Scotland's Children Resisting Contact

Getting together Scotland's response to

Children Resisting Post-
Separation Contact
This is a very full version. Start with the much easier summary here. Or a most compact version here.

Mahosadha finds the best mother (see below; click pic for more)

Selected international thinking and research to inform Scotland's families, legal and professional systems to do better for the children in the middle of the more complicated and difficult separations.

Scroll down beyond the Introduction for: Summary Ideas / Contact Box and then:
Nick's GUIDE: Overview (with Diagrams), Thinking It Through, The Resources,
Some Very Difficult Thinking, Nick's Conclusions, and Footnotes (including "The Test", Gardner's Definition of PAS, Practice and Policy, Help Now, and Human Rights).

Many professionals now do not dismiss this field as they once did. Here's some key reading for all … with more details, thinking and options further down this page too. Note that Nick Child is a learner not an expert; all help to improve this page is appreciated.

PACT Video on abduction and alienation (35 mins, three adults tell their stories through all stages)
Not got 35 mins?! Here's 12 mins of that video with the more unbelievable bits of PA - of alienation happening and tragic outcomes.
Fidler and Bala's 2010 article on Children Resisting Contact (that summarises their book)
If your interest gets going, buy these thorough and gripping books:
Baker and Sauber's 2013 - A Clinical Guidebook (including chapter by FTist Linda Gottlieb)
Amy Baker's research on Adult Children of PA Syndrome (powerful accounts, ideas and advice)
To get a more UK and legal angle that emphasises the need for interagency teamwork, read these:
Dr Kirk Weir's High Conflict Contact Dispute (UK assessment of children in alienating families)
Mr Justice Coleridge's 2010 speech to Association of Lawyers for Children.

INTRODUCTION
Nick Child, family therapist and retired child and family psychiatrist (whose website and words you're reading) attended the event "Changing the Culture" on 31st August 2012 in Edinburgh - click here for programme and click here to download the full report of the event held at the Murray Stable. The event was mainly for and about family lawyers and the courts, and an imminent forthcoming review triggered by an infamous case "B v G". There were contributions from others including the Scottish Child Law Centre, Families Need Fathers, and Women's Aid. Since then other discussions have helped improve the picture and information in Scotland.

As well as the resources listed further down, here is evidence of how far adrift the UK / Scotland has got. Here is the second Special Issue of the North American multi-disciplinary Family Courts Review (2010) on child alienation - the first was in 2001. The recent editorial gives a nice summary of issues, the experienced thinking, and the maturity of this community. Can Scotland catch up? This website is to hasten the day. As well as some small networks and projects found or founded since the first version of this webpage, this article and petition about fairer inclusion of parents is a good sign of public awareness.

Nick's interest arose from his family therapy work and his discovery and rapid learning about the field usually called Parental Alienation (PA) - click here for more. The terms PA and PA Syndrome are so loaded with presumptions that it is less off-putting to include it within a wider range of patterns of "Children Resisting Post-Separation Contact With a Parent" (Children Resisting Contact or CRC for short). Get a packed video interview about high conflict court cases and PA from one of the most prolific famous American names, Dr Richard Warshak. It is also important to know from the start that "pure alienation" is rare, that mostly a mixture of factors leads to a "hybrid" picture. Here's Karen Woodall explaining this careful discrimination of patterns well.

Starting from this hugely contentious complicated over-gendered front door of CRC makes this topic and webpage long hard work. If we started from calmer ordinary knowledge about patterns and relationships, we would quickly understand how such high conflict patterns can arise. That they happen is no surprise. What is also no surprise is to find that the patterns, notably alienation, can happen to both genders and any sexuality. Most of the mountainous debates this page wades through below are irrelevant, since the patterns happen independently of the gender and legal aspects that add to the heated wrangles. Patterns of domestic abuse show many similaritie whatever the gender of the victim and the perpetrator. Compare this with this for example. And note that both sides acknowledge that both genders cause and suffer abuse. Yet in talking about the subject, people often find they are “walking on egg-shells”. Read more on how equalism makes for firmer ground here.

Mix together universal things we know about such as the following elements, and high conflict will result. Being aware of gender is important especially in providing services. But Nick has composed a shorter alternative webpage based on the general idea that other factors than gender can explain problems. The full list there of non-gendered factors include: attachment patterns when attachment goes wrong, how thinking and feeling gets polarised and stuck, how neurobiological survival emotions of fight or flight fuel situations, the natural coercion of all childrearing, normal patterns of family division alliance and loyalty, how stronger and weaker personalities come into play, and the normal aspects of any separation process may naturally generate vicious circles (given the different concerns for children and differences in parenting styles along with other negative perceptions and given there is no constructive attitude or communication channels to sort these out). This recipe can explain problematic patterns in families without the gender and other issues that get dragged in. It may be advisable to read the shorter non-gendered version of this page first. Then you will be able to return to the many heated gender-linked debates covered on this page, have a calmer gender awareness that helps a better understanding and more directly helps all of the families and children affected. Meanwhile, read on:

Two key areas that readers should first make themselves familiar with if they are to understand Children Resisting Contact with a Parent (CRC) and Parental Alienation (PA). 1. Separating families in general. 2. The real terror that does arise from domestic and child physical and sexual abuse (abuse is also not always linked to one gender). If you do not properly understand these, and also show that you understand them, you will not understand the resistance to the idea that sometimes good men (and women .. and most importantly their children) may be unjustly treated after separation.

Separation and Abuse
If you are not familiar more generally with what it's like for separated families, here's a good starter for ten - One Plus One or Family Lives on life as a separated family. // Increasingly fathers are not happy to drop out of family life after separation like they used to, but there are still 1 in 8 who do. // And hear more discussion and phone-ins on this Call Kaye radio follow up radio show (35 mins). // Dr Roisin O'Shea did law because she couldn't afford a divorce if she didn't do it herself. Now she has dedicated her life to improving the system (with very similar issues to Scotland's). Here's a podcast of her talking about her research and the Judicial Training she arranged including gender and interviewing children for family courts. // Here's an app from Family Lives designed to help parents separating to sort various issues out. // One Plus One and its online resource: Parenting Connection have significant gaps, but provide a useful programme for parents able and willing to put their children first - it's simple learning with video scenarios to build skills that make things work better for the children in the middle of separations. // Woman's Hour (31/1/13) explored daughters experience of 50:50 separation, but starts with a strong example of alienation at work (from 32.45 mins). // Watch this TV programme or read about it and the children's experience of being told their parents were going to separate - this is anecdotal and there is wider debate about the pros and cons of separating. But the advice to talk as much as possible can't be bad. // There are other wonderful internet resources on separation too: Try Utah State University's "Divorce Orientation" programme for people thinking about divorce and the researched effects on children. Click through to the full programme, and each chapter, and the podcast audio / video / slide presentation too The full reference list at the end confirms that it is very useful for professionals too.

If you are not familiar with the real terror that can go with domestic abuse, then watch this set of short video views. Note that both genders can abuse and be controlling and bullying. // And read this recent account of past extra-familial child abuse being brought to court years later but still so distressing the victim that she killed herself after the court experience. The man and woman charged - note that both genders can abuse - could fully prepare for the

court hearing in advance. The victim witness was advised against getting professional support or legal guidance - to ensure she gave undiluted emotions in court, and to avoid cross examination saying she was coached. Unprepared she faced the normal but awful court processes including the "you're making it up aren't you?" stuff. How much more terrifying would this be for young children or partners facing their own close family in court having brought abuse charges at a time of family breakdown? Abusers (and their families) are often desperate and expert at covering up their abuse and intimidating their victims with the help of the underlying love and trust. They may be skilled at presenting as innocent or pillars of the community. Some of them may seek the cover of organisations that genuinely represent the good. Here is Rachel Pain's report on Everyday Terrorism. But note Denise Hines careful showing that this pattern can be done by women on men. And leading feminist researcher, Evan Stark, says in his key book Coercive Control (p 92): "However uncomfortable this may make feminist-oriented researchers, it is incontrovertible that large numbers of women use force in relationships, including the types of force classified as severe or abusive." See "Some Very Difficult Thinking" below for more on the difficult gender debate around family abuse with a glossary of terms.

WE WISH IT WASN'T TRUE ... BUT HERE'S
THE WORST OF IT IN A NUTSHELL:

It's common for a separating partner to think: "I wish I could completely get rid of my ex from my life".
That is sad but possible where there are no children.
Where there are children, most parents put the children's needs first. They support relationships with both.
There may be very real risks and good reasons to limit or monitor contact with a parent. And there may not be.
A few parents - purposely or not, and without good reason - do get rid of the other parent from their lives.
Sooner and later this deception is bad, a lifelong tragedy for all. It is abuse of the children. Intervention is needed.
This short video shows grown up daughter, mother and father. This one how alienation happens and the harm.
A simple way to tragedy is to abduct the children to live long-term with you. In the US, over 200,000 children per year have been recorded as victims of family abduction - though not all of those are for long periods.
The long way to get your ex out of your life is to alienate the children from their other parent (while knowing they could otherwise have a relationship with the children).
Those who abduct children will need to alienate them too.
Alienation can also happen without any separation at all.
Here's a very short story of alienation from BBC Radio 4 - the girl preferred boarding school!
Here's a short video showing how simply a contact centre can help prevent alienation developing.

KAREN WOODALL'S INTEGRATIVE APPROACH
Nick went to meet and hear Karen Woodall of the Centre for Separated Families talk about her approach and work (Edinburgh, 4th Dec 2012). This has been a major influence on him. Her approach and work apply to all separating families, especially those in high conflict of all kinds. A new consultation service for alienated families is available. Karen and Nick Woodall's book: A Guide for Separated Parents: Putting Children First is non-academic, easy to read, clear, wise and helpful. She and Nick Woodall were also behind this excellent 2004 training guide to organisations on gender equality. Every separated family, helping professional, and family service should have copies if they want to understand a properly gender aware approach to helping all genders. Her new book Understanding Parental Alienation: Learning to Cope and Helping to Heal is now available. Here is a good overview chapter as an example of her approach and thinking published on her blog. Karen has developed a way of thinking and working and an unusual caring confident skill with all members of a separated family that means she can often collect the conflicting threads of a situation and lead the way to bring awful or absent family relationships back on some kind of track. She knows what to do. The principles are not complicated. This brief (8 mins) youtube video shows her summarising parental alienation - but this is just one pattern in the spectrum of high conflict families. The video does not give the broader integrative approach. Her blog can be her most public image. The powerful arguing there for a balanced gender equal world does not do justice to her actual integrative approach with actual families. Here is how she sees the dominant gendered debate skewing things badly for families, especially for the children, and again her experience of how the women's rights lobby has not helped children's family needs. Here is one blog that gives a good picture of Karen at work with families to integrative effect. It is great that her book is now available.

In Scotland - please correct this if you know better - no profession or individual seems close to doing the integrative work she does. As someone said: We need a new profession. Nick thinks several professions - including his own, family therapy - could step up and try to do more of what Karen does with families. Four things from Karen Woodall for this webpage - 1. more constructive words, 2. learning what to do (not too much abstract talk), 3. broad framework (not just a focus on PA), 4. campaigning to change the world can look like ignoring how bad others think it is now.

1. Karen uses more neutral language (while not avoiding the reality of what is happening). Thus: It is the child's alienation that matters more than the parental. Work is on: relationships with Mum and Dad (what is going right and wrong - including when safety is the main thing), not on who gets residence and contact. Those terms imply at the outset an unequal importance of the parents in their child's life. Nick will match her language on this page, but "Parental Alienation" (PA) is also used because that is the label the world - and Karen above - gives it.

2. Karen does away with too much abstract thinking and talking because she confidently knows what to do. In other words, Nick sets out thinking here because he doesn't really know what to do .. apart from thinking! If we learn what to do from the likes of Karen Woodall, we could stop too much talking and get on with what matters . Meanwhile Nick's thinking does underpin and link with what Karen says and does, so it is a step in the right direction.

3. Karen embraces the full range of high conflict problems that harm children's relationships with their separated parents. She includes and differentiates between justified rejection (ie actual risk), hybrid (ie mixed risk and alienation, the commonest pattern), and pure child alienation patterns. This is in contrast with those who specialise with one or other extreme and tend to polarise between suspicions that it is all abuse, or it is all alienation. And Karen does not seek to find the best one parent for a child but how to secure a relationship with both. That means she is not (with any particular family or in general) more sided with one parent or against the other. So she is she is gender aware but gender neutral too.

4. Karen works with individual family cases and campaigns to build a better world for children and both their parents when they separate. So she works and campaigns on all fronts. Arising from children's need if at all possible for relationships with both parents, she speaks more about fathers. This is to balance the dominant culture just now which is generally pro-mothers and anti-fathers. Men are often assumed to be the risk always, and women always not ... whatever the evidence or logic or consequences. Karen campaigns for both men and women to have safe relationships with their children. But naturally people only see parts of one or two aspects of her work. Most people just don't begin to think about the overall system, let alone think about the possibility of making huge changes to society and its systems. So paradoxically, it can mistakenly look like Karen is ignoring the existence of present bad and abusive situations because she is doing so much more in general and in particular to make it better for children and all parents in the future.

SCOTLAND WISING UP ABOUT CRC/PA
The term Children Resisting Contact (CRC) includes a wide range of multi-factorial child and family and agency patterns and predicaments that require careful assessment and thinking in each individual case. Children almost always want to have a good loving relationship and contact with both parents, and for both parents to love them too. Here's Relationships Scotland (RS)'s leaflet that all separating families should be given. The RS video guide on contact centres shows the common "men/fathers are all scary" prejudice, but here is a much better picture of how contact centres can reduce child alienation. Even if things have gone wrong, children mostly still would like it to be better with both parents. If all the good ideas mentioned at the Changing the Culture seminar were to happen, then we in Scotland would be a long way forward in responding more reliably well for all separating families, including the more complicated and difficult ones that produce CRC or PA situations.

Nick continues to find relatively low awareness in Scotland of a huge international field of high quality thinking and research in the area of CRC and PA. But he is pleased to report that there are signs of progress - even in the legal system. Lord Neil Brailsford, Senator of the College of Justice, and Lord Brian Gill, and their colleagues in Scotland, are assuredly aware of many of the key issues and developments happening in family law internationally. See a news report (Oct 2013) on Lord Brailsford's plans. Child Welfare Hearings are already opportunities of abbreviated process (compared with proof etc). Other developments are being prepared for: fast-tracking, collaborative intervention, continuity of Judges, specialism of courts (and concern for burn out in them), specialist teams (the equivalent of English CAFCASS), and problem-solving approaches (with visits from US problem-solving Judges too). Sir Ernest Ryder of the Family Division of the High Court in England is developing there a completely new form for the Family Courts and Scotland is watching that closely. Court rules are under active review too so that eg standards for Bar Reports and Reporters are being improved, as everyone agrees is needed. See this research on Bar Reports here, and on Court Hearings here (though this one rather confirms the absence of international influences). There is a concern that the standards of human rights legislation have not really filtered into legal minds and practice - a bit of further training is unlikely to be a match for generally established practice. (See below for more on human rights in respect to children of separated parents in conflict).

Of course everyone wants things to move faster, but that is unlikely and not easy when it comes to legal systems. Examples of difficult changes are: where political will and funding prevent good practice being rolled out more widely; to specialise the family courts more reliably for all areas is hard when there is a long established independence and territoriality of courts limiting the numbers of courts and Sheriffs in remoter parts of Scotland.

Nick can also now give some assurance that the Judicial Studies Committee that organises induction and continuing training for Sheriffs and Judges is aware of many of these issues and future directions of family law and courts, and that training is being sought that paves the way for these new developments within the present system eg how best to manage a Child Welfare Hearing with the option of meeting parents and children.

So this is good news. But meanwhile there's much to be done. Lower down is a summary of the sophisticated system that Australia has in place to work with the voice of the child. In Scotland this chapter of a report gives the picture of how the child's voice is or is not heard in family courts. Often it seems that a pro forma F9 is the best Scotland offers to this serious task! Note how most of the available ways are done by one or another kind of lawyer, and that these lawyers do not have any requirement for training for this task. Those outside of Scotland are universally astonished at the general lack of more appropriately trained professionals for various purposes for assessing children and families for the family courts. In particular that chapter notes that a child's views are liable to be influenced by one or other parent. But there is no awareness that something far more powerful may happen - precisely because there is a place for the child's voice to be heard one way or another. That is, by outright or more subtle unconscious emotional influence, one parent may actually shape the child to firmly state views that are not genuinely theirs. The stated wishes to reject a parent may not match how pleased the child is to be with that parent - that is their behaviour and feelings are at odds with the views. And later children will say: "I had to say that for my [favoured parent]'s sake; and my [rejected parent] should have known I didn't mean it". In other words, assessing a child's views, wishes and feelings - and of course the wider consideration of the child's welfare - is no simple isolated task, but requires a degree of knowledge and skill considerably greater than any of the options available just now in Scotland.

