• Several socio-cultural-legal movements in the last 30 years have contributed to the prevalence, focal concerns and ongoing controversies about Parental Alienation.
• Persistent erroneous assumption that an alienating parent is primarily the source of a child's resistance/rejection of a parent (called the dominant Single-Factor theory of PA) is problematic in applying PA constructs in research and practice.
• Four principal factors (illustrating a refined multi-factorial predictive model of PA) are identified as goals for preventive–interventions and are proposed as measures for evaluating outcomes across different kinds of interventions resist/refuse cases in practice.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

• Since 1985, a remarkable amount of misinformation regarding parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome has been published in professional literature and presented at conferences.
• When misinformation occurs in journal articles and books for mental health and legal professionals, readers may want to contact the editor and publisher in order to correct the record.
• When misinformation occurs in presentations at conferences for professionals, audience members may want to challenge the presenter to correct the false statements.
• When practitioners have conflicting opinions regarding a topic, a constructive activity might be for them to write an article together for publication, in which they clarify where they agree and where they disagree.

Key Points for the Family Court Community

• Human beings have a tendency toward too easily accepting findings that fit into their established thinking, and toward dismissing information which does not.
• Academic debate exists within a larger societal framework and is not exempt from the influences of socio-political strife.
• Inquiry errors, misunderstanding of statistics, overreliance on flawed secondary analysis, and other methodological challenges present barriers to the unwary in using social science research.

• Do courts admit expert testimony on parental alienation?
• Do courts rely on expert testimony on parental alienation?
• Are the numbers of parental alienation cases increasing?
• What are the gender proportions of the alienating parents in appellate courts reports?
• Do courts change custody when dealing with parental alienation?
• What are the challenges in this kind of research?

• Allegations of child abuse in the context of child custody disputes pose significant challenges in determining the validity of maltreatment allegations.
• Fabricated allegations of child sexual are a particular concern within the context of high conflict child custody disputes.
• Fabricated allegations have been considered to be a weapon used by a separating parent, to effectively end the child's relationship with the other parent.
• The rates of malicious allegations are nowhere near the reported rates originally presented with the theory of alienation by Gardner and others in the last century.
• There is no reported research that specifically addresses allegations of child abuse within the context of allegations of alienation
• Allegations of physical or sexual abuse of a child arise in only a relatively small portion of cases where there are issues of child resistance and/or rejection.

• Professional risks in an emerging area of practice can be mitigated by using approaches informed by concepts derived from empirical research, professional knowledge, and professional experience, and by adhering to applicable professional standards and guidelines.
• Biases, superficial understanding of the complexity of parental alienation issues and dynamics, and inexperience can lead to inappropriate generalizations about the nature, roots, and remedies of parent-child relationship problems, and result in false positive and false negative errors regarding parental alienation.
• When faced with accusations of misconduct, practitioners should inform the regulatory agency of case evidence and court findings of prior false accusations and malicious complaints, ask the agency to evaluate whether complaints against the professional reflect similar dynamics to those identified during the litigation, and stress the importance of the rejected parent's observations of how the professional treated the children.
• Accusations of mistreatment of children who participate in specialized interventions for alienated children should be evaluated in the context of empirical data on the interventions.
• Outcome research on Family Bridges and Overcoming Barriers found high levels of satisfaction among child and adult participants and do not support assertions that these specialized services harm children.

• Practical strategies for lawyers acting for a client who is the preferred parent or the rejected parent, particularly when the behaviours are just starting.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

• Parent-child contact problems may have many causes. When children resist contact with a parent the multiple factors including trauma, that result in this problem must be explored.
• Assessing the impact and symptoms of interparental conflict and trauma on children and coparents, including emotional dysregulation resulting in feelings of being overwhelmed or needing to avoid is necessary to proceed with a family intervention
• For family intervention to be successful It is necessary for each family member to be able to manage distressing emotions without feeling overwhelmed or numb and to be able to process information accurately. These issues may result in one of the treatment components that can occur before or at the same time as the family intervention.
• Delaying contact with a parent generally results in more negative characterization, anxiety and polarization and is generally not recommended. Instead safe, structured contact to begin the process of desensitization should occur once the parent and child have basic skills of coping with and managing distressing thoughts and feelings.

