Parent Coordinator

What is a Parent Coordinator?

According to the American Psychological Association, "Parenting Coordination is a non-adversarial dispute resolution process that is court ordered or agreed upon by divorced and separated parents who have an ongoing pattern of high conflict and/or litigation about their children (Coates, Deutsch, Starnes, Sullivan, & Sydlik, 2004; Deutsch, Coates, & Fieldstone, 2008; Kelly, 2002, 2008). The underlying principle of the Parenting Coordination intervention is a continuous focus on children's best interests by the Parenting Coordinator (PC) in working with high conflict parents and in decision-making. Parenting Coordination is designed to help parents implement and comply with court orders or parenting plans, to make timely decisions in a manner consistent with children's developmental and psychological needs, to reduce the amount of damaging conflict between caretaking adults to which children are exposed, and to diminish the pattern of unnecessary re-litigation about child­ related issues. Parenting Coordination is appropriate pre- or post-decree, though it is most widely used as a post-decree model of intervention for parents who have demonstrated an inability to resolve their disputes through other dispute resolution and adversarial processes such as mediation, initial settlement conferences, and custody evaluations.  Recent research provides some preliminary evidence of the benefits of Parenting Coordination for high-conflict families and for the courts (Henry, et al., 2009; Lally & Higuchi, 2008; Scott et al., 2010). 

Who is our Parent Coordinator?

Jennifer Graves brings years of experience as a domestic attorney and guardian ad litem to her work as a parent coordinator.  Jennifer is specifically trained to do parent coordination, and works hard to make sure that all the parties in a custody dispute feel helped and heard. 

If you have questions about using or obtaining a parent coordinator in your case, call us at (636) 797-3004.