And here is evidence of more work to be done in Scotland: This is a report on the exclusion or denigration of fathers in general presentation of services for families. And this report about Scotland's patterns of contact of fathers with children. Here's the full report by Nick Smithers of Circle Scotland of how men are marginalised in the way social services work. Or this case of dangerously faulty assumptions of whose word could be trusted about risks to the child of separated parents. And here's Brian Dempsey's report on how 15% of domestic abuse has men as victims. Or listen to this BBC Radio 4 programme "The Deprofessionals" about how standards are being pushed down everywhere including an example of a resisting untrained social worker who was tasked with supervising a contact session between a father and child. Or see how easy it is for a lawyer to get into the Family Law Association - an annual fee and a proposer and seconder. That is a recent improvement on a signed self-certification, but still not much of a guarantee of the lawyer's quality or skill. In contrast the Law Society of Scotland specialist accreditation scheme looks more rigorous ... the Guidance Notes give a flavour of what's required. The pros and cons of having more rigorous registers for Family Lawyers were aired at the Changing the Culture event ... a register may leave out those unregistered lawyers who are still naturally good at Family Law. Lastly, why is it that a highly paid but not specially trained lawyer, the Curator ad litem (who acts in the best interests of individuals, but also asked to take the views of children), has a very similar role to that of the often unpaid Independent Advocate (who represents the views of individuals) yet has nothing like the Independent Advocate's rigorous principles and standards of conduct and operation set out in statute? Meanwhile here's notice of Roisin O'Shea's major PhD confirming the limitations and poor outcomes of Irish family courts. Let's not assume that an equivalent review in Scotland would produce a better picture here.

And there continues to be an important use for a webpage like this as an accessible up-to-date balanced resource now for legal and other professions, as well as for wider discussion at all levels in Scotland.

Be warned: you cannot get away with the common allergic dismissal and rubbishing of a complex area of real tragedy ... that unfortunately turns to farce in some courts (just as the BvG case did). The material below is adapted from part of Nick's presentation to his own profession: Learning from America Again (click here for more on that). And download his May 2013 Derby workshop at a family therapy conference "Why do we dismiss Parental Alienation: An unassuming workshop" for another way to get engaged with the subject - here are the Full Notes and the Powerpoint.

Obviously providing information and literature like this needs to be supplemented by organisations and networks of people in Scotland moving everything forward here in more practical ways.

Here Nick apologises that he cannot contribute more to building such a network. However he will update and add good ideas to this web page. He invites anyone who wants to use the Contact box here to feedback and make suggestions about how the information linked here can be improved, and any other suggestions for Scotland to do next.

IDEAS FROM "CHANGING THE CULTURE"

Children and families move on rapidly, so the legal system must ensure it is never a drag
Proactive efficient case management in courts (by sheriffs and Legal Aid Board) - focus, plan, simplify, be prompt, time-limit, monitor and report back on the court progress
More efficient litigation by family lawyers - fewer red herrings
Clarity of roles (eg curators, bar reporters, interlocutors) - if we need them at all?
Family Law cases reliably dealt with by trained specialist lawyers, sheriffs and judges
Support systems for contact etc around the courts run by trained specialist social workers, therapists etc
England's CAFCASS might be good for Scotland too if it were better resourced here.
Cost limitations - eg to what a private client would pay
Create common standards and skills for reports and reporters
Assume non-resident parent is as safe a parent as the resident one, unless the safety of either is actually questioned.
Consulting the children is an essential skill - but remember that children's views may be unrealistic immature and influenced; they are not able, and should not be expected to make the bigger decisions. (See footnotes for more on child inclusive practice, coercion and brainwashing.)

Domestic abuse and child protection questions are top priority legal matters to resolve quickly

For the full Changing the Culture report click here.

Please note that Nick is an enthusiast not an expert.
He is not able to be an expert witness.

BEST RESOURCES FOR FAMILIES

Try these: Karen Woodall blogs 2014 and Family Separation Clinic. Others are: Centre for Separated Families. Parenting Connection Programme. A family perspective. A family perspective. The Scottish bit of Wikivorce.
Do try Family Mediation if you possibly can. Read the FNFS guide to Bar Reporters in Scottish courts.

Karen Woodall's book: Understanding PA
Amy Baker's "I Don't Want to Choose" booklet for children (and parents) - extract here, order it here.
Try "Me and My Kids" from Australia. Free from here.
Get Bill Eddy's "Don't Alienate the Kids!" for Kindle off Amazon here.
Some say Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" could almost have been written for PA parents.
Search for a therapist / counsellor who will journey with you (even if they don't know much about the subject at first). Keep looking until you find one.
Read how your children will eventually come back to you here. And here.

    1. Let Nick know of anything better than the stuff you find here - of other people or websites or networks; other literature that is missed out.

    2. Suggest what Scotland should now be doing and how to articulate that constructively. Use the box above. This webpage should only be an interim stage before something better emerges.

SUMMARY OF NICK'S IDEAS

Follow through on ALL the ideas proposed at Changing the Culture seminar to improve family courts for all families (listed nearby).
Legislate for residence of children to go to the parent assessed as best able to support the children's relationship with the other parent
Of course informal collaboration - helped by mediation and the like - is always preferable to courts. But some families just cannot or will not accept this .. and it only takes one high conflict ex- to block collaborative methods.
Authorise skilled workers "in the shadow of the court" whose job is to pull things together where everyone else's partial role tends to pull them apart. Scottish CAFCASS workers would need to be better resourced and trained: here.
The nearest to CAFCASS in Scotland are the Bar Reporter, Curator and Safeguarder. The best guide is by FNFScotland.
Promptly identify complex CRC and PA cases and refer them to the Childrens Hearings to coordinate assessment and continuing family systems work. But that requires ...
Everyone involved must wise up in Scotland from the wealth of international thinking and research. Start on this web-page.
Find legal and helping professionals ready to learn from Karen Woodall.
Counsellors and therapists open up to journeying with CRC/PA clients even if we have to learn about it from them.
Professionals in this field should join the international AFCC (and get the FCR)
We need to learn the complexities of being gender aware of differences between genders, while being gender inclusive so that women, men and children and their needs are attended to properly.

How Things Work Better in Australia
This is an informal but fairly informed inside account from Australia. A family therapy ex-colleague of Nick's has worked in Oz and was a Director of Relationships Australia - their Relate equivalent but far more dynamic and broad in its scope. The approach to family law in Australia has also been far more developed for decades. This is a summary of her account around alienated children cases there. The key bits are a long-standing dedicated family court system, investment in other personnel and resources (than lawyers) and in their training - especially a more nuanced skill in the matter of "the voice of the child". Remember that "PAS" gets its power from when, in the absence of other measures, the voice of the child becomes the default decision of the adults and courts.

The system is not perfect - there have always been problematic cases and poor practice too.
But since 1975 there has been a system of dedicated family courts in Oz.
That means the judge and courts have had years of experience and continuity and responsibility for doing this work and learning what works.
In addition, there have been plenty of counsellors and social workers around these courts helping to get it right. (In England and Scotland it is predominantly family lawyers who do the work).
Plus there is a strong culture to take this work away from lawyers who inherently advocate for their client and therefore increase polarisation.
Over this long period has developed a range of extensive knowledge and training for those involved.
Part of that training is a well-established widespread more nuanced understanding and practice toward "the voice of the child".
Because the whole system gets going early with all separated families (there is more standardisation across different areas), there is early identification and work with unhelpful parenting patterns. So the more fully developed alienation doesn't have a chance to get going.
So there has been less reason or chance for the use of the "PAS" diagnostic label and courts using or battling about this apparently authorised "condition" to happen.
The voice of the child and how that voice is listened to and heard is generally seen as an important and skilled piece of work. It is not just something that the court can order up from virtually untrained lawyers etc.
In the most developed collaborative law practice, the child has their own worker who feeds back what the child says is their experience of the separation to parents who then have their own workers to help them work with that feedback.
This feedback is NOT directly to the court where binding decisions are made. It is to a more collaborative structured setting where parents are guided and helped to consider their child's best interests and views.
The experienced workers are aware of the influences and patterns that might shape what a child says. Within these experienced structures to work on it, no one is thinking along the lines of "we have to do what the child says"
Typically where a parent is coming on strong about the other parent's faults, and vice versa, the child's voice / feedback lets them know that the child doesn't like the pushy ways of BOTH parents. The workers help the parents do something else.
This shows how a system can grow that avoids the worst of the alienation stuff, and therefore does not need to use the terminology and measures found where "PAS" rules.
This shows how many of these elements are missing in the UK. Thus, CAFCASS in England is on the right tracks, but not if the workers are not allowed enough time or continuity, and not if they are not fully trained or experienced. Since there is little chance of such major investment in the family courts, we in the UK / Scotland will need to find some good short cuts.

These images come from Linda Gottlieb's website: End Parental Alienation. Click the pictures to get there. Linda is an American Family Therapist, author of the highly regarded textbook (2012) The Parental Alienation Syndrome: A Family Therapy and Collaborative Systems Approach to Amelioration. Charles C Thomas: Springfield, US

NICK CHILD's GUIDE AND SELECTED READING
ON CHILDREN RESISTING CONTACT AND
PARENTAL ALIENATION

With thanks to others for leading the way.
Note: These are just Nick's own views backed up by international authorities. You may want to skip his thinking and go straight to those resources further down the webpage. // Nick's views on this page are not written in stone.
Please feed back to improve this thinking and information. Read more here.

OVERVIEW

This material was originally designed for family therapists. But here Nick adapts it for a much wider audience of legal and other helping professions if not for policy makers, lay people and families too. This explores how a North American label and field might be used but adapted for the UK – where the culture, the services, the family courts and resources are very different.

Note that Canada, with it’s lead on collaborative divorce too, is where the leading work is being done on PA / CRC. Note that Nick wants family therapists to take more to do with this field of working with separating families, and that family therapists should have something to bring to bear on it. He is not saying family therapists know best how to help. Nick does not know enough about family mediation, collaborative law, and other approaches to explore them here. Looking across the Atlantic, it seems that there is lots more to learn there too about an even wider range of approaches - see for example Joan Kelly briefly talk on collaborative law vs mediation, and about differences between facilitative / transformative / evaluative kinds of mediation.

In 2011 Nick too had to overcome his long-standing allergy to the most contentious term "PA Syndrome". He invites you to do so as well. Get help from this workshop "Why do we dismiss Parental Alienation? An unassuming workshop" and the Full Notes. It also helps to see that the key Fidler and Bala paper (2010) uses the wider neutral term: Children Resisting Post-Separation Contact With A Parent. Not so punchy a title, is it? Here it is reduced to CRC. However, within this wider picture of CRC there is a pattern that is hard to avoid calling Parental Alienation – if only because it has become the widely established term. Sorry! A better name for it would be Child Alienation since the child is the more important concern.

GETTING OVER PRESUMPTIONS
Family Therapy and other helping professions in Britain are hugely, almost religiously, committed to being against sweeping generalisations and prejudices, and to being open to hearing the individuals and the particulars involved in unique situations. That's why we don't like labels in general. Yet somehow we can forget this aspiration when the allergy to PA jumps on us and we want nothing further to do with it. We need to step past our allergy and persist until we find a more nuanced picture. There is a compelling struggle between the strongly held assumptions and "camps" on one hand, and the attempt to think things through more calmly and thoroughly. This struggle has many of the characteristics described by Stanley Cohen as "moral panic" ... "an intense feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order ... moral panics are in essence controversies .. in which disagreement is difficult because the matter at its center is taboo". In their opening paragraphs, Fidler and Bala try to meet this struggle head on:

... As with so many issues in family law, there are polarized, strongly gendered narratives of alienation. Some men’s rights activists claim that mothers alienate children from their fathers to seek revenge for separation, some making false and malicious allegations of abuse. These groups may further assert that the courts are gender-biased against fathers in dealing with child custody matters generally and especially when addressing alienation. Some feminists dismiss all, or most, alienation claims as fabricated by male perpetrators of intimate partner violence, often also abusive fathers, to exert control over the victimized mother and maintain contact with children, who justiﬁably resist or refuse contact with them, this being an adaptive and positive coping mechanism. While there is some validity to both of these narratives, each has signiﬁcant mythical elements, and furthermore, in our view, neither is especially helpful for improving the lives of children. The reality of these cases is often highly complex and not captured by either of these relatively simplistic explanations. ...

Take note: "There are polarised strongly gendered narratives .. each has some validity .. [but also] significant mythical elements .. and neither is especially helpful for improving the lives of children."

IT IS NEVER THAT SIMPLE
Abuse AND alienation can and do happen in families separately or together. And they both appear especially when families are separating. We will do better to open our minds and study this field as it is in wider complicated distressing reality, not just how we imagine it is in our simple imaginations and the inevitable bias of our own limited experiences. Luckily people around the world have done a lot of research and thinking already – even in the UK actually – and they’ve published it. Especially since the UK and Scotland seem not to have much access to that research and published literature, let’s just read what others have said before thinking we know it all, eh?!

Here's some thinking that may help us avoid unhelpful oversimplified polarised myths:

There are loads of well managed family separations. In other words, many if not most men and women / fathers and mothers and their children collaborate with enough love and care, putting their children first even if it is hard for them to do. Those of us who get to see the problematic separations may forget this. So let's remember that there are many good parents of both genders. So when anyone appears to damn all Xs and praise all Ys remember that just cannot be true.
However scared a person naturally is of the gender that abused them, remember that patterns of domestic abuse, emotional abuse and of alienation are gender neutral - both genders are found on both sides. See this C4 set of short videos (on redefining domestic abuse).
Some men and some women are not as mature and balanced, and not so good as parents. But they are still mostly doing the best they can. Their children still mostly love them and want to be loved by them.
Good separated parents set aside their own negative feelings in order to actively support and encourage their children's relationship with the other parent. They may even have to make special contact arrangements.
Whenever separation goes bad, it is the children should come first. But mostly that is forgotten as everyone sides with one or other parent. (Children coming first is not the same as children making the decisions.)
Remember that if there are 'bad' parents they are not all the same gender. Men / fathers can be 'bad', and women / mothers can be too. Again anyone who seems to universally praise one gender and damn the other is mythologising.
'Bad' is in quotes because 'bad' is a label and presumption others may have to make that does little or nothing to help the person. Evidence shows that even the most 'evil' criminals were themselves victims as children of terrible combinations of neglect, violence, sexual abuse, and brain damage. See e.g. Lewis; Pincus. It's hard to sustain the natural 'bad/evil/psychopathic' thinking when you know what nearly all these children suffered without any of the protection or help that we aspire to for today's children.
Which reminds us why protecting children of separated parents is important. That sometimes means that someone does have to assess the quality of each parent's parenting, residential and contact parent (not just assume it is ok).
But the commonest 'bad parenting' in this situation is the joint result of parents in conflict over their children - sometimes with legal and other agencies virtually cheering the fight on from the sidelines. A child caught between warring parents is being neglected and emotionally abused whether or not there is any other abuse identified. Everyone involved needs to find a better resolution. The idea that one parent simply gives in and gives up on their children is not a good resolution of course.
The less happy separations are most often a messy mixture of feelings, facts, allegations and truth. It is best to always assume there is no single simple pattern happening. It is very common for both sides of a conflictual separating couple to give entirely believable but opposite stories against the other. If professional adults find this hard to understand and resolve, just remember the far harder position of their children who mostly hope to love and be loved by both their parents. The children have to find non-simplistic answers if they can. So must we.
The usual figures given are that nine out of ten separations are managed outside courts (not usually happily, but bearably). One in ten separations come to family courts (i.e. with more serious conflicts). And one in ten of the court cases need more than that to sort them out. So high conflict cases of CRC and PA on that measure are rare - 1% of all separations. But the feelings and issues and patterns are much more common - what we learn from the few will help the many.
It is important to be repeatedly clear that if there is any chance of risk or abuse (by either parent), then that risk is the absolute priority to assess and manage. Abuse or concern for child protection are not merely part of a dispute; they are (true or alleged) serious offences to be treated as such.
When there is abuse mixed in with alienation it is even harder to assess and separate them out. It is natural for people to fight fire with fire so few parents remain angelic .. and if they did manage to, that might also be provocative! But if there is any actual risk from the rejected parent of abuse (neglect, physical or sexual abuse), it is by definition not the pure PA pattern. When there is good reason for the rejection, then it is reasonable or justified alienation. No caring person or parent ever wants a child to have to face contact - or at least not unsupervised contact - with a parent where there is real risk of abuse. So abuse and risk do happen sometimes (and may produce CRC patterns). Elements of alienation may be mixed in as well along the CRC spectrum. And:
As part of the wide range of patterns, so the distinct rarer pattern Parental Alienation also happens. Just because something is rare doesn't mean we can assume it doesn't exist. We all know people with the kind of human failing found in PA - so why on earth wouldn't PA happen too?! There is lots of evidence that alienation happens and has lifelong effects on children (see this 35 minute video for stories told by the children as adults). Yet many deny it (Nick denied it once); we are sure it is a cover up for something else, usually that the rejected parent must be a real risk.
One way for Scotland to be ahead of the game is for those who emphasise any particular position here to always acknowledge the complexity, that many patterns happen, that each troubled family must be carefully assessed rather than presumptions made.
We in Scotland could aim to neither make nor accept any mythical statements. We should keep thinking. Mythical statements are recognisable because in one powerful assertion they tend to induce an emotional paralysis of our proper thinking and talking about a complex range of difficult things.

