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Parent Coordination in Divorce
Psychological Services provides a unique Parent Coordination
service for families in the process of divorce or
post-divorce. This service provides an objective
professional experienced in both the short-term and
long-term effects of divorce on all members in the family.
The primary task of this service is to generate a long term
parenting plan.
Parent Coordination is offered to encourage productive and
effective solutions for parents in an effort to prevent
adverse effects of the divorce process. High conflict
families risk child loyalty conflict, alienation, domestic
violence and frequent court battles. Learning to work
together benefits both the children and the parents during
and after divorce.
Primary Goals:
- Helping family members develop and maintain
constructive communications
- Promoting children’s rights of access to both
parents
- Teaching parents to resolve conflicts constructively
- Facilitating fair resolution of scheduling conflicts
and general parenting concerns
- Protecting the children’s best interest in general
The Parent Coordinator’s role is:
- Specifically focused on helping parents work
together for the benefit of their children
- To assist the parties in making decisions with
effective conflict resolution and problem-solving
procedures to keep the children OUT of the conflict.
- To educate both parents about the sources of their
conflict and its effect on the children
- To help both parents accept the relevance of the
other parent in their children’s lives
- To point out a “loyalty bind” (children caught in
the middle between both parents) and help parents stop
the behavior leading to this dilemma for the children
- To help the family understand the serious emotional
consequences of losing a parent
- To be an ongoing resource for families before,
during and/or after a divorce
The Parent Coordinator is granted authority, by court order,
to settle day-to-day disputes, except for significant
changes in visitation time-share. Decisions on legal,
financial and residential issues are reserved for judicial
decision making only.
Areas of focus include:
| Visitation
schedules |
Childcare |
| Health issues |
Vacation disputes |
| Extracurricular
activities |
Therapy for the
child |
| Choices of schools |
Holiday schedules |
| Time/location of
exchanges |
Participation in
child’s events |
With the focus on reducing conflict, the Parent
Coordinator assists with the creation or implementation of
the parenting plan. The Coordinator can facilitate the
voluntary modification of the plan and/or make
recommendations to the Court for adjustments.
Arrangements can also be made for outside evaluations of
either parent or therapy for the children.
Periodic summaries will be made to the court, if requested.
An immediate report will be made to the court if one or both
parents are not following through appropriately.
The Parenting Coordinator is not a custody evaluator,
a witness for either parent unless court ordered, a crisis
counselor, an on-call nor after-hours arbitrator, nor an
arbitrator of financial issues.
Each parent is seen individually for an intake appointment
to complete the necessary paperwork, to become familiar with
the process, to provide relevant documents and to identify
their issues. All subsequent appointments will be held
jointly with both parents in attendance. Children of
appropriate age may be seen individually and generally only
once or twice.
Related Resources:
St. Johns County Collaborative Family Law Group (http://www.sjccflg.com)
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Psychological Services
of St. Augustine, Inc.
Main Office:
1100-1 South Ponce de Leon Boulevard, St. Augustine, Florida 32084
Phone (904) 824-7733 Fax (904) 829-9768
Southlake Office: 300
Kingsley Lake Dr, Suite 403 St Augustine, FL 32092
pssa@pssacare.com
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