
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Thanks Kenneth.
I would echo your point about workers “needing to look after themselves” by linking to Karen Woodall’s blogpost – she includes this point along with a broad description of how tough the work can be. That picture fits my experience even though I don’t even do the work itself!
As a relatively new person – and having chosen to be more of a thinker and coordinator than a do-er of casework – it is easy for me to admit ignorance and defeat on any of the many fronts that the field of PA challenges us with.
Being in Scotland with its different laws and courts and systems – with not even a CAFCASS to turn to (or criticise) – I can’t and won’t claim to know about what would work best in England and Wales, nor about the history of why a good idea like Early Intervention (EI) didn’t go through last time it was in the frame. I cannot think that anyone from any perspective disagrees that EI – whatever form it takes – isn’t a good idea. It must have been some other factor that derailed it and made CAFCASS resist. My guess would be that it was a mistaken imposition of gender politics into the process. Others would know better than I do.
My understandings that shape my ideas of what Early Intervention should look like are that:
> For parents who have it in them at all, every effort should early and strongly be made to go for voluntary collaborative solutions and help, for the sake of their children. I think you have a way where just seeing one parent can increase the collaborative shape and prevent PA developing.
> The proactive court – using guidelines like Hamish Cameron promotes from Florida and in West Midlands – is an important way that courts can be a final push to parents to collaborate even within a court process. Again any and all agencies – including your own – who know how to help them do it are part of the prevention solution.
> But sometimes one parent (or both) just will not or cannot take responsibility for this step to collaborate. They may be clearly driving in the opposite direction. This incapacity to collaborate is a definitive feature of those high conflict cases and PA that need spotting (early on) and alternative measures authoritatively put in place (early on).
> That means more than getting them to voice agreement on the way to then not doing it. It means authoritative measures and consequences if not.
> By definition, the followed-through authority of a court is required to mandate such parents to engage in the work that they don’t do under their own steam. The court must therefore get clear (and early on) when they are seeking to get parents to collaborate, and when they are over-ruling the parents because they cannot.
> As far as I can see – by definition, if you like – all successful treatment of PA cases requires an effective court authority and mandate and follow-through. All kinds of help are also required to make it work, but it won’t work reliably unless there is the court’s mandate to impose consequences if progress does not happen
For serious cases of high conflict and for PA then, prevention and treatment are both functions that courts are key to putting in place.
Prevention includes families where what the court encourages and insists on is enough to get the parents (and any helpers) on the right collaborative tracks. If a few weeks shows that they are not able to do this, then they fall in the other category and require the other measures.
This is the other aspect of proactive courts: the treatment-managing function of courts. I suspect this happens sometimes in the UK given the right lawyers and judge in the court teaming up with well-linked in CAFCASS workers (or others, like Karen Woodall). In the USA they have developed a whole new profession for the linked-into-court work: Parenting Coordination, a blend of several other kinds of work.
So there are several elements to this picture of Early Intervention. They need to be teamed up too. And they need to be reliably in place wherever families go to court. None of the elements are reliably in people’s thinking or plans, as far as I can see, let alone reliably in place in practice. Lawyers, expert witnesses and judges – but probably not any new laws – need to know how how to do proactive prevention and treatment-management, authorising and teaming up with suitably skilled professionals who can do the family work.
As I see it, this way of thinking is very familiar to me from my earlier NHS welfare state career – it’s like when a social worker is given a supervision order for their family work when parents who struggle to care responsibly for their children wouldn’t do it without that extra legal authority watching over them and their worker. Social workers often work with child protection and abuse, which is widely recognised to be happening in PA and high conflict separated families. So the analogy is closer than people like to think – classing social work, as many of us understandably do, as if anything worse than CAFCASS. My point was just to show that mandated / supervised orders are very familiar ways to go. I am not proposing that social workers could do this job – though properly trained and staffed, why not?!
That’s enough for this reply, don’t you think?! What do you think?
Nick
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Thanks Nick,
I understand that a growing body of enlightened professionals considers the ‘Early Interventions’ initiative as the way forward. And why not? There is nothing else tabled that comes close, by way of substitution.