So saying, Nick has over-simplified this complex subject of CRC/PA into four slides showing: 1. CRC as a complex field, 2. Happily separated families, 3. Unhappily separated families, and 4. Parental alienation. So the visuals may help as a framework before reading on.

1. A quick glimpse of the complexity (diagrams from Child Alienation paper, click here). Multiple systemic factors. A continuum of children’s relationships with separated parents with PA at one end.

3. Genders may be reversed or different (eg LGBT couples). Relationships are fraught. Hurt upset or scared Mum wants to distance and protect herself and the kids from contact with an angry upset maybe abusive or risky Dad while the child has mixed feelings in the middle, resists contact maybe, and often just wants her parents to stop arguing. Although the Dad may throw in “PAS” this is not PA. It gives PA its bad name. PA is typically more like this >>

2. Parents both love their child and each collaborates with the other for her sake. Their child has a relationship with both and knows they love her. Contact works fine. See Relationships Scotland's leaflet

4. Again genders may be reversed or different. Relationships are polarised into aligned and rejected. Mum is a woman with a very negative inner self esteem hidden inside an overpoweringly controlling strong outer difficult personality. This may be the only solution she knows to hold onto attachments. In the literature, she gets called Narcissistic or worse. Actively or intentionally she programmes her child to side with her to resist contact with a caring safe and previously loved Dad. The child can only resolve the split by devoting herself to her Mum’s needs and develop the denigration of her Dad. The child’s voice gets amplified by the unintended help of the family court process into a powerful choice.

  THINKING IT THROUGH

HOW TO KEEP THINKING
In the face of powerful inner and outer blocks - like moral panic, deeply held beliefs and ways, peer group cultures - it is important to keep our thinking going. The idea of moral panic itself helps good thinking eg in this balanced personal short blog. The trick is to notice when what you are reading or hearing makes you stop thinking, when you believe that it proves whatever to be true, that it is the last word on the subject - or just because it seems so reasonable, so well researched, so morally right. Notice that you will stop thinking with either something conformist like "Well I can't argue with that, can I?" or else something conformist like "See! I knew that was true". When you find yourself thinking or saying: "I always think / say that X Y and Z" you can be fairly sure you need to review X Y and Z! When you realise you've stopped thinking, it is important to then switch your thinking on again ... to find out what made you stop thinking. Here's Michael Shermer's neat video and summary of careful thinking called the Baloney Detection Kit. Read  James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds for more interesting ideas on how diversity and conformism work to produce good decisions or not. Here's an Open University video introducing Stan Cohen's original study of moral panic in youth culture. More generally there is lots of evidence now for how human beings - in contrast to our fond belief in our reliable and rational thinking capacities - cannot avoid using all kinds of bias  and therefore making mistakes (like confirmation bias, belief bias etc) in our decision making as a result of the dual-process or thinking fast and slow functions underlying all our decisions.  Lastly here is Nick's workshop notes from Derby's DAFT conference in May 2013 - Why do we dismiss Parental Alienation: an unassuming workshop. These expand the picture of blocked thinking about PA itself, blocked thinking of any kind, and in contrast a confirmation of open minded or systemic thinking for professionals and all of us to remember to do. Here's some more of the common thought blocker topics in CRC / PA discussions.

The Child's View
The trend has been to enlighten adult conflicts by bringing in the child's views. Listening to the child is clearly a reasonable, natural and right thing to do all the time. It is especially important given the exceptional stories we keep discovering of awful secrets that some children hold and never expect to have believed, e.g. about celebrated pillars of the community being able to use our social approval of them to cover up their astonishing lifetime abuse of the vulnerable. But the tendency - e.g. in research and courts (where it is a key factor in the PA pattern there) - is to believe that the child's view is also the whole truth of the situation, that they are our new ultimate authority for what is right and must be done especially in major decisions like separations. This then is another idea that makes us stop thinking and leads us to burden the least responsible and least able with an awful authority that no one should carry. This idealisation of children's knowledge goes with an idealisation of good parenting, as if parenting can and must always be sublimely angelic and free of anything like setting limits that might upset the children. Click here for a humorous reminder of what a loving parent might need to do. Again the powerful implied ideal can prohibit thinking for ourselves. (See also below on coercion.)

Another example of some of this is in a recent Nuffield report of interviews with separated families (read it here). It is great to have so much careful broadly based verbatim experience from those involved. And the conclusions are careful enough to say e.g. that people's views are influenced by experiences, that CRC patterns are usually complex, and that genuine PA does happen but is rare. But the researchers have perhaps taken their own assumptions and seen them echoed in what young people and parents of separated families say. Then they've set those views out as if it proves that this is therefore the way it has to be. It is like finding that girls and boys all agree that pink is for girls, and that that proves that girls must therefore have everything coloured pink, without thinking that perhaps the children's views have been influenced by what they see on telly and in advertising for clothes and toys. Read more about pink here. The other concern is that the researchers have not clarified the important difference between a child's voice not being the same as a carefully assessed adults' choice or decision for them - it is not good (in the short or the long term) for children to be at the top of the decision making hierarchy, nor can they make the best decisions either. See here for a more powerful critique of the Nuffield report - and in that blog comments reference to a local example of a positive outcome for an alienated family.

Feminism
Another common block to thinking is in how feminism has been amplified to seem to be anti-men "women fighting for women's rights". It is important to note that the rights feminists fight for do not seek to reverse male dominance and patriarchy. Female dominance or matriarchy is not the aim. Feminism aspires to equality (of rights etc) for women and men. Feminism might better have focused on "gender equality" - implying equal opportunity and diversity, not that all genders or sexualities are the same. Mascul(in)ism usually means the defence and promotion of men and male power. But (read more on that link) it can have the same meaning as feminism: gender equality. In our culture a great many men now support gender equality - they are not brought up to control women. They might call themselves male feminists. Since "male feminist" is not an easy label for a man to adopt, and "masculinism" is mostly used to mean promoting male power not gender equality, a more suitable term is needed for the cause of gender equality than either of these gender linked words. Because it has seemed so important to find gender neutral thinking, we have created a weblog on equalism - a term that couldn't be much clearer or more generally applicable. There is much more on feminism and patriarchy there too. If having children continue with a good relationship with both parents is important, then it may be important for women to actively join with the men to campaign for it as is beginning to happen in the US (see here). Here is one of many examples of being "feminist but …".  Strong feminism has found itself fighting the corner of single mothers and female victims so much that it is easy to forget that feminism's prime aim was to bring fathers more into family life (before and after parental separation). This helps women to access more of what men tend to do outside of the family. Here's a useful reminder of the original aim from leading women who support shared parenting.

Anyway, whatever gender equality is called, and feminism certainly has more to do to get there, there are now pockets and evidence of reverse gender inequality. For example, in a few high conflict separating families, there are actively gender-equality-supporting men who find themselves branded among the controlling and abusive ones. Nick is working on promoting the word and idea "equalism" to help avoid the unhelpful aspects of always seeing abuse and alienation through gender-based lenses (see this C4 set of short videos for evidence that it's not just one gender).

Patriarchy
Across the world at all levels men do generally continue to have more power, position, privilege, strength and authority than women do in general. Societies are patriarchal. Equalists rightly want further change for a fairer society. But the term patriarchy has developed a special unwarranted power of its own to stop thinking in its tracks. To demur in any way from being against patriarchy in some discussions can confirm your complicity with it. You have to submit even when you shouldn't. It has great power to silence any questioning because the only implied correct position is to be against patriarchy - unlike feminism, patriarchy does not imply any positive better system. At times, as we shall see below, those most keen to depose patriarchy at every level unwittingly perpetrate the ignorance and unfairness they presumably want rid of as one of patriarchy's faults.

How does this happen? Whole sections of society and the helping professions have come to use the word patriarchy as an unquestionable presumptive truth in all situations. This use is not just as a valid general view of society, but even in specific serious practical predicaments. In particular actual situations it can be used to mean "in this as in any problematic relationship, one should presume from the outset that the man is responsible and the women and children are victims". For busy professionals with complex particular tasks - eg social workers assessing childcare and protection - it is very handy to have such a quick rule of thumb that all around are very keen to use. So the professional straight away assumes the woman and child are victims and the man is the perpetrator. To consider individual situations more carefully would take much much longer ... even then it is often hard to reach conclusions.

But for good practice with particular situations and clients, this presumption is astonishingly and seriously offensive, illegal and faulty. Even if patriarchy is generally true, in any particular situation good practice requires that assumptions are not made, that minds remain open, and that all views are sought and considered before drawing conclusions about who is doing what and why and what help and protection may be needed. Indeed these ethical and legal requirements are enshrined in our present society even though it is patriarchal. It is particularly terrible when this patriarchal dominant narrative is applied to the point where the worker is blind to childcare and child protection needs, so that a more risky mother is preferred to a father who would be the safer carer. See this report for examples of dangerously bad practice in this respect that would fit an overriding belief in patriarchy applied in every situation. And at the other end of that process - a convicted violent woman specially spared jail because of her gender. If abuse and patriarchy are defined by ignorant, unjust control and power, then if these are case examples of what is to replace it, a matriarchal society will be more ignorant and unjust in its local methods than patriarchal ones aspire to be just now. Revenge may be sweet, but two wrongs do not make it right.

In terms of keeping thinking going, there is no easy way to get out of this particularly powerful silencing of open thinking. Here are some responses that might work: Let's not make a categorical error ... A general truth does not excuse individual prejudice ... Patriarchy or not, individual men (and women) need to have their particular story heard and respected ... Each problem relationship needs to be thought about carefully without any sweeping presumptions ... [An ironic response:] If individual men can be assumed to be evil perpetrators without a hearing and all women and children angelic victims, then logically we should work to persuade governments to change laws, human rights, and professional services, procedures and codes of conduct and ethical standards to fast-track all males - including those who have not been found to have done anything wrong yet - straight to probation or prison in order to prevent problems and cut back on a lot of expense and trouble.

Unequal Opportunities
Here is a short report about policies in Scottish Councils about schools and parental contact. The reader may think: Of course that's right (that residential Mums get told everything and non-residential Dads have to go through hoops). But it clearly shows how systematically unequal the opportunities are for separated parents in their contact with their children's schools. Information about a child's schooling is a relatively safe, controllable and positive involvement. The less residential parents concerned here are often fathers (but may be mothers) who care just as much about their children. But if the parent does not have the main caring role for them, the school has very unequal hurdles to keep them down and out of their children's school lives.

Domestic Violence
Of course people reading this will all want a world that is free of male domination and domestic violence. We rightly want to tackle this at all levels, along with abuse of children and all victims, wherever they are. And if domestic violence is wrong, then we need to keep thinking about all of it. People often say: "How could a woman / mother be so evil?" and it is easy to believe a man / father can be evil. People often have understanding for the woman, but rather less for the man. The public and media are often led to believe that strangers and paedophiles are the main cause of child abuse, when the majority of this is within families. Thinking harder than this shows that there is a range of domestic violence, while Home Office statistics and other research show that males are not infrequent victims - although the outcomes and quality of the experience may be different for men than women. NSPCC statistics show that violence against children is more often done by mothers, which is not a surprise since mothers do many more woman-hours of childcare than fathers do man-hours, and caring for children is not all fun and games especially if you face lots of other stress too. The point is that gender aware thinking does not mean that one gender always plays the part of goody and the other always plays the part of the baddy. And even if that were simply true, it would be the beginning of the story, not the end of it.

Whoever is "evil" the assumption is often that they are then persona non grata from family and help - "lock them up and throw away the key" is one impulse. Yet offenders are still humans, members of families who may still love them, culprits to be "disposed of", rehabilitated or helped. If they can be changed or helped, there will be many more benefits than easy damnation produces. Children will generally still love both parents and want a relationship with them. Someone still has to decide what to do with a baddy (short of execution at dawn) ... and we all have to decide whether we just accept the faulty world as it is, or whether we want to work to change it. See Gender Glossary towards the bottom of this webpage for more on domestic abuse and gender.

Child Homicides
A deadly serious example of failure to think through beyond a moral panic is in the widespread reference to a singled out report of 29 child homicides while in the care of the non-resident parent (ie fathers) as if it gives the whole picture. The inference is that it is best to assume that fathers generally should not be trusted to care safely for their children. At least, the report implies, major measures of assessment and monitoring should be put in place. Remember of course - in our present culture - that children do spend many more woman-hours with their mothers and other female carers. But it would still be logical to be at least equally concerned with this other report: In the same decade as the 29 child homicides by non-custodial fathers, some 800 children died at the hands of their resident parent or carer (ie mostly mothers and female carers). Karen Woodall's referenced blog expands on this: Power and control; breaking the cycle of silence ... the importance of precisely accurate thinking has been underlined by some commentators there too! The figures 29 and the 800 are from quite different studies that are not directly comparable. The figures cannot be taken to mean e.g. that women are or are not more risky to children than men are, without other factors taken into account. When facts are about something as emotive as child homicides, it is easy to lose sight of (ie stop thinking) our concern to safeguard children from all forms of harm.  NO child's death (or harm or misery) at anyone's hands is acceptable. If that is really what concerns us, then we need to make sure we know of ALL the people and places that they are at risk, not just take sides and wade in with our metaphorical guns blazing like we're in some B movie of goodies and baddies.

Gender
Overly gendered approaches may fail to protect children at risk (see Einat Peled's review of abused women who abuse their children). For a properly peer-reviewed and fully referenced paper that underpins that, here is Nathan Beel's (2013) Domestic violence, gender, and counselling: Toward a more gender-inclusive understanding And here is Nick's plea for a wider repertoire of approaches to family abuse than getting fixed on gender. See also the "Difficult thinking" section on gender, and the glossary toward the bottom of this page. There are powerful ways to understand PA / CRC patterns without bringing in gender. See the section some way down in CRC. Attachment theory provides a rich understanding. For example, the Family Court Review in 2011 index (part 1, part 2) was dedicated solely to applications of attachment theory to separated families and their conflicts.

And, in all these emotive areas, we have to know how to keep our thinking going when it gets stuck.

A BROAD SPECTRUM
The place to begin to make more sense of the over simplified picture of CRC / PA above is in the Fidler and Bala paper on CRC (click here). Or the Kelly and Johnson paper that proposes the better name as Child Alienation (click here). This is where the two diagrams above can be found that show a very broad sweep of the complexity of factors in CRC patterns in separated families, at one end of which is a quite distinct picture that gets the PA / PAS label. While the label is useful as a description and door to enter the field, it is not (as they point out) a competent or scientific diagnosis. But then there are many child and family psychiatric “diagnoses” that could be similarly criticised.