• Intervention in Resist-Refuse Cases often comes too late to save the child and family from severe emotional dysfunction
• Judicial officers, attorneys and mental health professionals have unique contributions to either impeding progress or promoting solutions
• Practitioners may need to intervene to stop “emotional bleeding” and support the child's or family's functioning, and weigh the risks and benefits of prolonged and repeated assessments compared to evidence-informed intervention
• Scientifically informed interventions exist for many of the problems encountered in these families
• Risk assessment and intervention are not mutually exclusive
• Suggestions are made for judicial education, structuring services and system reform

• Authors provide a review of the state of the research literature with respect to differentiation and available treatment approaches for resist-refuse contact cases.
• Authors propose the use of the Blended Sequential Model, an innovative clinical model developed for severe cases of resist-refuse dynamics.
• Authors describe the important role of judicial leadership in resist/refuse contact cases.
• Authors argue the need to develop heterodox models of interim judicial decision making in resist-refuses cases.

• Separation and divorce.
• The impact of Parent/Child contact problems in high-conflict divorce and separation.
• The impact of high conflict co-parenting cases on family law and mental health professionals.
• Interventions: Current practice Polyvagal theory.
• Polyvagal informed therapy.
• Effects of polyvagal approach and self regulation.
• Managing physiological response from a cognitive perspective.
• Clinical setting and polyvagal theory.
• Family therapy and polyvagal theory.
• Experiential framework and polyvagal theory.
• *Equine assisted therapy, polyvagal perspectives and alternatives.
• Processing chaos and grief.
• Other opportunities for making connection.
• Implementation for professionals.

• Parental alienation is highly damaging to the child, and the damage lasts into adulthood.
• The general public and professionals who work with children are largely unaware of PA, and its damaging effects.
• Prevention of PA is a public health issue.
• Prevention of PA is possible, but depends on public awareness and training of professionals to take preventative steps.
• Prevention requires identification of at-risk children and parents, and of situations in which PA is liable to develop.
• After identification, immediate intervention – therapy for the child and parenting education – are required.
• If PA has already resulted in contact failure, courts must act speedily and resolutely to make orders for reconciliation therapy and treatment.
• Identification, treatment, and judicial intervention require multidisciplinary coordination.
• The court must supervise progress of reconciliation and therapy, and impose sanctions for parental disobedience.
• Israel has programs which address all the above issues.

• Child's estrangement or contact refusal takes an unusually large amount of Court time.
• Need for innovative and out of the box solutions.
• Implementation of a psycho judicial case management (Quebec, Canada).
• All the 6 cases who presented with child's resistance or refusal to see one parent (between 4 months upto 2½ years) resumed contact.
• Key features to successfully address these cases.

• There have been significant advances in understandings and practice related to parent-child contact problems (PCCPs), with a growing consensus about some issues and continuing controversy about others.
• It is widely acknowledged that PCCPs cases are best understood and addressed by relying on a multi-factorial perspective, a family-systems approach and coordinated professional services.
• Attention to false positives and false negatives for both alienation (unjustified rejection) and for realistic estrangement (justified rejection) is necessary. For either of these types of contact problems and for cases involving elements of both, it may be in the child's best interest to remedy the strained parent-child relationship and for the child to maintain contact with both parents.
• Legal and mental health professionals involved in decision making, forensic and clinical assessments, and psycho-educational and clinical interventions face challenges in fact finding and correcting for ubiquitous cognitive biases. Continuing education, intentional exploration of alternative hypotheses, and active dialogue with openness to different perspectives will contribute to effective professional involvement and positive outcomes for families.
• Increased parent education and prevention can play an important role, although for the more severe PCCP cases the family court system will continue to play a critical role in early intervention, case management, decision making and monitoring some cases post judgment.
• More research on screening and assessment tools and to differentiate different types of PCCPs and on appropriate interventions is needed. Given the complexity of PCCPs, conclusive research findings are unlikely. Family justice professionals must make decisions and tailor interventions based on an analysis of each family's circumstances using our present knowledge, while recognizing the limits of legal interventions and resource constraints. Often, families and professionals will face the conundrum of making decisions in the face of uncertainty.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

• Only eleven states and the District of Columbia have statutes addressing the use of mediation in disputes arising from open adoptions.
• Of these eleven states, only seven states and the District of Columbia actually require the parties to mediate before allowing them to ask the court to order a judgment.
• Open adoptions are becoming more common, and each one varies on how much contact or visitation there will be between the birth parents, or biological siblings, and the child.
• Creating a statute for New York mandating mediation for these types of disputes will afford parties the opportunity to create a modification that will work for both sides in a less adversarial setting.
• In other areas of family law, mediation has been proved to be effective in creating durable agreements as well as being cost effective for both parties.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

• Approximately 105,000 children in New York have an incarcerated parent, while 2.7 million children in the United States have an incarcerated parent.
• The incarceration of a parent and the visitation in prison between the parent and child can affect a child psychologically, emotionally, academically, and developmentally.
• Obstacles exist to visitation between incarcerated parents and their children in New York, including distance, lack of transportation, cost, and stress.