Parent-Child Reunification: A Guide to Legal and Forensic Strategies

by Stanley S. Clawar

Overview

Family courts are increasingly looking at ways to reconnect parents and children whose relationships have been damaged over time. "Reunification Therapy" or "Reunification Counseling" are two common terms for procedures that are applied in attempts to reconnect a parent and a child. There can be a high level of frustration by judges, parents, and children as various procedures are implemented. Attorneys often must agree to Reunification Therapy on behalf of their clients without having clear guidelines in terms of goals, plans, methods, timelines, and defined measurable outcomes.

Parent-Child Reunification explains these types of processes and supplies important background and guidelines to assist lawyers and related professionals comply with reunification interventions and make them work for their clients. This book is both a working tool as well as an explanation of the causes of parent-child breeches. Reunification is a special type of intervention that is not clinical psychotherapy or family therapy. Rather, it is the process, techniques, methods, and theories that are employed to repair, reconnect, rebuild, heal, normalize, and/or stabilize a relationship between a parent and child that has become damaged, distant, absent, and/or alienated.

Beginning with a discussion of what reunification is, what it isn't, what it involves, and what are the sources for beginning reunification endeavors. Other topics covered include:

• Causal considerations
• Alienation Impeding and facilitative factors
• Problematic approaches to the reunification process
• What to look for in selecting a reunification expert
• Measurements for success Guidelines for attorneys, judges, and masters
• How guardians ad litem can help in reunification
• Comprehensive and accessible, this book provides attorneys, judges, guardians ad litem, social workers, and forensic experts pertinent information that is analytical and applied so that they can work to repair a family's broken bonds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641056045
Publisher:	American Bar Association
Publication date:	09/30/2025
Pages:	357
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)