With the reservations about the terminology, the literature is still mostly found under the heading Parental Alienation. Gardner’s PA Syndrome is still a useful checklist (see footnotes below). A valid reason for making it a psychiatric syndrome is that, unless it is in the diagnostic Bibles, at least as a relationship label, it will not be taught to mental health and other helping professions. So professionals will remain unaware and it will continue to be dismissed as insignificant or nonexistent, especially in family courts. Those who campaign against PA's existence or importance are even more vociferous against these attempts to raise its mental health profile. Many prefer to drop the ‘Syndrome’ tag, even in family courts, choosing more nuanced thinking about the behaviour patterns in each case in terms of the child’s welfare.

Following Kelly and Johnson and Karen Woodall, Nick takes the broader invitation to engage positively and consider separating couples and families as a separating system in its own right. Usually therapists and the like find their usual remit is to be resigned to working only with the suffering or resulting remnant parts of a split up family, with little thought to influence the whole (eg legal) system around them. To do that requires professionals to work together with family lawyers and court systems to understand and better respond in the UK and Scotland as they have in North America. Hence this web page.

But what do professionals do when – as most extremely in PA – there is little or no chance that the family will be prepared to sit together with you and have a collaborative discussion or use mediation? This professionals' problem is the same as the children’s problem in the middle. We know how universal is a child's wish: 1. to have both their parents love them and accept their love; 2. to not be caught in the cross fire of their parents' conflict. Children are both less powerful and more involved and vulnerable to suffering than the adults and the professionals, so it should be the adults who sort that out. Someone needs to pull things carefully but strongly together.

It would make this massively longer to try to go into the many theories and explanations that underpin the different CRC / PA patterns. Reading this webpage and the linked resources will cover many of them. Attachment theory is worth mentioning. This is a universal picture of close relationships, parent-child and also others too. The life and death function of attachment - linked to sex, reproduction and survival - means that attachment threats and insecurity produce well-known patterns of disturbed attachment. The simplest quickest way to see all of these, and their repair, is in this youtube video of the Dr Ed Tronick's Still Face Experiment. Remember that the same patterns happen when adults also feel they are losing their important secure attachments. So you can imagine a child and a parent generating attachment anxieties in both directions that then generate the powerful alignments found in CRC / PA.

THE CHILD AND SOCIETY
The wider patterns of family life and work are a big factor in promoting conflict before as well as after separation - on top of the simple fact that you don't often get richer by splitting up. There is a huge amount of writing and thinking about patterns and values in society and families in general. For example, how (even more in Britain than elsewhere) women are at home and men work long hours away from their families. Of course a lot of this is also hotly argued about, often from a gendered perspective too. In the UK there is now some progress from the old gender divide of women running the home and men providing at work. Now we think about both women and men caring and providing. But when it comes to separating, the old model still rules - it's residence and access, and the legal and benefits / child support systems rather assume one parent only does the caring. Feminists (and all the policies they have influenced) should welcome men sharing more, but typically they support the woman against the man, and that means the lone mother way of thinking. Karen Woodall of the Centre for Separated Families proposes a "whole family" model instead.

There is a lot of discussion of shared care options after separation. Parents in conflict who divide their child's residence 50:50 by quantity of time, miss the point that it is shared caring decision making that the child most needs, not equal quantities of time and "contact". Even without 50:50, often a child gets more quantity and quality time with their father after separation than they had before separation. And it's no surprise therefore that many safe and loving fathers are not very skilled when they do care for their kids on their own after separation, especially if that is complicated by high conflict separation and unnatural contact centres. Here's Scotland's "Fiona" of Wikivorce summarising some of this thinking:

Equal time shared care is just another thing for parents to argue about and not really about the welfare of children. The biggest obstacle to parents sharing caring 50:50 after separation is the absence of shared care before separation and that is because of the working practices in the UK. Most men (about 90% according to the ONS) work in full time inflexible jobs whereas around 70% of women with dependent children in the UK don't work or work in part time lower paid flexible jobs. Countries with more equal opportunities have higher employment rates among women, more shared care before parents separate and more shared care 50:50 after separation.

"Residence," "contact" and "shared residence" are terms that leave parents with a sense of winning or losing and make it difficult to negotiate or mediate arrangements. Parental Responsibility and Rights means legally both parents already have equal responsibility and rights to carry out those responsibilities. I think education explaining this to separated parents, encouraging them to put the needs of their children first and giving them strategies for dealing with conflict is the way to go.

Karen Woodall does not use the usual assumptions and words. Residence and contact assume from the start that one parent is more important in the child's life than the other. Decisions can be made instead within a framework of thinking of the child and their relationship with both their Mum and their Dad (and others too). What those relationships are like and could become is then the task of assessment and effective family work. Within that approach it may be that risk means that the child's relationship with one parent has to be stopped or kept safe, whereas in other alienated situations it means that relationships can be got right back on track.

After separation many fathers discover how attached they want to be to their children. They may have to learn how to be single parents and do more housework and childcare than they ever had to before. As the figures show, even in together families, it is still women who function like single parents and do most of the "women's work". Men are happy to accept that women are better at it. As long as women mostly do it then of course they will be better at it.

If men clearly get so upset after separation about being left out, the best way to prevent that .. indeed to prevent separation itself .. would be to change things before families split up. Their aim - and indeed the aim of feminists too - should be to make housework and childcare be just as much "men's work" too. Individual men should do this in their own families. Any men's movement should campaign for this, rather than against women. They should push their brothers to see the sense in this, and push government policy to change to facilitate it. This won't stop some post-separation patterns happening - notably alienation - but it would help in all kinds of other ways. Here's a useful reminder of the original aim of feminism from leading women who support shared parenting. It's best to work on shared parenting when you live together with your children. It's much harder to do it after you separate.

THE CHILD AND THE SYSTEM
When conflict rather than collaboration generates CRC and especially alienation patterns, it is the absence of anything better from the adults and professionals, that means the child’s voice in the proceedings may get used as an authoritative choice or decision (not just a voice) - the hierarchy is up-side-down. We all value children having a voice, but we need to find ways to keep hard complicated decisions in the hands of wiser mature adults, especially where parents may have lost that themselves.

Australia has led the way with Child Inclusive Practice (see here). This is a much more carefully developed approach to gathering the child's experience of their separated families for parents and others to carefully consider as they (the adults) make decisions. It is not about the children making the decisions. The widespread mistake - that has enabled CRC and especially PA to flourish - has been in confusing the welcome increase of hearing the child's voice, with using that as the child's choice, and then allowing that to become the adults' and court's decision where parents can't or won't work things out responsibly.

The thing that makes the assessment of the child's voice so difficult is that no child - no one of any age actually - can ever say what they truly think free of context. They will say what they know or imagine is what eg one or other parent wants (or needs) to hear. This context may influence what they say even with a neutral interviewer. The examples Dr Kirk Weir describes here give a good picture of children strongly voicing one thing and then doing the opposite. And of some parents saying they are only supporting what their child wants but then plainly not supporting their child when the child wants something else. Then each side claims they know best what their child "really" means or wants. This predicament rather confirms that children want a good relationship with both parents. And it confirms that children may indeed be influenced by one and/or the other parent - which is hardly a surprise, is it?! But it shows that the children's voice must not be used as the decision making factor in the way that has become common in (what Dr Weir calls) the new orthodoxy.

The transition from one conflicted parent to the other can be quite a tricky thing for a child to manage. Children need to be allowed (by their parents and assessing professionals) to get themselves ready. Karen Woodall describes cases where a child is plainly having a relaxed good time with one parent but, when time draws to a close, they gird themselves up to what the other parent needs them to be: "I hate you" they tell the parent they're leaving; "It was boring / scary" they tell the other. Or they may just not remember anything about their time with the other parent. Karen distinguishes the different patterns of anxiety of the alienated child and of the genuinely scared child. If necessary, questions of risk need the fullest courts and reports to guide safe plans.

But, to repeat here, if there is any valid question of risk or abuse, then it is not just alienation. Pure PAS is defined as resistance to contact when there is NO good reason, when the child previously had a good relationship with that parent.

When one or both parents cannot or will not collaborate over what their child needs, a neat idea that can reframes so much, is that in eg many states of USA and Australia, the rule is that a child's main residence is given to the parent best able to support the child's relationship with the other parent.  Of course any basic risks raised need to be sorted first. If supporting the other relationship were made the priority consideration, then it reminds everyone what a child most needs and wants, and it instantly undermines the usual adversarial arguments. In particular, with alienation, it reminds people to ask and assess as a priority, in what ways a parent has explored and supported this other relationship with their child. Some parents will look very blank at this question.

Collectively, professionals in the UK need to put our thinking caps on and assemble all the best ideas we can (see Fidler and Bala for loads of good ideas - Nicholas Bala is part of a multidisciplinary approach in Canada, something that is much needed but largely missing in the UK too ... there is more of a sense of active avoidance of other disciplines here). Now with the likes of Karen Woodall's innovative lead, we can do better than we have so far in the UK and in Scotland. Given the UK’s welfare state, it is strange that there has been more inter-agency development going on in both US and Canada than here. The legal system is the key arena in which CRC/PA plays out. So the UK’s failure may be because the UK legal systems are far longer established and more impervious to change than across the Atlantic. Of course most family courts and lawyers work skilfully and well to quickly reach the best outcomes in Scotland. And anyway, better than just our thinking caps, let's get our "how to do it" caps on - and learn from those that know how to do it.

But at the Changing the Culture seminar and the BvG case in point, it was shocking to discover that in Scotland any good family law and courts practice was at present more a case of luck and postcode lottery than reliable design. Unlucky families can face a haphazard sometimes very expensive miserable long-drawn-out rather random deployment of powerful legal professions, courts and systems with little or no standardised selected specialisation for the job, training, quality control, options, complaints system, or choice to reliably bring together the appropriate legal people and courts with the children and families who need their services. Family Lawyers do, but Sheriffs, Curators ad litem, and Bar Reporters do not appear to have a clear standardised remit or training or experience for their special roles. Most families are helped to resolve things well enough. But for the high conflict cases not all will get skilled court systems in their neck of the woods. They cannot know in advance what they're getting and geography may limit what is available to them. For them it becomes a nightmare, and the ones who suffer most are their children ... despite the fact that the children's welfare is supposed to be the highest concern of the whole proceedings.

No other state funded and managed system would get away with such an unreliable set up. Who makes the law and oversees the standards for "the law"? Politicians are also often drawn from the legal profession, so maybe they don't see what's wrong? Perhaps they don't feel able to confront senior members of their own profession on whom they will depend on any career they may have after politics? Conversely those leading the judiciary to better developments will find political will and funding hard to secure. It is important that the rest of us do not hold back from clear critical thinking and powerful campaigning. It is good to know that there are forward-thinking, sensible and skilled legal professionals working on this. So let's all work hard to help them. The summary of some good ideas is listed above. The issues are repeated in resources below.

SPECIALIST SERVICE IN AND AROUND COURTS
One of Nick's ideas is based on his own home-spun approach to referrals of children stressed by parental conflict when he worked as a child psychiatrist in Lanarkshire. This is not yet published. It was a version of "working in the shadow of the court" where he created - by preliminary contact with both parents and their solicitors - an informal legally empowered context for meeting with the parents to push them harder to collaborate for the sake of their children's welfare. By getting their agreement to routine summary letters copied to both parents and their solicitors, all were helped by a contrived but real sense of the legal authorities watching how well we all behaved. A key difference in this to Family Mediation is that some informal legal reporting and authority was positively built in. Family Mediation in the UK sticks firmly to voluntary involvement with no reporting; this means that the process is more easily derailed.

In contrast to this minor approach to separated families and in clear contrast with Karen Woodall's approach, Nick notes that there are lots of people involved around family courts who have a plainly partial role. They represent just the child's views or needs, or they represent just one party but not the others. Or they assess all parties, but don't have any continuing responsibility for working with them all. It is then blindingly obvious why there are problems. There is not one person, not one single person, normally authorised by the courts, to carry a role and responsibility to work with all parties and liaise appropriately (with children, parents, court, other agencies) to pull an integrated plan together as far as may be possible and desirable and then make that plan happen. There is an option for a Judge or Sheriff to take such an overall role on in a limited but powerful way - and one or two do, even as far as communicating with the parents by email. But in Scotland most do not do this; in some areas Sheriffs even routinely keep parents out of Child Welfare Hearings!

So where no one has the job of pulling things together, it is absolutely no surprise that everything is liable to get pulled apart. Except of course the children in the middle, the ones we are all meant to be protecting and working for - they may end up being the only ones most wanting to hold a relationship with both parents together yet on their own they're least powerful to make it happen. Of course in many cases sensible family lawyers and others will make the present system produce a sensible collaborative result. But BvG tells you that this is not a reliably secure outcome for all families and children.

Scotland's family courts need a routine service from skilled confident and authorised court child and family assessors / workers, ideally applying Karen Woodall's ways of doing it. With the essential directive requirements of this work included, the word 'systemic' would describe it. These could well replace the present loosely set up and randomly used ancillary legal roles (curator, bar reporter, interlocutor). This might include the reporting so that many other expert witness reports would not be needed. The systemic court / court appointed child and family worker's role would be to meet all parties (both parents and the children) and actively liaise with legal and other professionals involved. This would be to both assess and report, but also to continue to work with the whole family system as far as and in any way possible towards pulling something together. This would be authorised and accountable to the court. The role is not merely that of a case manager. This is skilled work requiring experienced and well trained staff who can engage with people in depth and breadth, providing both confidential and reportable aspects of the work. Suitable people for this job may be recruited from social work, family mediation, couple and family therapist or counselling backgrounds. There may be similarities to the English CAFCASS system, but here Nick is describing a more sophisticated remit requiring greater systemic expertise and creative intervention with standardised standards and training. Again, Dr Roisin O'Shea's podcast of her work in Ireland is very instructive and sounds familiar to us in Scotland and our family courts.

READY-MADE SOLUTIONS FOR SCOTLAND
The most complex family situations, hybrid CRC (mixed patterns including both abuse and alienation)  and purer PA get stuck and magnified awfully in the worst of the adversarial family courts and legal system. One solution might be to have this quickly identified as a complex family situation with serious concern - just as proven risk and abuse would be. As mentioned earlier, the simple fact of intractable high conflict can be assumed to amount to neglect of children's needs and of emotional abuse. Intractability here might mean that the best efforts of a systemic court worker has not managed to pull something together.

With PA itself, it's even more complicated. Alongside the child's vociferous loyalty to the favoured parent that portrays the rejected one as bad for them, research shows clear evidence of how even in the favoured household, there are long-term concerns for the child's welfare. See Fidler and Bala (2010) and the PACT video below for anecdotal evidence. Just as other abuse or risk is attended to as a top priority, so should this longer term one.

So, as well as more nuanced long-term legal changes, any and all these complex intractable CRC or PA cases could be referred for complex family assessment and help from experienced child and family services and teams that can assess and then continue to work alongside the family as well, rather than have the family and the courts run rings around each other.

But hold on! In Scotland we already have a well established alternative integrated child and family justice and welfare system in place ... the Childrens Hearings. Many many years ago the Kilbrandon Report also "changed the culture" where people saw similar inherent limitations of the adult court system in dealing with children and families. This led to the innovative Childrens Hearings system. Click here for more.

The Committee considered that the existing juvenile courts were not suitable for dealing with these problems because they had to combine the characteristics of a criminal court with an agency making decisions on welfare. Separation of these functions was therefore recommended.

Scotland can do a similar much smaller revision again for its family courts where they are failing children (and families) as the BvG case showed. Rather than changing the adult family court system (despite the injunction to make children's welfare central), some simple triggers can ensure the early referral of the families that need it away from failing family courts to the more rounded assessments of a Childrens Hearing. Triggers might be: when a child resists contact with a safe and previously enjoyed parent; when the family court remains no further forward after say a few days in court and after a systemic court worker has also failed to make progress; and when better informed professionals more quickly identify the fairly obvious characteristics of a PA pattern (as well as the more messy hybrid CRC situations).

EMOTIONAL ABUSE
In April 2014 in England the so-called Cinderella law came out. This highlights emotional abuse and makes it a crime that allows perpetrators to be charged for doing it. Some useful discussion was generated. And if it is important to categorise child alienation (or high conflict separation in general) as emotional abuse, then we need to get to know more about that subject. One view is that emotional abuse is hard to demonstrate and evidence in courts - there are no bruises that show. But experts say that it is really quite easy to define and identify significant emotional abuse. Danya Glaser (2002) writes " Unlike sexual abuse that is a secret activity, these forms of ill treatment are easily observable". Here she reports (2012) on whether teaching works. This well-known and gender-biased "power and control" Duluth wheel shows the classic elements of emotional abuse - isolation, coercion, humiliation, intimidation etc. If you take coercive control as a kind of emotional abuse - usually used for adult to adult domestic abuse - we can see there too (e.g. Evan Stark's book of the same name - here's a short accidentally non-gendered youtube of his main thesis) how it greatly clarifies an understanding of what makes violence especially abusive, i.e. more than the bruises. By seeing coercive control as a "liberty" or "capture crime", a victim's ways of coping and escaping can be seen as heroic rather than just self-defence or mental disturbance.