EI inserted into the existing system would quickly put right most of what is wrong, to the benefit of the child through timely resolution, (where appropriate). It would also remove the potential for Judicial embarrassment due to reliance on potentially misleading reports. Moreover, it would change public perception of mediation, becoming the ‘service of choice’.
I am interested to understand how Scottish Courts operate without Cafcass or an equivalent service?
There are many in England & Wales who say that Cafcass should go. Well, I’m not entirely sure I agree with that sentiment, as there have been many examples of good work, however, in its present form without guidelines it is unfit for purpose. It lacks consistency and quality cannot be properly assessed or challenged. Case outcomes based on the same facts should not be a lottery of time. Everyone from parents to practitioners should know what sort of outcome to expect at every stage of the process – reducing both rolling litigation and the need for litigation; thereby rescuing children’s futures.
EI provides the remedy, with all the necessary ingredients missing from the existing process.
To understand how such a worthy and forward thinking project such as EI came to be cast aside, you might read the attached ‘Early Interventions: The Hijack’ – clearly setting out how Cafcass came to throw out the baby with the bath water!
http://www.cyriax.co.uk/hijack.htm
Regards,
Kenneth
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Hello Kenneth
Maybe we can finish our exchange without coming up with all the answers. Who’s managed that ever?!
Early Intervention and Prevention:
Family mediation, collaborative divorce – and you – specialise in the early stages of conflict pre-court and around early Hearings at the lower Court. Just by rethinking the way they start up, proactive courts may also replace a lot of the escalation before it starts.
Entrenched Cases;
For support in the more entrenched cases, there are the few we know who specialise in assessment or help. There need to be quite a few more of those experienced helpers too.
Awareness Raising:
Even if lots of the worst cases could be prevented, we have to talk a lot about them. Otherwise the world doesn’t understand why it is such a serious problem that needs those solutions. The trouble is that the picture of grim abuse, misery and injustice before we have got some clear answers pulled together, probably makes people just hopeless.
Coordinating Our Efforts:
The Early Intervention plan over a decade ago cannot be the last coordinated effort. The need to keep thinking and teaming up must continue until effective solutions are found.
Meanwhile, I continue to come across remarkable people whose often isolated innovative work remains far too unremarked on and certainly not joined up with other people’s efforts. I continue to improve my concise and comprehensive overview … with anyone’s help please.
And the alienation experience blog remains available to network and pull together thinking and plans.
Nick
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Oh, I should respond to your question about CAFCASS and Scotland’s equivalent.
I agree with you that CAFCASS is a basic and good idea. Good CAFCASS workers I know can do a good job. As I understand it, the very limiting funding, time and management – and limited training – are enough to explain why CAFCASS staff are often criticised. I would say that, in terms of training, if you come into CAFCASS without enough help to adjust the widespread assumptions all of us carry from our professional cultures, then you will miss the many counter-intuitives you need to assess and help families (and children) stuck in high conflict.
Scotland to its shame has no equivalent to CAFCASS. There are as yet no dedicated family courts or family court sheriffs even. There are few expert witnesses either and those who provide a decent (and expensive) assessment, don’t seem to think of offering themselves or anyone else to help actually do the work with the families. With few services around to do it, it is no surprise no one thinks of recommending ongoing work, let alone to use the court to follow-through on it actually happening.
So what is the McCAFCASS equivalent? That would be Bar Reporters. These are usually lawyers, mostly unqualified – well, they’re on lists that have been joined almost for the asking – mostly well-meaning, who take on the role of Bar Reporter to meet members of the family, perhaps gather some other relevant information, and report back to the court. As there is for CAFCASS, there is criticism of Bar Reports and unpublishable evidence of serious limitations in many cases. The lawyers of course feel they’re doing a good job. Their fees are higher than others would charge, but they are capped so perhaps only the better lawyers bother to go the extra mile and have a committed shot at the task. These reports are still part of an essentially informal court process, and they are not treated very seriously in some ways – for example, they are not challenged, nor used when things do come to proof hearings. Yet, to get a quick resolution, the busy sheriff and lawyers commonly rather rush and hush up objections or discussion. They don’t have time to have read the reports thoughtfully. So these highly variable unreliable unqualified unchallenged reports are effectively what decisions are based on.
