Child Consultant
What is a Child Consultant? A Child Consultant is defined as a child centered, family focused intervention role that is particularly important to families who are attempting to make decisions that include children post separation and divorce. The Child Consultant provides a safe and developmentally appropriate way to include children’s input so that parents and other third party decision-makers can consider children as part of the process vs. objects of discussion. The Child Consultant is trained in specialized approaches to working with children and views children as part of a broader family system.
Referrals
Child Consultants may be requested by parents, lawyers, family mediators, arbitrators or Judges. To make a referral each parent needs to contact my office at: 403-228-0011 and provide some basic demographic information prior to any meeting times being set.
Process
- ChildConsultants meet with the parents individually first in order to learn about the child from each parent’s perspective.
- Each parent is requested to bring their child/ren to a session with the ChildConsultant at least once.
- Each child’s session is 45-50 minutes in length (direct time) and the Consultant will take 10-15 minutes after the time spent with the child recording information from the session.
- The Child Consultant may need to see the child/ren more than 2 times depending on the child’s temperament, personality and/or age or request of the child. This information will be shared with each parent after the 2nd meeting with the children and any additional sessions can be set at that time.
- After meeting with the child(ren) the Child Consultant will call a meeting with the parents (together or individually) to provide verbal feedback. This meeting could also happen at a Mediation session or at a 4-way Lawyer meeting.
- There are times parents need to have the feedback written in a report as a Judge may have provided a Court Order to hear directly back from theChild Consultant. The Child Consultant will share the contents of the report with the parents, but she will provide the hard copy of the report directly to the court via the parents’ lawyers.
Goals of Meeting with Children
- Gain an understanding of the child’s view of his/her family and generally his/her relationships with important people in his/her life
- Provide the child with basic information about the process of separation and divorce and the roles of various helpers involved
- Explore the child’s perspectives and experiences
- Identify what is going well for the child and what is not
- Identify any specific needs as represented by the child
- Provide the child a safe space to express thoughts/feeling he/she may otherwise be unable to express to a parent in case of hurting a parent’s feelings
- Identify coping skills utilized by the child
The Child Consultant does not place children in the middle of their parents nor does she place the child in the position of being a decision-maker.
Usefulness of Gaining the Input of the Child
Most parents are not aware that children have a legal right to be asked about their thoughts and feelings related to legal matters that affect their lives and therefore parents are adhering to providing their children the right to a voice by using this service. Children have unique perspectives and are an intricate part of the fabric of their families. Gaining the input of children is an important consideration in decision-making as children provide a greater context to the issues at hand.
Although parents often think they know what their children value and think about, it is often through the process of talking to someone outside of family that a light is shed on a critical issue for a particular child. Each child is different and parents may be able to make very small adjustments/decisions that make a very big difference to one or more of their children if they hear from their children through a Child Specialist.