So emotional abuse is an important area to know about. But it seems we do not need any new laws to help us. Here are Karen Woodall and four social work academics and Erin Pizzey, arguing variously against the Cinderella law. What is perhaps new, daringly new it seems, to consider that high conflict separations and child alienation (i.e. without actual other abuse) as, in themselves, significant emotional abuse. Family courts and lawyers tend to presume the awful conflicts that come to them are just normal for the territory - if parents want to pay large amounts of money to lawyers to pursue their battles, then that must be fair enough. But it takes only a moment's thought to see that parents - well, one of them anyway - and everyone around has forgotten the child in their no-man's land, has failed to do what anyone would do for any other emotionally abused child.

No change of any law or system is required. Intractable conflict means neglect or abuse, and these are standard reasons for referral to the local Reporter to the Children's Hearings for the standard processes that ensue. These include a call for reports from school and social work. The Reporter may also be the best person to suggest diversion referrals to any suitable or specialist local service that might be able to provide help that might work away from but authorised by the legal system. This could be the Scottish equivalent of the Australian 'Parenting Ordered Programme' (see here) which brings a degree of legal authority to getting parents to collaborate for the sake of their child. The power and benefit of this idea for many parents, who may not mind fighting forever in family courts, may result from their wish to avoid the shame of a referral to the Children's Hearings system; often this would provide the motivation to resolve things more quickly instead.

This Childrens Hearings option would be a very simple and very logical option that would be hugely cheaper for the legal system. However it would require at least equivalent extra resourcing and training up of all those called on by the Reporter and Childrens Panels - social workers in particular since they would be the routine source of assessment. At present cutbacks and allergic lack of knowledge and skill would rightly be reasons to say no to this otherwise logical proposal.

ALL LEARN MORE
Remember that if the legal system does review and change its functioning then that too will make major improvements on its own. But change in the legal system is not all that is needed. Professionals and others in general also need to learn more about CRC and PA. For a start, let's all get ourselves better informed - read the literature linked below. That's what this webpage is for. Then court-linked and other professionals need to consider how to assess and follow through the work with families and children afresh.

The door of CRC/PA is a good way in to an understanding of the broader major concern and clientele of separating/ed families. Professions need to learn more than they do about the often painful process of separation (and the agencies involved), especially these so far ignored PA patterns. Nick was also previously allergic - it used to simply annoy him that adults and parents couldn't be more sensible and just do what's "obviously" best for their children.

Before the main selection of other resources - and with Berger and Wyse's permission (see more cartoons here) - here's one of their wonderful cartoons. They make us wish that high conflict separating couples with children could be resolved more easily - a custard fight would be brief, messy but easier and cheaper than legal battles. They remind us that separating families is one of the only areas of life which feels too serious for humour.

Mahosadha
There's an earlier and better story of the "wisdom of Solomon" as part of this longer Jataka Tale about Mahosadha. "In this Jataka, the young Buddha-to-be was a wise sage, Mahosadha. He earned the respect of a powerful king, who he ultimately came to advise, by settling a number of otherwise unsolvable dilemmas. In one particular case, two woman present themselves to the future Buddha, each claiming to be the mother of a particularly valuable child whose birth had been prophesized. The Buddha proposed the following solution: one woman would take hold of the child’s head, and the other would hold its feet. The Buddha would mark a line on the floor, and the woman would compete to try and draw the baby completely over the line. The first woman to pull the baby completely to her side of the line would keep possession of the infant. The floor is marked, the whistle blown, and both women begin pulling on the baby. But the real mother, hearing the baby cry out in pain at being stretched in two directions, immediately lets go, opting to give up the child rather than cause it any more pain. The Buddha awards custody of the child to the more tender-hearted woman, and the closing credits roll over a scene of domestic bliss." Here is the full cartoon version of this story, one picture per day - click on the calendar through from 7th-14th July 2010.

THE RESOURCES
So here's some suggested international reading behind Nick's views, starting with relatively minimal amounts and ending with stuff for those who want to know much more. The key references are tagged "BEST".

RESOURCES THAT TAKE A FEW MINUTES

BEST: PACT Video about abduction and alienation - a 12 min edit of a 35 min video showing the more unbelievable bits of PA of alienation happening and tragic outcomes. Better to watch the whole thing (see below).

BEST: Here's Relationships Scotland's leaflet that all separating families should be given. It simply states (with references) what children say they want when their parents split up ... things their parents and other adults and agencies seem to easily forget.

BEST: Here's Channel 4's set of short video views about redefining domestic abuse to include emotional abuse. They show how traumatic abuse is and that it is not just one gender that does it. If PA is emotional abuse - at least of the children - then we need to learn and focus on the non-gendered approach.

Here's a very short story of alienation from BBC Radio 4 - the girl chose boarding school in the end.

Janet Bloomfield's blog here tells of her abuse as a child by both parents before they separated, and her later adult realisation that she had been turned unjustly against her father by her mother.

Brief video of abducted and alienated now grown up daughter, uniquely featuring a little of both parents too. There is much more material on the PACT website (Parents and Abducted Children Together). The longer PACT video below tells this woman's fuller story showing the most painful effects suffered by the children. The commoner pattern of alienation is of mothers alienating their children from their fathers; this woman's story shows fathers can do it too, albeit her father started with the blunt intervention of sudden complete geographical abduction. The downside of this short video (on its own) is that it feeds the popular imagination that it is always men who are "the baddies". If you can't imagine how mothers can alienate and cause their children the same pain, then watch the longer video below with two sons alienated by their mothers against fathers who had good relationships with their children - all in the wake of international abduction.

Here's a 25 minute US TV show that does a pretty good job of covering the main points about PA. It includes the creator of the film: Jake's Closet, a story about PA. Here is the 1min 40sec trailer for Jake's Closet - it is an effective summary of some PA features.

Dr Kirk Weir's Short Guide on Parental Alienation Syndrome

This is a wise un-hyped typically British article - it uses psychodynamic and family therapy ideas. David Pitcher avoids using the term Alienation, yet it is all about working with that as a UK family court social worker.  David Pitcher (2010) ‘Do you see what I see?’ Thinking about contact in high conflict cases in Seen and Heard, 20 (3), pp 38-51, the Journal of NAGALRO.

Paul Bishop's rich account as an independent social worker ascertaining children's wishes and feelings, shows how skilful the worker has to be - and how essential always to consider the child's whole context and family in making sense of their expressed views, wishes, feelings or behaviour.

BEST: Recent UK summary description and research is Sue Whitcombe's article in The Psychologist (2014) Parental Alienation: time to notice, time to intervene.

An important authority on PA (see below), here is Amy Baker is interviewed on a chat show.

BEST: The single best learnéd (ie a bit longer than minimal) paper is this one. From start to finish it is packed with brilliant clear systemic stuff, ending with a series of recommendations for the interagency systems to follow, including the legal systems.   Barbara Jo Fidler & Nicholas Bala, (2010) Children Resisting Post-Separation Contact With a Parent: Concepts, Controversies and Conundrums. Family Court Review, 48, pp10-47.  Read it online here.

BEST: This blogger is anonymous and genderless too. This allows a profoundly caring, neutral and reasonable account from a family viewpoint as it exposes the thinking and concerns behind these out-of-this-world child and family situations that the rest of us - including family lawyers and courts - often don't even begin to take on board:

There are two established English based resources that are a very useful general start for us in Scotland on PA and separated families. Karen Woodall, a gender and family counsellor / consultant, runs a blog alongside many other activities including the charitable "Centre for Separated Families". Her recent visit to Scotland appears above. We await her book because the blog tends to present the polemical views rather than the skilled balanced work method.

BEST: Here for example are four Karen Woodall blogs on Parental Alienation and on differentiating pure from hybrid patterns, and on PA Treatment Routes and Decisions in the Best Interests of the Child - as an example of her approach and thinking published on her blog. chapters for a book she's writing. You can sign up to get notified of new blogs. And her blog about a House of Commons seminar 27 June 2012 (click here) .. she presented there too. She criticises CAFCASS and others who think that child-led decisions are the best way to solve conflictual separation arrangements. Here she contrasts her "whole family" approach to separated families in contrast to the "lone parent" one that dominates in the UK. Karen's keenly awaited book will be out in autumn 2014. Meanwhile here is a comprehensive published article Understanding and Working with the Alienated Child (2014)

Here is a Guardian article (2002) that gives a fair overview of a PA case and context. It’s sadly not that much different ten years later in general. But we now know how to make things different.

Here and here are examples of organisations of fathers presenting their children talking movingly of their experience in the middle of CRC or PA. Short videos like this quickly convey something of children's longterm traumatic experiences like Amy Baker's more research does (see below). With the videos set yourself the hard task (that courts and professionals face) of separating out the valid bits of the "gendered narratives", the "mythical elements" and what is "helpful for improving the lives of children". Consider the wider view that putting any child in the position of choosing between parents at all is always neglect and emotional abuse of that child. Compare the PACT video (next) that is more clearly focused on the children's needs, not siding with fathers or mothers particularly.

Another exercise in separating the good bits and the missing bits is on One Plus One and their Parenting Connection webpages. Click on the 'Get Started' button, register, and you will be taken through really useful video scenarios to learn skills so that you help your children in the middle of separations. But there is no mention of alienation throughout these websites although including new partners and step-parents is very well covered. Great for step-families maybe. But imagine how damaging that ignorance is to children who need but haven't got a relationship with their other parent. Alienation patterns require prompt attention; "wait and see" is very much the wrong advice. So this gap contributes to the delay that lets this tragic pattern become entrenched. Constructive advice is all very well for those that can and do use it, but how infuriating this gap is to parents (mothers as well as fathers) who have been unjustly closed out of their children's lives by a parent who does not begin to see what their child needs, let alone will be motivated to get any kind of help to change. Then the material here tends to prioritise a dominant gendered emphasis, not on children's needs, but on the needs of single parent mothers. Even the videos in the programme portray mothers as the usual residential parent who has to take sensible initiatives to cope with the dim dads. We all want all members of families to be safe and to thrive. We all want what the children want, that is, fathers to be effective and involved with their children. Yet, based on a gendered view of risk (that for sure needs to be attended to), so many well-intended sources of help, like this one, are designed to shape the exact opposite.

Just to remind you if you need a reminder of how messy it gets - how wider legal systems can multiply the high conflict rather than resolve it - here's a mother in a high conflict separation, having successfully stopped her ex-husband's alienation of her from her children, testifying in the Connecticut Hearings on Guardian ad Litem (GAL) and Attorney Accountability (8 mins).

Arlene Vetere and Jan Cooper, psychologists and family therapists, of Reading Safer Families provide e.g. in this commentary a leading UK integrated gender inclusive model and service for all kinds of abuse in couples and families - but probably not for what happens around PA.

PA is not a gendered pattern, but it often gets treated as if it was always Dads who are being rejected. Then the generally anti-men anti-fathers culture of nearly all professional services can shape how they are treated. Read Nick Smithers article "Dangerous feckless and disinterested" on Inside Man about his experiences as a social worker and fathers worker in Scotland. People say the same sort of thing applies in the rest of the UK and in the USA.

Try Richard Warshak's brief overview of parental alienation. His website has much more too: Divorce Poison page. And the Pluto page.

To get the most authoritative, multi-disciplinary and international network and journal, join the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts and get Family Court Review. Costs very little as a student, which you probably are! An important development is the Parenting Coordinator role. And here is a 2011 issue of FCR that highlights attachment-based approaches to high conflict separation.

RESOURCES THAT TAKE HALF AN HOUR OR MORE

BEST: Here is a video (35 mins) of three adults telling the full stories of their family separation in their childhood onwards. In their cases the active alienation (two by mothers, one by a father) is added to big geographical moves or abduction - a more straight-forward step than alienation alone. They tell stories of happy relationship with both parents with no risk or abuse to them as children; then of parental conflict, and of separation. If you don't have 35 mins, click here to watch a 12 mins version of excerpts. The extracted sections describe what is hardest to imagine: the alienation happening, and the tragic long term effects.

The video was produced by Parents and Abducted Children Together (PACT). This is the anecdotal equivalent of Amy Baker's book (see below). The main point here is to validate that alienation can happen and that children suffer long-lasting effects. The strength of PACT and this video is that it is entirely child focused. It is not systemic. It does not tell us the parents' stories and wider reasons. It does not help us know why this happens or how to stop it. But it happens!

BEST: If you can manage the packed fast moving American style of it, this Dr Richard Warshak video interview about high conflict court cases and PA covers lots of ground. Dr Warshak is one of the most prolific and famous American names in this field - here Dr Richard Warshak. That youtube series on Family Matters has loads more.

Dr Warshak's "Bringing Sense to Parental Alienation: A Look at the Disputes and the Evidence* can be accessed free here and scrolling to click on CR27. In the different US culture, this  paper responds to critics like Carol Bruch, who would deny the existence of parental alienation.

BEST: In case you missed it before, here it is again - the one paper to read and re-read. Or their book (see below). Barbara Jo Fidler & Nicholas Bala, (2010) Children Resisting Post-Separation Contact With a Parent: Concepts, Controversies and Conundrums. Family Court Review, 48, pp10-47.  Read it online here.

BEST: Karen Woodall (2014) Understanding Parental Alienation: Learning to Cope and Helping to Heal.

A second good UK resource is Dr Kirk Weir’s writing. A child psychiatrist, he did not start with a view but over many years of providing court reports his experiences influenced him. He presented in Scotland in the Autumn 2011 - Relationship Scotland's (Family Mediation side) and Families Need Fathers organised that (click here for more). Sadly, he has finally retired and his considerable experience is not now so easy to find on the internet.

BEST: This is the US published version of Kirk Weir's main influential work: (2011) High conflict contact disputes: Evidence of the extreme unreliability of some children's ascertainable wishes and feelings. Family Court Review, 49, 788-800 But there's a better UK published version of this work - more open thinking and a good case example - here:   Weir, K (2011)) Intractable contact disputes: the extreme unreliability of children’s ascertainable wishes and feelings. Family Court Journal, 2 (1), 1-8. (The FCJ is published by NAPO).

Based on 58 cases he shows how what a child says may (in these situations) not be what they show in their behaviour when given the opportunity for contact  arranged for assessment purposes with a safe rejected parent. He concludes that "courts might exercise caution when evaluating the views of children and young people in this situation", and emphasises that assessors should consider including at least one observation of the child at a prolonged visit to the non-residential parent. Because of the new orthodoxy some parents may be tempted to misuse their child's right to a “voice” in court in order to achieve their own ends. Practitioners who advise courts may need to be more aware of these difficulties." The paper is clear, balanced and reasonable and gives some very clear descriptions of what the children are caught up in and how the court assessment might help cast light behind their verbal statements.

BEST: … and a new third UK authority ... description and research with lots of telling quotes of parents, is Sue Whitcombe's (2014): Powerless: the lived experience of alienated parents in the UK

BEST: This is the more useful overview of the CRC / PA field as child alienation not parental alienation, and also of broad range and multiple factors rather than just a specific syndrome or disorder).   Joan B Kelly & Janet R Johnston (2001) The Alienated Child: A reformulation of Parental Alienation Syndrome. Family Court Review, 39, 3, 249-266 Sage.  Click here to read it.

Here is a rare UK paper about PA by a helping professional involved with the courts, Tony Hobbs, psychologist, writing about PAS and UK Family Courts (2002). Just as BWS (Battered Wife Syndrome) is accepted in England's courts, so PAS was in 2002. Laws have changed, but the situation and needs of high conflict families haven't.

Like many careful and "systemic" professionals, Nick does not see negative labels as useful. The PA literature often draws powerful parallels e.g. with the psychology of cult leaders and followers and constantly uses very negative and pejorative terminology for the aligned parent. The caption under the PA diagram above is Nick's best effort to describe all parties realistically but more sympathetically. If you want to call the aligned parent something, Nick suggests they may be “overwhelmingly strong personalities” who nevertheless still have that inner core of very low self-esteem that drives their outer powerful ways and effects on others. Nick reminds us that this view does fit with real experience: we do all see families with individuals with overwhelmingly strong personalities that dominate the lives of all around them. Often we will have worked alongside some too.

