Mental Health Professionals' Experienced Knowledge of Reintegration Therapy in Cases of Children Resisting Parental Contact Post-Separation (WITHDRAWN)

Background

A small but significant sample of children from separated families, particularly custody disputing families, have been found to resist or reject contact with one parent while remaining aligned with the other parent.

Child alienation has been defined as a child who expresses unreasonable negative feelings and beliefs towards a parent, which are significantly disproportionate to the child's actual experience with that parent. Alienated children have been shown to suffer from long term negative emotional and psychological consequences.

Family courts have seen a significant increase in the number of parent-child contact problems and allegations of alienation and unjustified rejection. To remedy these parent-child contact issues, a specialized therapeutic intervention referred to as 'reintegration therapy' (RT) is typically mandated. There is a lacuna in the research literature on RT or evidence based therapeutic approaches for addressing parent-child contact problems. No standards or practice guidelines are available resulting in varied clinical opinions and multiple service delivery models being implemented. This paper will address this gap, generate knowledge, and develop a greater understanding on how reintegration therapy is understood and practiced among experienced social workers. A further goal is to identify theoretical constructs underlying this therapeutic intervention.

Methods:

Fourteen in depth semi-structured interviews of experienced social workers was conducted. Purposive, non-probability sampling and snowball recruitment strategies were used. Since there are a relatively small number of social workers that practice RT, the sampling frame was open to professionals practicing in Canada and the United States. Professionals affiliated with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Office of the Children's Lawyer, Best Interest's listserv and CASW were recruited via email to participate in an in-depth qualitative interview. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded thematically using NVivo qualitative software, guided by hermeneutic phenomenological principles and McCracken's (1988) Long Interview model.

Findings:

Data analysis reveals social workers consider RT to be a process of reintegrating children with a resisted parent using desensitization and conflict management techniques. A lack of assessment criteria for suitability or assessments was found. Allegations of domestic violence were dismissed if the courts had made a ruling.

Ecological and family systems, attachment and child development were key theories that informed professionals understanding of this dynamic. Only four participants showed congruency in their theoretical understanding of the problem being directly translated into practice via structure of therapy, service delivery models, or therapeutic techniques. Eighteen different clinical techniques were identified in practice ranging from cognitive behavioural to exposure to animal assisted/equine therapy.

Of concern, participants showed unclear differentiation of key goals, short term and long term treatment goals and had no specific indices of success.

Implications for Practice

Findings highlight that this is a growing area of practice that is still nascent. Practitioners were cognizant of their desperate need for more training and research in this area to help these families.  Social workers in practice may benefit from the development of standards or best practice guidelines that provide assessment criteria, differentiates treatment goals with measured indices of success, along with more training and educational resources.