Multi-Day Family Intervention
The parents agree that the objective of the family therapy intervention is not to determine IF it is in the child(ren)’s best interests to have contact with one of the parents. Rather, the parents agree that it is in the child(ren)’s best interests to have meaningful relationships with both parents. The multi-day intervention is intended to help the child(ren) have a meaningful relationship with both parents. The Multi-Day Family Intervention includes the intervention and treatment occurring over a weekend, and sometimes extending into the Friday or Monday. It involves carrying dyads and triads of the family working together toward the reconciliation of a relationship between an estranged parent and a child or children. There are individual and joint therapy sessions, as well as opportunities for connection during recreationally time. But the work occurs intensively over only a few days. It is sometimes requested that this intervention take place in collaboration with a holiday. During this time, the treatment team would attend with the identified family members and carry out the same process in the identified location.
There are individual and joint therapy sessions, as well as opportunities for connection during recreational time.
The goals of the treatment/intervention are:
- to foster healthy child(ren) adjustment;
- to facilitate the implementation of the previously agreed to or court-ordered parenting time schedule,
- to restore adequate parent functioning, parenting and roles;
- to restore and/or facilitate contact between child(ren) and a parent;
- to work with each parent and their child(ren) towards the goal of identifying and separating each child(ren)’s needs and views from each parent’s needs and views;
- to assist the parents to fully understand the needs of each child(ren) and the negative repercussions for the children of a severed and/or compromised relationship with a parent in their young lives and as adults;
- to work with each family member to help them form more appropriate parent-parent and parent-child(ren) roles and boundaries;
- to correct the child(ren)’s distortions and replace with realistic perceptions to reflect the child(ren)’s actual experience with both parents;
- to assist the child(ren) to differentiate self from others and exercise age-appropriate autonomy;
- to help each parent to distinguish valid concerns from overly negative, critical and generalized views relating to the other parent;
- to assist parents to resolve relevant parent-child(ren) conflicts;
- to improve our parenting skills and family communication skills.
While the parents may have different views about the cause and reasons for the child(ren)’s refusal or reluctance to have contact with one parent, they agree not only to the objectives defined above, but also that they each need to be a part of the solution to meet those objectives.