BEST: Our anonymous blogger has a really fine account of the child's experience of a parent with an overwhelmingly strong personality (using Nick's alternative phrase).

Here is one paper that helps us become more sympathetic.  Alan Rappoport (2005) Co-narcissism: How we accommodate to narcissistic parents. The Therapist (downloaded versions say: “in press”). Click here to read it.

Gudrun Somerland also summarises "Narcissism and Co-Narcissism" well here:

Next here is a summary of the conclusions of Amy J Baker (2007) Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome.

“Beyond the Highroad” is Amy Baker’s paper that covers her book’s suggestions usefully for alienated parents and professionals involved. You need to buy it from her website http://www.amyjlbaker.com - click on "Advice for Targeted Parents" and you'll get: Amy J.L. Baker, &  Paul R. Fine (2008) Beyond the High Road: Responding to 17 Parental Alienation Strategies without Compromising Your Morals or Harming Your Child

Here is an extract of the headings of Amy Baker's excellent booklet for children "I Don't Want to Choose". It's useful for parents and children in any separating family. We need to translate it into Scottish too! You can order that booklet with extra e-worksheets from her website but not from Amazon. http://www.amyjlbaker.com

Dr Roisin O'Shea has dedicated her PhD and her life to working to improve the family court system in Ireland. She had unprecedented access to 1,800+ cases there and the results are very revealing, with many parallels to what happens in Scotland and the rest of the UK. Here's a podcast of her talking lucidly about her research and the Judicial Training she arranged including issues of gender and interviewing children for family courts. And here's an Irish Times article about her work. Plus a shortish video of her speaking at the July 2011 conference of the Men's Support Group in Ireland. And finally, an impressive line up for an RTÉ Late Debate panel discussion (58 mins) on: Do Men Fare Badly in the Family Courts System?

For separated families who want to make sure alienation does not get a grip, try this from Australia. Me and My Kids Click here for a free copy.

In Australia, by the late 1990s, legislation heavily promoted collaborative non-court based ways to manage separation. Here is an early review of the Parenting Orders Programs developed there which are effective and far cheaper than court solution.

Here is a good description of Child Inclusive Practice - but remember that when PA is established, this is not going to work to find the best outcome for the child.

There is a Nuffield report (2013) on: Enforcing contact orders - are the courts getting it right? This gives a picture of the small proportion of high conflict cases, and the infrequent use of penalties for families that don't do what the courts order them to in terms of child contact with parents.

Attachment theory has slowly grown more and more relevance and application in theory, research and practice. It applies to close relationships of all ages. Here is Chris Fraley, one of many good resources, explaining this further.

For the Scottish Government, Fran Wasoff (2007) reviewed a range of comparable international ways of dealing with child contact cases. But see comment in next paragraph about the danger of experts who fail to think carefully enough.

Clare Sturge and Danya Glaser created an Appendix (2000 in Family Law) - it takes a minute to load. This is a kind of check list of what makes an expert an expert on children and families in abusive conflict, someone we (and family courts) can rely on to get the assessments right. Both this and Wasoff's authoritative reviews seem unaware of PA and its importance. The articles presume that the resident parent's relationship and care of the children will be fine and doesn't need attending to. So it remains for us all to continue to critique even the highest expertise in order to further improve it for children and families on the ground and facing courts.

The Custody Minefield (and its App) is a comprehensive resource for all high conflict cases. Here's their recent excellent slide show of issues and relevant case law on family courts and Child Alienation (England and Wales) and guide to their full resources. For now, Scotland can only look enviously across the Border and work hard to catch up on this gruelling groundwork. Or find something more radical ….

RESOURCES THAT TAKE MORE THAN AN HOUR OR TWO

Pamela Roche (2013) Broken Lives Broken Minds. The full transatlantic harrowing story of a rejected mother of alienated children, one of whom gets several (other) hefty diagnoses and treatments for disturbance that only starts after alienation begins. Most striking is how no professional asks the most basic question: What was happening when the trouble started? This book is also important to help counter the ignorance that alienation always means rejected fathers.

In a polarised field, and since we all absolutely support protecting all victims from risk and abuse, to it is important to read and understand both the sides' positions in detail. Here is:
Prof Rachel Pain's (2012) "Everyday Terrorism: How Fear Works in Domestic Abuse", produced for the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action, Durham University and Scottish Women’s Aid

Prof Bala recommends these resources:
Benjamin Garber at:   www.healthyparent.com
And Bill Eddy at:      www.highconflictinstitute.com

Among Bill Eddy's many books on high conflict resolution, this one is most relevant here. It is full of great realistic experience, advice and resilient optimism.   You can get the always updated Kindle version very cheaply off Amazon here.:
Bill Eddy (2012) Don’t Alienate the Kids! Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High Conflict Divorce. HCI Press

Here is the invitation to a Family Law Seminar in Westminster in June 2012 - Managing Cases of Children Resistant to Parental Contact & Alienated Children – International & UK Experiences. Lots of people with expertise assembled. We can hope Scotland will soon catch up and do something similar.

Prof Bala from Canada (the co-author of the top choice paper above), allowed his whole Westminster presentation to be circulated after (with permission to share)  Recognising and Responding to Parental Alienation: Why Have English Courts Been So Slow? Click here to download and view it. Lots of further references in there too.

But you might prefer this version of much the same thing he presented in Australia – the summary is more accessible, and if you click on the title (or lower down) you will find an audio recording of his seminar that you can listen to as well.

The most powerful account of PA to read is Amy Baker's book. This is based on interviews with 40 people who describe how they had been turned against one parent by the other parent. It's not very scientific - meaning that it is a self-selected author and subjects who would be expected to support a biased viewpoint. Nor is it very systemic - meaning that it focuses (like the PACT video above) on just one part of the family / agency system. It does not help you gain a sympathetic view of the favoured parent, and it doesn't think much about the wider systems and what they might do to help. It is anecdotal but still very valid research that gives a full convincing picture from the mouths of some PA children grown up. (Amazon is the easiest place to get it):
 Amy J Baker (2007) Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome. Norton: NY.

Karen Woodall and others who have read it really recommend this “PA bible”. For 260 pp. you pay £53 paperback on Amazon, cheaper in USA. Linda Gottlieb (2012) The Parental Alienation Syndrome: A Family Therapy and Collaborative Systems Approach to Amelioration. Charles C Thomas: Springfield, US But you can read the first 29 pages of it on Linda's "End Parental Alienation" website.

For the most comprehensively up-to-date learning about this field, these are the two books to buy:
1. Barbara Jo Fidler, Nicholas Bala & Michael A Saini (2013) Children Who Resist Post-Separation Parental Contact: A Differential Approach for Legal and Mental Health Professionals. Oxford UP.

2. Baker A,. and Sauber S.R. (2013) Working with Alienated Children and Families: Clinical guidebook, New York, Routledge … This is the first published collection of clinical writings, and the most challenging is the first chapter that sets high standards for how a proper assessment avoids bias.

And 2013 was a good year for PA textbooks, because in December this big expensive one was also published:
Demosthenes Lorandos, William Bernet, and Richard Sauber (eds) (2013) Parental Alienation: The Handbook for Mental Health and Legal Professionals (Behavioral Science and Law) Charles Thomas Publishers.

Click for Douglas Darnall's website: PsyCare / Parental Alienation, featuring his revised books:  "Divorce Casualties: Protecting your Children from Parental Alienation" and "Divorce Casualties: Understanding Parental Alienation, 2nd Ed (2008)"

Joseph Goldberg has coordinated educational conferences and resources in North America for professionals and families, now accessible on the website Parental Alienation Education.

Dr Craig Childress in the USA has done most to develop an attachment-based model of parental alienation. Talking for an American context he uses that kind of terminology and (appropriately) older family therapy models, but it is still really helpful. Here is his website page with a 90 minute video of his presentation on the subject.

Nick Child's CRC/PA Workshop at the DAFT Aspens Derby Day in May 2013. Click for: The Workshop Powerpoint:   "Why do we dismiss Parental Alienation? An unassuming workshop" The Workshop: Full Notes
And the his Plenary Powerpoint & Script includes more on PA too:   "On, In and Out the Box: Big Ideas for Britain"

Here is an article about different ways to manage child abuse best to both protect the child and stop the abuse but also keep families together. See text for the double whammy this implies for CRC children.
Charles Waldegrave (2006) Contrasting national jurisdictional and welfare responses to violence to children. Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 27, pp57-76

Jennifer McIntosh (reported with Caroline Long in 2006) has written about Australia's more advanced approach to child inclusive primary dispute resolution. This helps put our much less developed UK approaches into perspective.

SOME VERY DIFFICULT THINKING

Much of this next lot of very difficult thinking is not needed if we took on board "how to do it" from Karen Woodall. The difficult thinking arises from grim solutions to "stark dilemmas" (ie which parent gets the kids). If you can make a plan that ensures children have some kind of a relationship with both parents, then you don't have to think about such grim or stark matters. So this whole section can serve as an encouragement to learn how to do things positively. Nick looks forward to the day he deletes this difficult thinking from this webpage!

THE STARK DILEMMA - COERCION
In the USA the literature describes how the family courts and a more diagnostic approach to 'PAS' throw up a 'stark dilemma'. That is whether and how to impose or force a change of main residence on the child and parents when the full assessment confirms that the child has been alienated against the parent who is assessed as better able to care for them. The child is by definition in PA occupying an up-side-down place in the hierarchy that is not good for them. Professionals involved in this grim situation have to rethink their basic otherwise laudable belief that "Children should never be forced". In the US they have developed effective but costly programmes to educate and persuade them instead of physical force (e.g. the Family Bridges approach, researched by Richard Warshak; click here for more). Closer to home though, Dr Kirk Weir's work in England employs a much simpler persuasion that also works very quickly and effectively (click here) in the limited context of assessment.

Of course no one wants to further traumatise a child in these already tragic situations by physical forced contact with the scenario of fearful distress and physical resistance to an adult's cold or angry physical force. That kind of coercion is not going to work well. But it may be necessary then to think of skilled ways to avoid that situation and/or develop better methods of persuasion instead .. equivalent to Woodall, Warshak or Weir's.

The best way to avoid such stark dilemmas in Scotland is for everyone to be so much better informed and skilled at assessing and dealing with things right at the start. So, if the Changing the Culture ideas (above) all happen, such awful polarised situations will not have a chance to develop in the first place. Any coercion will be done with finesse.

It may also help if we do think further about everyday coercion, about the universal ways and degrees of force, persuasion and general induction of children into family and cultural norms. We may find a degree of mythology in assertions like "Children must never be forced". We may approve or disapprove of other kinds of coercion too - even if we leave aside old long-settled arguments about physical punishment. Here are some everyday occurrences in any loving family where persuasion and even physical restraint and force might be used appropriately in the healthy hierarchy of family life. For examples: changing nappies, getting toddlers to eat, to dress, to have their teeth cleaned, to be innoculated or accept medication or hospital treatment, to not run in front of that bus, not to be cruel to the pet, not stick fingers in electric plugs, to have to go to nursery or school or hospital (and be left and even restrained while weeping and wailing for a parent), to prevent a child bullying another (see here to be reminded of how children are not all angels), to physically stop a child who is beating up another child in the playground, to do homework or tidy rooms or else get no pocket money or social time etc etc etc.

Coercion of various outright and subtle kinds is a constant healthy part of children's and families' lives.

We don't want grim enforcement of contact and residence in separated families. But we may well need some strong methods of persuasion and encouragement in this far far more significant issue (than those listed above) that will affect children's and families' welfare and relationships for the rest of their lives.

To push this thinking about acceptable coercion further, some loving families bring their children up to accept things that others of us would disapprove. Some children grow up to want to go to church or mosque, or to dress in certain ways according to their family's culture and religion. Other families see it as normal for children to truant and steal or take part in other antisocial things ... even in their family's criminal lifestyle. Society has agencies to intervene and spoil their fun; this coercion will be against those children's express wishes. In some countries and cultures, parents lovingly expect their children to accept arranged marriages, or to endure bloody ritual ceremonial surgery such as male or female circumcision. In one religion parents may prefer a child to die than to have a blood transfusion. All these children really want to do what they believe from their families is right. But some of us have a view that we should intervene powerfully to coerce them onto other paths. We would still try to find ways to avoid a physical struggle, but if that were necessary, force might be justified.

BRAINWASHING
All parents naturally use their children's unquestioning trust, confidence and attachment to them to inculcate encourage and shape them up to behave in what are the family's own 'family values'. Family values are usually within their own cultural values, their own upbringing and extended family and community. Although this can be framed as a confidence trick, we don't think of it as brainwashing because it is what all families do and what children need - it's part of belonging, it is a loving and positive process. Commonly we might see very minor forms of brainwashing when a child is convinced by sustained advertising that they must have 'one of those'. Or that children demand they stay up late or go to a party because 'everyone else does'. The utter dominance of girls' preference for pink just now surely counts as mass brainwashing! But the unquestioning shaping of a child's whole life and values is seen positively, not as brainwashing.

Why isn't normal family upbringing called brainwashing then? Because a healthy family (to our culture's thinking) expects and celebrates their children growing up and developing their own individuality and choices ... even when that might mean major disagreements and conflict between parents and their teenagers in particular. This is love, not brainwashing.

(Actually some authors have more or less proposed that all parenting is abuse and brainwashing - e.g. Alice Miller click here. Another angle on this hard thinking about what matters in children's care and attachments is in Parental Acceptance-Rejection Theory (see here). Their research shows that "negative effects .. [of] .. corporal punishment and restrictive control are most often due to the feelings of rejection [they] produce in children, but not to the punishment or control itself.")

Good parents bear the conflict with their children at the same time as actively encouraging and celebrating their children as they grow into individuality and independence. Unless you remember to look and ask, a key sign of the brainwashing in a PA family is the active absence and avoidance of the parent's enquiry and encouragement of the children about and towards one selected bit of their life: a relationship with the other parent. Reasons given for this omission are often tellingly at odds with everyone else's standards of good parenting. The PA favoured parent may assert their reason for this reverse of good parenting in various ways. They may see it as their responsibility as a loving parent to support rather than contradict their (view of their) child's expressed needs and views. The child's views in PA have been shaped in the first place in various ways by their parent. Conversely, if a child does say they want contact with the other parent, the favoured parent may overrule them stating that they know better than a child can know. See Dr Kirk Weir here for good descriptions of this.

The outcome is that the child gets no sign at all that their main parent wants them to have any relationship with the other parent. The other parent is suddenly to be dead to them (see this blog). The court's more neutral decision about residence is relayed back to the child by the aligned parent who will likely put their own spin on it as proof that even the court agrees that the other parent should be rejected. This brainwashing takes some seeing through by outsiders too - that the presented perfect family is of greater risk of being emotionally abusive, while the rejected parent may be (assessed to be) the better parent. Better or worse, the child still does better if they have a relationship with them both.

So the word brainwashing might fit if individuality is systematically stifled like this by conscious or unconscious requirements and programming by the parents. We all know how adults and children can be encouraged, persuaded, conned, hypnotised and brainwashed by well-meaning or evil others. We don't usually think of families like that, but we do when a young person gets caught up with a gang or some other group. Or if they are taken in by a cult of some kind. There is much evidence of how this is done, and how gang or cult members are affected, freed and repaired (see Amy Baker's book's section on how cults function). There is no doubt that these kinds of brainwashing can be traumatic and amount to abuse.

Nick uses the strong word brainwashing since it does convey the essential element that the other words don't. The other words for persuasion - even the idea of being conned or hypnotised - imply that the person being persuaded still has a degree more control of their mind as they head into agreeing with the persuader. Brainwashing implies that something else more hypnotically coercive and unethical happens that by-passes a person's control or choice in the process of agreement. It's a kind of emotional spiking of the drink. See more on mind control here.

By the way, note that the brainwasher - and therefore their brainwashees - are almost always motivated by high ideals, not evil ones. It is outsiders who see them as evil .. it is the abuse of trust by a powerful adult, the coercion of brainwashing that makes it evil. The child sex abuser genuinely thinks the child loves them and benefits from the sexual activity. The cult leader is driven by a prophetic vision (e.g. Jim Jones's anti-religion of 'apostolic socialism' that led to the suicide massacre of Jonestown in 1978, click here for more). The leaders of Al Qaeda and the suicide bombers they train are dedicated to a holy quest, not an evil one as others see it (click here for more).

