Divorce & Custody: A Model of Care and Compassion
Learning to Co-Parent with Grace & Humor
Divorce & Custody: A Model of Care and Compassion
Divorce & Custody: A Model of Care and Compassion
Every family struggles with the daily stresses of family life. The modern family life is increasingly complex. Marriage and child rearing are complex life tasks, and families must adapt to many changes in the course of normal life.
At times, these changes involve divorce and shared custody of children. Every parent wishes to protect their children from the stress of these changes. Parents often seek professional advice on these complex issues. Parents, lawyers and arbitrators seek guidance on child development, on children's emotional needs during divorce, on best methods to share custody and on how to co-parent with grace and humor.
Dana Dean Doering, ARNP, is well experienced in child growth and development, family systems, effective parenting practices, expert witness testimony and Parenting Coordination. Dana brings best practices and current research in divorce, parenting and shared custody to bear on each and every case. She has worked repeatedly with difficult and/or precedent setting types of cases, both directly by court appointment, and at the request of individual families. Courts and families often seek determination of the best interest for their child or children. Special areas of interest include parent-child reunification, interstate jurisdiction issues, and parental estrangement and parental estrangement and alienation.
We also enjoy working with families wanting creative and customized shared parenting arrangements. Dana prefers to work with families seeking a peaceful resolution of conflicted opinions as they combine personal preferences and intuitive understanding with the needs and best interests of their children. We are glad to work with families just starting on this journey to peaceful resolution.
Families can at times face exceptional circumstances. Enhancement of effective parenting practices, custody and divorce determinations, guidance to educational decisions and even expert witness testimony can be required to accomplish a parent's goals and to protect a child's best interests. Dana has worked repeatedly with difficult and/or precedent setting types of cases, both directly by court appointment and at the request of individual families seeking determination of the best interest of their child/children. Dana often works on the leading edge of child development and family law. She works with families to build creative thinking and peaceful resolutions from conflicted opinions as parents combine personal preferences and intuitive understanding with the best interests of their own children.
Parenting Coordination has set a new standard for collaboration in divorce and custody. We strive to bring this new model of care and collaboration to every family during these times of stress and change. Dana has expertise in multiple areas of child assessment, family counseling, parent evaluation, high conflict custody work and forensic clinical evaluation. Her forensic training began in 1996 while she was in mentorship with Dr. John Dunne, child psychiatrist and expert in the interface of child mental health and family practice law. Her training has continued with additional post graduate training. Her interest in child development and the accumulation of expertise acquired in 45 years of practice led Dana to specialty training in parent-child reunification, Parenting Coordination and family conflict resolution. She is a full member of the AFCC, Association of Family Conciliation Courts.
Children of all ages, child to adult, need to feel that their family is intact, even if marriages at times are not. It is possible to achieve a happy and successful co-parent relationship following divorce, and to give this gift of wholeness to your children for a lifetime.
We are proud to bring this new model of care and compassion to your family and children.
Member of Washington Chapter: wa-afcc.org
Member of International AFCC: afccnet.org
Reunification counseling is a highly specialized intervention. It serves parents and children who have become estranged from one another.
Reunification efforts, subsequent to a child’s prolonged absence from a parent, should be undertaken with providers with specialized expertise in parent-child reunification. Reasons for reunification are many and can include absences due to geographic distances, as well as more complex issues such as parental alienation, substance abuse, mental illness, mental health issues, violence, abuse or incarceration. A first step is to differentiate between realistic estrangement and parental alienation, and then adapt a specific treatment plan to focus on the needs in that particular situation.
A number of models of intervention exist. They reach consensus on critical factors, such as allowing the child to have a healthy relationship with both parents, removing the child from the parental conflict, and encouraging child autonomy, multiple perspective-taking, and critical thinking. All models emphasize the clinical significance of the children coming to regard their parents as equally valued and equally important in their lives. The ultimate goal is to develop and re-establish healthy parent-child relationships. It is possible to repair these parent-child disruptions.
Intervention steps can include:
- Initial assessment phase
- Treatment implementation phase
- Ongoing therapeutic maintenance
Reunification teams will likely include multiple professionals- such as the Reunification case manager, a co-parenting therapist and a child therapist, but variations may occur as each family’s needs are taken into consideration.