As always, my inexpert views above of the situation are subject to correction.
There has been a government committee reviewing this Bar Reporter system over the last couple of years. Recommendations are sensible but rather small and shaped, of course, with an eye on what will be acceptable and what they might cost. Some training – as much as two days – is being recommended. Sterling efforts have ensured that Parental Alienation is mentioned in the list of topics for those two days. Drawing attention to the big responsibility (and the continuing poor qualification to do it), they will in future be called: Child Welfare Reporters.
Some are hopeful and some are not hopeful about how far this improvement is going to make much difference.
NIck
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That’s very interesting Nick. We may not have all the answers but we have covered a lot of ground.
In matters of family and child disputes over quantum of a child’s time there’s already a viable alternative waiting in the wings – such as that adopted by Scandinavian countries, where parents are to a great extent considered ‘court phobic’ avoiding escalation to the court in most cases.
Here in the UK children have long endured a ‘Family Justice’ system that deems needless exclusion of one parent, usually the ‘non-resident’ parent, from the child’s life – heralded as being in “the child’s best interests”
How can this be so? Courts have long relied on potentially misleading reports as a document of weight, rubber-stamping recommendations in over 95% of cases. Professional concerns have long been held about lack of specialist training, and migration of staff who ‘cut their teeth’ in criminal work, into the delicate matters of child and family disputes without any proper guidelines & training. (Not my view – the view of SFLA: re; article published in ‘The Lawyer’)
According to a recent Centre for Social Justice report – UK has the highest child-parent severance rate in the World, compared to Scandinavians with the lowest.
http://centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/publications/fully-committed-how-government-could-reverse-family-breakdown
So, what do they do differently?
Re; child arrangements post separation – for decades, they have had enshrined in statute a post separation framework setting out the sort of time-based arrangements that ‘good enough’ parents will agree, as a benchmark, with reference to periods of time. Ideal for mediated solutions – because every parent already knows what to expect, and what a Court might enforce, so why not reach an accord via mediation?
Conversely, here in the UK, without such a framework, there is the potential for opposite conclusions to flow from the same facts – more usually to the exclusion of one parent from a child’s life.
So, why hasn’t it been considered before?
Well, actually it has. A small but enlightened body – The professional Association of Family Court Welfare Officers, made up of mediators, lawyers, Judges, court welfare & academics, attempting to raise the profile of the beleaguered FCWS by installing quality control and consistency – set out child-centred guidelines, defining parent responsibilities and quantum in the median case, as a benchmark – and this proved highly effective where applied. Unfortunately, for UK children, the association only had 5% membership, with remaining FCWS staff consisting of 95% NAPO members – who rebuffed time-based guidelines, seemingly on the basis that staff would become accountable for the quality and content of their reports & recommendations therein.
In short, when FCWS was severed from Probation and hurriedly disbanded in 2001, the worthy aspirations of the professional association were also lost – and CAFCASS was created without such guidelines, staffed mainly by NAPO members, who favoured unaccountability when making life changing recommendations about children’s futures. By excluding a child-centred framework, NAPO effectively threw out the baby with the bath water!
It is somewhat ironic that some 76% of criminals held accountable for their actions come from fatherless families, when NAPO staff in Cafcass – operating without such accountability – can, and do, sever the child-parent bond on whim, due to potentially misleading reports that are rarely challenged.
Bottom line is, the Scandinavian model or framework puts the focus on the child with resolution via mediated solutions; ensuring that children continue to be loved and cherished by both parents even after separation – because parents and professionals alike already know what to expect at EVERY stage of the dispute. Introduction of such a model in the UK would drive up the workload of mediation services, and significantly help to manage Court lists, acting as a filter to litigation.
The ultimate beneficiary would be the child, from which short and longterm social and economic benefits will flow.
Kenneth
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