Let's think further still of this rare but real example, one that is more relevant to the similarly rare PA pattern too. What do we think about force and persuasion against a child's will in this predicament? ... Professionals assess and decide that a child is a victim of neglect or abuse or at serious risk in their family. But the child has been persuaded by their love or fear or attachment or threats or brainwashing within the family to join in with huge loyalty to fend off the authorised social agencies. Should that abused child be allowed to have their strongly expressed way, or might they need to be rather firmly overruled by others 'who know best' and 'for their own good'? There is a real case of an alienated child whose mother was overdosing him with salt to make him sick to support the rejection of the father. Four expert reports supported the child's powerful rejecting view. Many would suggest that the child's life could be at risk with the father, but here the child was at deathly risk from his favoured mother. Moving the child to the safer parent only partly solves the problem if the child then has no relationship with the unsafe parent.

So sometimes outside agencies do use a degree of force and persuasion with children. Carefully assessed CRC and PA situations may be another occasion for this.

Note also how even quite neutral intelligent uninvolved adults can have their own thinking overpowered by what they are being told. Earlier on this page examples were given of implied final truths about gender, risks to children, unequal access with schools, that seemed fully authorised by research, or children's voices, or idealisms. All were examples of adults switching their thinking off. If this can happen to ordinary mature adults faced with just words on a page, how much more powerful might it be for a child faced with a real loved parent they are dependent on for their life and happiness but who has their own agenda to impose? Call it something other than brainwashing if you want, but it is going to be overpowering for a child.

CHILDREN'S DOUBLE WHAMMY IN CRC/PA
It is a hard conclusion to reach, and even harder to solve. But instead of the battles between genders and parents, it is worth assuming that ALL children who have to choose between parents are in effect having their needs neglected and are being emotionally abused. This is separate from the evidence about children's welfare in the favoured family of an alienated situation. Have a look at this international comparison of responses to general child abuse, about whether it can or should be managed without separating the family members from each other. Think about how this underlines the importance - even when actual physical or sexual abuse has been perpetrated - of how to sustain family relationships at the same time as protecting children and stopping the abuse in families.

Next, think about who should tackle abuse (of any kind), and in CRC/PA too, and how can or should they tackle it? Read that international comparison again. In CRC and PA where the family is already most definitely separated and intent on not collaborating for their children's sake, what can the courts and other agencies do to prevent separating parents reach this stage of enduring conflict that will always entail neglect and abuse of their children's welfare. Once that conflict is established, what can anyone do about that?!

If the one welfare that the children need is X, and X is the one thing that the parents and other agencies cannot provide, let's not be surprised at how unsatisfactory everyone finds this task even if we aspire to make the children's welfare paramount. Everyone will have their own view on what the children need and want. And children in their immaturity are likely to be shaped variously and changeably by everyone's views too. Such flowing partial pictures are bound to present the most complex matters for anyone to assess, evidence and resolve.

Anyway, Nick suggests for the most intractable situations that we may consider that children of CRC and PA situations are neglected and emotionally abused simply because of the abiding conflictual separation. And in PA there is now evidence of added concerns despite living in the favoured family. So there can be a double whammy for some children. They will suffer silently because parents and adults just don't see it. If society does not see this, then we have another situation like we had before baby battering was recognised, and before child sexual abuse was recognised. This webpage is dedicated to improving adults and agencies seeing what these children are facing.

THE GENDER DEBATE ON DOMESTIC ABUSE
The gender debate over domestic abuse is relevant for patterns like parental alienation because real and false allegations of abuse may be brought into separated family conflicts to amplify the alienation. These patterns can be explained without bringing in gender, but gender always colours each situation, while gendered social patterns shape statistics too. While we all want all abuse to stop whichever genders do it and suffer it, the gender differences may require separate services and different thinking for the different genders. But the gender debate rather polarises the field into passionate camps that tend to view any focus at all on one gender's experience as a denial that the other gender may be victims too.

A more gender inclusive humane connection that shared knowledge and experience of abuse might reduce the strident ideological divisive noise at the top. There is overlapping similarity and concern to share in the knowledge, policies and experiences of those of any gender (and children too) who have suffered from domestic abuse in families. A united front by all victims against all abuse is inherently sensible.

To clarify the terminology we use helps clarify thinking and avoids misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict between colleagues in the field. With thanks to Nick and Karen Woodall for their expert guidance in improving Nick (Child)'s equalities thinking here, here is a summary statement of Nick C's position using various gender terms that are further explained and explored in the glossary below:

Gender inclusive thinking recognises that women, men and children can all suffer when domestic abuse happens in families and after separation, and that any gender may be a victim (or a perpetrator). Gender-based approaches are relevant in understanding any gender's situation, not just for women victims. Different experiences for each individual involved in abuse - as well as the responses of society and its systems - include gender-based differences. But many of the experiences of abuse, and of the systems then involved, are similar whatever the gender of the victim (or perpetrator). It would be good to share knowledge and build alliances about abuse that are gender inclusive in principle if not organisationally. This might breed a more humane and compassionate, less polarised, ground-up (not top down), approach to domestic abuse. But gender inclusive thinking must also be gender aware of gender differences in the experiences of abuse and in the social responses and services. Gender awareness may point the need for separate services for different genders around domestic abuse. Gender equality / neutrality / inclusion must not ignore issues of gender awareness of difference and different need.

A Glossary of Some Gender Terms

GENDER EQUALITY: Gender equality means equal opportunity with respect for difference. Equality doesn't mean genders are the same. Feminism is usually defined as women's right to gender equality. Governments and laws are bound by human rights laws to gender equality (of opportunity and rights).

GENDER NEUTRAL: Gender neutral is a term that can cause trouble even if the use is well-intended as an invitation to think about both genders and wider variations too (e.g. LGBT). There are more accurate terms to use in most situations than gender neutral. Gender neutrality does not mean that genders are the same. But gender neutrality does carry an unhelpful sense of differences being downplayed, not recognised - that gender differences are "neutered".

GENDER INCLUSIVE: This is a better term than gender neutral for loose meanings like supporting the use of gender inclusive thinking or language. Thus we want to ensure that we repeatedly present an awareness that both women and men (and children) may be victims or perpetrators of abuse. And to indicate that we should include all genders and categories of people in our talk and thinking and research and policies and services. Eamples of gender inclusion is in the standard "PC" practice now to say "he or she" and "Chair" (instead of chairman or chairwoman) in order to avoid inequality presumptions. Gender inclusion implies a more egalitarian culture but with more respect for gender differences (than gender neutral conveys). Governments and laws are bound by human rights laws to gender equality (of opportunity and rights) ie to being more gender egalitarian and inclusive. Where organisations and discourses are too gender exclusive in their thinking and ways, we would wish to make them more gender inclusive - remembering that gender awareness may require different approaches for different genders too.

GENDER AWARE: Gender aware is a better term than gender neutral for including both genders in our talk and thinking, as well as a better term for adding an awareness that genders are different, that we are not all equal, not all the same. This is especially true when it comes to those who are victims of abuse, and in the provision of services that are gender aware.

Individuals and genders are generally different through nature, nurture and culture. Sexuality (LGBT) adds further to the diversity of relationship patterns too. Victims (and perpetrators) of domestic abuse have unique experiences. Many aspects of that are not gendered, but many aspects will be gendered. If you are abused by the opposite gender, it is likely you will be fearful of all members of that gender. If the policeman is also ignorant toward a female rape victim, that gives her confirmation of her fears. If the policewoman just doesn't believe a male can be a victim of a woman, then the man has his fears confirmed.

So gender neutral does the opposite of conveying the need to be gender aware about differences and different needs. And gender aware thinking about services for domestic abuse victims (and perpetrators) may well lead to separate services for men and women, not just assume that one gender inclusive service can serve both clienteles together. This is what Women's Aid have always held as a core principle - that women need their own exclusive service organisation. To that extent, this is appropriate gender awareness. Of course that principle historically links closely to a strong feminist approach that is not fully gender inclusive or gender aware in its thinking because it ignores and imposes a view on society in general that is blind to facts, experiences and needs about the other gender, men.

GENDER-BASED: This is commonly used in the phrase: gender-based violence. Within domestic abuse circles, this phrase is exclusively claimed to refer to a strong feminist view that essentially holds that women are always victims and men are always perpetrators, and that patriarchal society is the main problem. Even when women perpetrate abuse or murder, this is their only means of defence in an abusive relationship within a patriarchal society that supports male abuse.

Gender-based violence is also more broadly used than for domestic abuse (eg in government policies) to include a wide range of criminal violence. The list is mostly violence by men on women (eg rape, sexual abuse, female genital multilation). The list may include a few instances of male victims too. Nobody could fail to support the fight against criminal assaults like these. Some note how the list of violences leaves out much of the violence that men do suffer.

However strong men consider and purport themselves to be, male victims can (sometimes at least) suffer as badly as female. Leaving aside domestic abuse of men, there are situations that are just as gender-based for men - eg homophobic attacks, homphobic countries (death penalty included), male rape, macho gang street fights and attacks, etc

But the dominant concern of gender-based talk has been for women victims. With criminal violence even with some male victim categories, men are seen more as the perpetrators not the victims, and as less in need, or less deserving, of protection somehow. Men are tough, and big boys don't cry. It is not easy to decide objectively, qualitatively and quantitatively, how much harder it is to be a man victim or a woman victim. But does that rather academic debate matter as much as an agreement that we want all abuse to stop?

When used in intimate partner or domestic situations - domestic abuse was previously called: domestic violence - it is now widely recognised that what matters more than violence is the sustained fear and coercive control (ie a liberty crime, Evan Stark, in Coercive Control, 2009). This is not usually nor necessarily so much to do with the actual degree of criminal harm caused by violent acts. So the correct phrase for a gender-based approach to domestic abuse might be: gender-based abuse (not gender-based violence).

Given the way gender colours any relationship (from the moment of birth ... "Is it a boy or a girl?"), so gender shapes and colours domestic abuse. Perpetrators and victims will use anything that helps their cause, and that will often be a gender-based power or defence. In high conflict separated family court cases, for example, both men and women will use opportunities to win their argument - including the power of getting their children to say things that support their aims now that the children's voice has some power because it is listened to in courts. If you are the resident parent, you will have an advantage that may be considered a gender-based advantage, if the legal and social norms are that your gender equips you best to be the resident parent.

So, to summarise about the term: gender-based, this is a term that should be available to any gender-based approach. It includes a feminist approach, but should not exclude other gendered approaches. The strong feminist approach does powerfully exclude any other gender-based approaches. Gender-based violence may be the appropriate term for the wider field of criminal violence. Gender-based abuse would be more appropriate for domestic abuse.

An Example of Partial Gender-Based / Aware Thinking in Evan Stark's "Coercive Control"
In Evan Stark's book, Coercive Control (2009), he explores the evidence for the prevalence of domestic abuse. He summarises (p 92) "However uncomfortable this may make feminist-oriented researchers, it is incontrovertible that large numbers of women use force in relationships, including the types of force classified as severe or abusive." And (p 85) he says: ""Population surveys identify large numbers of male victims and female perpetrators." Then he says: "But studies conducted at service points show the population in need to be overwhelmingly female." Evan Stark goes on to convincingly explore this puzzle by distinguishing fights, assaults and coercive control (or intimate terrorism) and showing the way violent acts must be understood within their wider context. He argues that reports of hitting by both genders don't equate to more serious abuse, and that a particular kind of coercive control (with or without much violence) is quite specific for how men abuse women. That would be disputed by those who know of men who are abused by women who use both violence and coercive control.

But going back to the simpler puzzle - both genders reportedly use violence, but women use services - it is easy to see how those who see women victims and hold a feminist view will make that feminist gender-based interpretation of this failure of abused men to show up to use services - that men are not as disturbed or in need or needy as women victims. A gender aware view accepts that each gender may have their own different experiences and needs. A (non-feminist) gender-based analysis of men's failure to use services - despite the large number who are "incontrovertibly" known to be victims - would be that services are not nearly as available or promoted (as they are for women victims nowadays). That analysis would also show that those services that there are, are not receptive to an approach by abused men. In addition it is well known that men tend to avoid seeking help (e.g. for medical troubles). Here is a situation where they rightly fear that no one will believe that they have been abused. Thus we have a self-reinforcing circle of factors that is similar to the circle feminists originally identified that prevented abused women from getting help.

There are also reasons why abused women may also hold back from seeking help. Many argue that abused women still don't get enough protection and help, and while abuse of women has not been eradicated, that must be true. Yet there is also evidence - and it is entirely possible that both views are valid - that the dominant feminist-influenced view of female victimhood self-perpetuates a circle of factors by informing everyone including professionals who provide services into the plainly false belief that men can be reliably assumed to be perpetrators, never victims who need help. In addition, where men do show up as victims a strong feminist gender-based view is that the abuse by women is the result of male abuse of the female. Case histories show how awful can be the domestic abuse and coercive control (and violence) before as well as after couples separate. But the failure of men to come for help is taken (by hard feminists) as evidence that men don't suffer like women do. Evan Stark does look further at other hypotheses about why men don't come to services for help, but he doesn't consider that men may suffer specific patterns of coercive control and abuse. Gender-based thinking that is fully impartial and gender aware for all gendered patterns is very difficult thinking to do!

NICK's CONCLUSIONS
If you've read this far, you may be surprised that the final thoughts start quite simply.

