Schools and psychosocial professionals were facing an increased trend of children being victims of their parents’ high conflict separation and in some cases leading to parental alienation. Through the Matthew’s project CSCF provided an intensive professional training from the UK experts in the field.
The training was held on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of September 2021 at San Antonio Hotel. The forty-seven participants who attended the training were coming from multidisciplinary backgrounds – therapists, social workers, psychologists, and guidance teachers. The trainers, Nick and Karen Woodall who are psychotherapists and parental alienation experts flew over from the UK to deliver this training. The training was a mix of theory and experiential workshops addressing themes related to understanding the children who are being alienated by one or both parents and approaches the psychosocial professionals need to take focusing on the children’s wellbeing rather than that of the parents.
The participants’ feedback was very positive and insightful. Here is a sample of their feedback:
“Very useful to my practice; I will adopt some principles, approaches, and strategies in my work with child “
“Interesting but our judiciary setting does not permit any of the principles, approaches, and strategies presented by the trainers”
“I have understood the difference between an Alienated Child and an Estranged Child.”
“I will give importance to the need to remain curious and understand the child’s world”.
“More confidence to be curious & backed up “signs/symptoms” of parental alienation in children”.
“The importance not to rush on decisions making and to take decisions collaboratively”.
“Further networking with the Family Court, which will lead to smoother engagement with clients/families in parental alienation”.
“It would be good to have common guidelines on how to work with this client group”.
Following this training the trainers collaborated with a local expert, Claire Francica to mentor a multidisciplinary core-group who attended the training, in devising common guidelines for the psychosocial professionals working with children in schools. Another set of guidelines was created for schools to support the management and educators in identifying signs of parental alienation and being equipped on how to deal with the family (parents and children) in order not to support this alienation through their actions, decisions and approach.
