High-Conflict Separations and Differentiated Professional Responses – From Confrontational Interaction to Post-Separation Violence and Stalking

Figures & data

Table 1. Characteristics of three types of high-conflict separations.

	Features of the situation	Parents’ actions	The child’s role	Typical services offered
CONFRONTATIONAL INTERACTION	- Prolonged disputes related to the child’s custody, sustenance, and living - Parents’ inability to collaborate and to look at the situation from a child’s perspective - Unprocessed separation/divorce	- Polarized parental thinking and actions - Inability to value the other parent’s post-separation parenthood	- An object of post-separation parental efforts	- Low-threshold services for divorced/separated families
EXACERBATION OF COMPLICATED PSYCHOSOCIAL PROBLEMS	- Pathological conflict related to one parent’s or both parents’ social and health problems - Emergence of traumatized experiences related to intimate relationships, separation, or a parent’s personal history	- One parent’s or both parents’ litigations and re-litigations - Invalidating the other parent’s new partner/family - Separation-instigated violence as a reaction to disputes	- A mediator and an ally between and for the parents	- Specialized social and health services
POST-SEPARATION VIOLENCE AND/OR STALKING	- Fixation with the ex-partner - Desire to seek revenge and control over others - One parent (and the children) are fearful of the other parent - Gendered violence - Can involve a risk to commit homicide or child abduction	- One parent’s coercive and controlling behaviors toward the other parent - Different forms of repeated violence and threats of it - Parental alienation as a form of violence	- A means of perpetrating violence, and a target of violence	- Protective and securitizing services

Table 2. Responses and interventions in high-conflict separations.

	Professional approaches	Parenting possibilities	Child–parent relationships	Follow-up procedures
CONFRONTATIONAL INTERACTION	- Mediating methods - Strengthening child–parent relationships - Trauma-informed approach - Family services and family law procedures	– Possibilities for parallel or co-parenting	- Supporting the child’s contact with both parents	- Evaluating the quality of parenting from the perspective of the child’s wellbeing and comfort
EXACERBATION OF COMPLICATED PSYCHOSOCIAL PROBLEMS	- Preventing and minimizing the harm for the child - Evaluating the need for child protection services - Trauma-informed and/or therapeutic approaches - Family law and/or criminal law procedures	- Possibilities for parallel parenting - Evaluating both parents’ access to the child	- Evaluating the safety of child–parent contacts - Evaluating the need for limiting the meetings with the unsafe/abusive parent	- Evaluating the children’s well-being and the services used; do the parents or the child need some extra support?
POST-SEPARATION VIOLENCE AND/OR STALKING	- Child protection orientation from all professionals - Securitizing the child and the abused parent - Trauma-focused work and therapy - Family and criminal law procedures	- Ensuring safe parallel parenting - Suspending the abusive parent’s right to access the child	- Limiting or suspending meetings/contacts with the abusive parent - Strengthening the relationship with the safe parent	- Continual, systematic multiprofessional risk assessment and monitoring