Prevention: The best solution with any difficult high-conflict post-separation family situation is to spot and deal with it so promptly and intelligently that it doesn't get a chance to get going or polarised or puffed up.
No generalisations please: Thinking and systems have to generalise, but every individual and family is unique and no one likes being put in boxes.
Adversarial courts: Courts are inherently adversarial. If they can't find more collaborative ways, they are going to make an adversarial situation worse. Childrens Hearings were set up in Scotland to get out of this. Australia has systematically done anything and everything it can to keep separating parents away from courts. But there is always an important authorising role for courts, and family lawyers can often be the best people to negotiate a collaborative solution for their clients.
Remember: Children want a relationship with both parents. Their needs will always be best served by parents sharing the decision-making and caring for them.
Most manage ok: 90% of separating families just about manage separating without coming to court, 10% need a family court's help. 1% need rather more to get it sorted. The 1% and the 10% particularly need improved services from courts and helping professions. Effective efficient services reduce suffering and deterioration, and are also economical. But all 100% of separating families can benefit from new thinking.
Key idea: Where there is conflict, one simple way to change the way we think and decide things for children after separation is to legislate or make a higher priority of the main carer being the one who can best support the children's relationship with the other parent - as long as there is no concern for basic risks, of course.
Wising up: The motivation to develop prompt preventative systems, and the knowledge and skills those systems will require to do that job, arises from knowing what happens if we don't prevent it. We all support prevention like vaccination and car-seats by remembering how terrible the diseases and accidents can be. So Scotland needs to learn what the worst of separation patterns look like in order to prevent them. BvG is a start, but there's more to learn.
Wise wising up: Scotland looks set to sort its problems well if not very soon. But it does need to learn a few more lessons. Wanting to do it all ourselves is not wise. It would be wise for Scotland to use the mature thinking and research the rest of the world can provide us. And practical approaches that work elsewhere. This will help us short cut by decades the suffering endured by everyone and especially the children.
Wise up now: So to avoid CRC and PA, Scotland needs to learn about them and learn how these patterns can be quickly assessed, spotted and managed.
Preventing emotional abuse: Unrelenting conflict between separated parents entails neglect and emotional abuse of the children, whoever may be right or wrong.
Repeating pattern of disbelief: If we sustain an active almost unanimous disbelief in this, the pattern is akin to the disbelief in earlier decades about physical and sexual abuse - and the challenge about what on earth we can do about them. This webpage is dedicated to challenging our disbelief for the sake of the children in the middle.
Mostly CRC is hybrid: Most of the drawn out high conflict cases are a mixture of evidenced abuse and of alienation. They are the hardest to assess and help.
Rare but spottable PA: The pure PA pattern is a rare, equally serious, less complex, and well evidenced possibility in the range of CRC that we all need to be able and willing to spot early. Once established it can show such easily recognised features that the syndrome checklist works (see below). But by then it can be the devil to sort out. To know the full blown picture is to be readier to spot the early signs.
Key features of PA: Unaware and without some hard thinking, we may be bowled over by a child and their favoured parent powerfully convinced of how perfect their family is. The clue that something is awry is that this unanimous assertion is based on a less than convincing absolute requirement that an assessed, safe and previously loved and loving other parent should completely exit from their lives. Contrast how, even when there is real risk with a parent, children almost always would like a good relationship with both parents. This turns out to be true of children embroiled in the PA pattern as well (see Kirk Weir here and Amy Baker here).
Features of any separation: Separation can be the most emotionally heated thing. The couple are not going to be functioning at their best. When hurtful things are said and done, it is hard not to hit back hard using fair or unfair tactics that escalate the conflict further. Saying things to or in front of children is not a surprise. But even so, responsible caring parents realise and return to repair things with a more constructive tone with their children to support their relationship with both parents. If they don't then the CRC / PA patterns get going.
Brainwashing happens: But in unprevented PA a more sustained conscious or unconscious programming happens that the child cannot resist. Even adults may not be able to. Brainwashing can and does happen. Families cannot be exempt. The comparison of any family to the functioning of a cult is shocking. But it helps to bear it in mind as part of a whole range of factors and possibilities.
The concern within: For a pure PA pattern then, the concern turns out to be less for the rejected parent or even the child's lost good relationship with them. The bigger concern is for what is happening inside the apparently perfect favoured relationship, and the long term consequences for the child's welfare and the possibly tragic end of the favoured relationship. See Fidler and Bala here.
Balanced assessment: Where PA has not been prevented, the assessment, decision and ongoing work has to consider the balance of a child's best residence and contact in relation to the pros and cons of each parent's qualities as a responsible carer for their child. In addition, (what may have to be constructively coercive) decisions depend on the options and resources available in a particular area as well as assessing the consequences of each option if chosen.
Prevention: Prevention may largely mean taking separating families as much as possible out of courts where the adversarial process so easily amplifies the adversarial parents. Most families respond to stronger measures and legal requirement to attend services designed to promote collaborative separations eg the Parenting Ordered Program in Australia (see here). But Australian legislation was well state funded to make this happen.
Prevent endless court cases: Never-ending court cases may require prompt effective court management, effective collaborative family lawyers, and readier availability and use of alternatives such as systemic court workers at hand, or referral to Children's Hearings or other external agencies instead. But the money saved by the legal system would need to be transferred for major resourcing and training of those other agencies. Taking the resources linked to this webpage seriously would be a big and relevant step forward for all professions and services whatever happens.
Prevention is better: To repeat, it is much much better for us in Scotland to ensure that all problematic separations and CRC are spotted and tackled early so they do not get a chance to get into their stride. This is not easy since the early days of a separation are when the parents may be most emotionally het up. Legal and other professions must raise their knowledge and skills to reduce the double whammy children may face. Read this webpage. Read the linked resources above.
Imposing measures: Where better resolution still proves elusive - PA may be one such pattern - then there remains a place for thorough careful assessment and imposing measures to ensure that children are protected and cared for as well as possible. This requires much further sophisticated development of knowledge and services than Scotland presently can begin to envisage yet.
Meanwhile in Scotland - and anyway depending on how much the system is changed by the review now happening - a number of specific points need to be attended to about how the courts work, but they are too complicated to go into further here.
Make justice work: As outlined at the start, there are judicial reviews going on to "create efficient and effective court structures" who will then "improve procedures and case management" with more specifics built in. This is inevitably not a fast process but those leading it are largely aware of key issues and international thinking. And there is awareness already building and a readiness to do the best possible within present structures and processes.
The two best papers to read are: Fidler and Bala (2010) here with its last section summary of principles to guide those designing the relevant systems (see footnote below). And: Weir (2011) here for carefully demonstrating key points and case descriptions in a more UK context.
Nick suggests five levels of help that CRC / PA families may find helpful from helping professionals (other than legal, that is). These are:

THE TEST

The test of any future system is simple - much simpler than the complexity above. It will be in how the system as a whole responds in theoretical trial or actual practice to a difficult case, a case that of course none would know about in advance. And pure PA would be the best test case.

Within weeks (not months) of legal or other agencies involvement with a separating family someone will reliably spot the signs of more serious likely enduring conflict and failure to prioritise their children's welfare ie CRC or PA.
Others will know what that means.
Courts will be extra alert and ready to promptly obtain specialist assessment and appropriately make clear orders, and follow them through.
All will spot when children are inappropriately having their voice made into choices.
All will spot when parents or other adults' discourses or rights are dominating decisions and plans rather than the child's welfare.
New effective differential and integrating work by systemic court / appointed workers will be used.
Sometimes this will entail that both resident and non- resident parent's parenting qualities will be properly assessed and decisions imposed.

FOOTNOTE ON PAS - WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

Richard Gardner's still widely used but controversial definition of PAS is of eight features presented by the child. PAS has now been turned down as a child psychiatric diagnostic label in North America. If the alienation has a reasonable cause (e.g. evidenced abuse), it is by definition not PAS.

A campaign of denigration and hatred against the targeted parent;
Weak, absurd, or frivolous rationalizations for this deprecation and hatred;
Lack of the usual ambivalence about the targeted parent;
Strong assertions that the decision to reject the parent is theirs alone (the "independent-thinker phenomenon");
Reflexive support of the favored parent in the conflict;
Lack of guilt over the treatment of the alienated parent;
Use of borrowed scenarios and phrases from the alienating parent; and
Denigration not just of the targeted parent but also to that parent's extended family and friends.

See here for more on PAS and controversies about it. Grades of mild moderate and severe PAS are unclearly defined. But mild is obvious enough and very easily cured: reassurance of a parent's unjustified fear of completely losing residence is enough to dissolve the PAS syndrome.

FOOTNOTE ON PRACTICE AND POLICY

Nick's summary of the summarising final section from: Barbara Jo Fidler and Nicholas Bala (2010) Children Resisting Post-Separation Contact with a Parent: Concepts, Controversies, and Conundrums. in the Family Court Review, 48, pp10-47 (See here).

1 Prevention: Education before having children and after separation.

2. Education and standards for professionals: Legal and mental health require initial and continuing training in high conflict cases to avoid enmeshment with clients. Best practice guidelines helpful.

3. Early identification, screening, triage, and expedited process: Unanimous agreement for early response to high conflict cases, including intimate partner violence. Later interventions waste resources and can escalate polarisation. Voluntary methods best. Court ordered assessment if needed should be done quickly (less than 8 weeks) and forward planning details clear (e.g. who and how reports are shared).

4. Detailed and unambiguous parenting plan orders.

5. Early and vigilant case management by one judge: The best resolution of mild and moderate cases is by judicial case management.

6. Effective enforcement of all court orders: Given the difficult personalities involved, judiciary must follow through on their orders. In severe cases, change in custody may be needed.

7. Improving professional collaboration:   Legal and mental health professionals need to remain truly open-minded to each other's ideas. Space for discussion and disagreement required.

8. Judicial control after a trial: In some cases judicial control is needed beyond the court decision.

9. Further development of clinical and educational programs and interventions:   Decades of experience - this is not a new problem. Further development of models and strategies needed.

10 Better access to services: To ensure that a few families don't take up (and not benefit from) disproportionate amounts of services. Best services need to be honed and made available in all areas.

11. More and better research: But aggregate research won't give answers for particular cases. The decision to take no action (e.g. leaving an alienated child in the care of a disturbed parent) also needs to be researched and justified.

   SAD FOOTNOTE ON HELP FOR THOSE COPING WITH CRC / PA NOW

The general message of this webpage is about improved understanding of CRC/PA with a view to improving the system in the future. It has not been geared to helping children and families already stuck with a CRC or PA situation cope within the present system. Some of the links for parents will help a bit. Sadly, a bit of help may be the most that can be expected just now.

When it comes to questions of who in Scotland's system right now knows about CRC and PA and can help right now - as family lawyers / courts / other legal roles, expert witnesses, experienced counselling or therapy - the answer seems to be very disappointing. If you are lucky enough to be served by particular Sheriff courts in particular areas (ie Glasgow), you might get more proactive help than elsewhere. Until Nick is advised otherwise, he has no confirmed named family lawyers or expert witnesses who are known to have a special interest and expertise in CRC and PA - though of course many are dealing with it and recognise the pattern without its usual name. There is no one in Scotland close to offering a service like Karen Woodall offers.

Women's Aid are best at supporting those (women) who have good reason to fear their ex-partners. Families Need Fathers Scotland provide as much support and guidance as they can to those (not just fathers) who struggle to keep a relationship going with their children after separation. There are several agencies involved in a minor way on the sidelines - eg social workers, family mediators, contact centre workers. They may be supportive and aware of the complexities, but they don't have the role or power to work proactively with all sides of a family, let alone to make the wider system different for the most difficult cases.

Nick has very limited experience and availability as a family therapist. There are very few family therapists in Scotland and none others with this specialist interest. What little he has done has taught him a lot and shown how hugely time and energy consuming the work can be .. of "leaving no stone unturned" within the uninformed legal processes, and in the slow years of what to do while you await your children maybe thinking afresh about their alienation from a previously valued parent. Unfortunately turning over every stone mostly seems to confirm the limits of what can be done. Hence the focus on wider changes in the system. On the way to being even more retired, Nick is not able to offer that kind of enduring support work, nor to be an ordinary expert witness, nor to do what Karen Woodall does.

The resources above include lots of supportive guidance and encouragement for the absent parent that the long patient wait is worth it, that children can and do grow up and think for themselves and remake contact with their missing parent. Children then benefit from knowing that their missing parent kept faith, did not give up on them, was not the person they were told about, kept things that showed this through the years, and did all they could do to be there for them through the years. The saddest long-term consequence of all is that, added to the lost years of relationship with the absent parent, the grown up child (when they realise how they had been fooled) may face the loss of trust and faith in the previously favoured parent for the rest of their lives. If those parents who abduct or alienate their children knew that this can be the end result, they might choose a path from the start that is better for everyone.

Nick considers his energy is best spent on raising awareness (ie this webpage, some workshops), and promoting the need for legal and other professions stepping up to these jobs with new understanding on board. He is active in this networking project. He implores younger (and fitter!) fellow helping professionals of all kinds to learn and take on this work. As we learn more, this will become both a very satisfying field within which to help (courts and) children and families better, and also one where you can earn a living (while massively reducing the amount that everyone presently has to pay for legal and other ineffectual services in the most difficult cases). In particular Nick aims to gather a handful of professionals (of any kind) who would be interested to be trained up by Karen Woodall. Please do contact him via the contact section above.

FOOTNOTE ON WHAT HELPING PROFESSIONALS CAN OFFER THOSE COPING WITH CRC / PA

1. SIMPLE THERAPEUTIC SUPPORT AND VALIDATION
Don’t dismiss and turn CRC PA clients away like Nick might have done in the past. Just to be heard and validated and supported (ie not as someone needing therapy even!) would be hugely valued by those lost in space. Through this work, the professional will learn more anyway. But normally clients should expect their helping profession to know more than they do already. This is likely to be with just one client member of a family.

2. USUAL COUNSELLING OR THERAPY
Of course helping professionals might use any of the usual skills that might help a client. However this can sometimes invalidate by treating the problem as if it is significantly inside the client. Validation would be much more therapeutic. This is likely to be with just one client member of a family.

3. CRC / PA INFORMED PARTIAL SYSTEM WORK
The professional who has studied the resources on this webpage will see that there may be active strategic work to be done with their client. This is likely to be with just one client member of a family. Steps taken outside the sessions may be more than many professionals would consider to be ethical or within their remit. It requires considerable care, supervision and thought, especially if you have no contracted role or impartial relationship with the whole family or situation. Two kinds of work are possible:
a) On the continuing legal processes and linked other agencies (write letters / reports, liaise with lawyers, expert witnesses, maybe even the wider family).
b) On patient maybe minimal long-term steps toward future planning to prepare, sustain, sensitise, encourage and await the return of independent thinking to your alienated children and maybe a relationship with them.

4. KAREN WOODALL’S PROACTIVE WHOLE FAMILY WORK
This approach takes the whole thing to a massively different level. It is a work in progress. Her book is now available. Karen Woodall's approach is to work with a family case through courts dealing with their high conflict separations of all kinds (including all mixes of abuse and alienation). She gets alongside all family members, children, mother, father – and any other parties too - on the way to establishing the best relationships the children can have with both parents. She does not talk of residence and contact, but of relationships. Her highest concern is the children’s welfare, not the parents. There are similarities to old-fashioned family therapists in building an alliance with everyone and heading in a direction they want but may not like. This requires much more authority and persuasion than most professionals nowadays feel comfortable with. But this is what is needed - it is the most developed version of what Nick says is the role of someone who is authorised to pull all parties together into some kind of plan focused on the best for the children. Any profession or professional who thinks they have what it takes, should take their lead from Karen Woodall. In Scotland, any professional interested in learning more about this, please contact us (use the contact box above).

5. WORKING WITH SEPARATED FAMILIES IN GENERAL
Any kind of learning and working with high conflict separated families leads to fresh ideas for working with separated families in general. Again professionals may need to claim more directive skills – stretching and including therapeutic skills, to contracting with separated families (while seeing individuals as part of a clear and coordinated process), to writing to convene joint meetings, to chairing them (which is not therapy), and then writing to summarise them with copies to all involved. Therapists would naturally charge more than for a usual session (given the deskwork required). But a big fee for a therapist would still be much less than lawyers, and results will show how much more effective various professions and practitioners are.

FOOTNOTE ON HUMAN RIGHTS & THE STATE'S POSITIVE OBLIGATIONS

The Scottish Child Law Centre emphasises (about Parental Rights and Responsibilities) that: "[The law] recognises that parents have responsibilities towards their children, and that those responsibilities exist for the benefit of the
children, not the parents. [The law] gives parents rights which are really the powers they need to carry out those responsibilities. They are given to parents so that they can give their children the care and guidance they need to grow up happy, healthy and well cared for."

So the Scottish law is perfectly adequate in enabling cases of high conflict separations with children in the middle to be dealt with appropriately ... if only we can overcome the widespread lack of understanding that leads to reliance on old ways, myths and ideologies.

Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) address English law, but the principles are similar for Scottish law. They make it clear that under the Children Act 1989 there, contact is expressed as a right of the child. Liberty also makes clear that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has recognised contact as an element of a parent’s family life.

There are circumstances where the State is under a "Positive Obligation"; a duty to do something in order to protect and promote these rights. Some separated family situations may well be situations that call for the State to take such action. Because both children and parents also have rights to contact and family life, positive action may be required to protect those rather than give up on them without trying ... especially when one parent may have done nothing at all to warrant the loss of those rights and where it would also be in the child's best interest to preserve and protect them. Here's what Liberty's expert human rights lawyers have to say on the matter of Positive Obligations:

[ECHR] Article 8 and the other qualified articles are largely concerned with preventing the Government, the police or other state bodies interfering with people’s rights. They are negative obligations in that they require the State to refrain from taking certain action. However, there may be circumstances where State is under a positive obligation - a duty to do something in order to protect or promote your rights.

In order to determine whether such a positive obligation exists, consideration must be given to the fair balance that has to be struck between the general community interest and the interests of the individual. Because a Positive Obligation will require the State to take active measures or steps, it will always be much harder to argue that the State is under a Positive Obligation than under a negative one. Examples of where courts found that a positive duty exists include: ..    X and Y v Netherlands (1985) where the ECHR held that the Netherlands should have taken steps to protect the applicants from sexual assault by their parents, as this assault was a grave breach of their right to respect for their private life.

In Scotland, it seems that some lawyers tend to assume that the law fully complies with the ECHR, and that there's really no need for them to look any closer at the ECHR itself (or the adopted United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child). It's a problem because the (then) existing legislation was amended to
make it compliant with EHCR. However there were no radical changes to the legislation (that the legal profession were already used to dealing with). So although these changes were meant to reflect the important step away from parents having rights; to them having responsibility to first promote and protect the rights of the child, lawyers and courts have never really changed their operational mindset. As Nigel Fielding, Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean (Research) at The University of Sussex, suggested (in BBC Radio4's Thinking Aloud at 10mins into it) - perhaps with particular relevance to Scotland where there a plans to involve the legal profession even more with additional training (for safe-guarders and bar reporters): "The problem is that studies of training in criminal justice professions show that the effect of training is short lived. It is the effect of occupational culture which takes over once you're on the job."

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