recommendation 2
more services to both parents to support co-operative post separation arrangements
Too many existing services provide support to one parent to the exclusion of the other and fail to take into account the different experiences of mothers and fathers. Services to separated families should be gender proofed to ensure that they can effectively engage with the different needs of mothers and fathers that promote and support post separation co-operation between parents…
I completely agree with this recommendation unreservedly.
One hundred percent spot on!
Paula
After more than 8 years, nothing has changed , albeit there is increased ineffective propoganda.
Thank you for organising the conference and follow-up meeting. As you know, I am a family mediator and mediation offers parents an opportunity to find mutually agreeable solutions to their future arrangements about children and finances. We cannot claim to be entirely successful at gender proofing, but our aim is to assist both parents to co-operate as separated parents and to put their children’s needs ahead of their conflicts as adults. Please encourage your clients to try mediation. We also have parenting courses called “Children in Mind” which run every 6-8 weeks. If you wish to receive information about them, please email: danjeans@iftnet.plus.com
The Institute of Family Therapy also had a world renown programme of conferences and workshops which you can see on our website- “Working with High Conflict Couples” is on the 30th January 2009. http://www.ift.org.uk
Sorry if this is a promotion rather than a comment, but my mission is to make our services more widely know!
Lorraine Schaffer
Director of the Centre for Mediation and Conflict Resolution
Institute of Family Therapy
24-32 Stephenson Way
London NW1 2HX
020 7391 9150
Definitely! I look after my three kids for three nights a week – including all weekend. I also do all the collecting and delivering of my children, take them on holiday, pay child support, buy them clothes etc etc. But, when I phoned the One Parent Families helpline, they said they were there just for lone parents. What they meant was that I wasn’t the parent with care and so they didn’t class me as a lone parent. All I’m trying to do is the best for my children but because I’m not the parent with care, no one seems interested in helping me. I think this is wrong.
The policy you seem to be advocating is that there should be one overall service meeting the needs of all separated parents. Yet at the same time you recognise the diverse nature of these needs. Although theoretically there is no reason mothers and fathers should be treated differently as parents, experience has shown that reality is different. Take, for example, the suggestion, on this page, that ‘mediation’ is always a reasonable alternative to litigation in the divorce courts. If this were so mediation would be mandatory. But this proposal had to be rejected by the Government as the result of exhaustive research which found that because of the uneven playing field in family proceedings mediation was ineffective – Therefore I would be obliged to advise any father to ignore mediation, if at all possible, in family proceedings.