Child Abuse, Sexual Abuse, and its Traumatic Effects through Peaceful Households

  • Defining and understanding child abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, signs of abuse, and trauma including the Adverse Childhood Experience Study (ACE) findings. understanding brain development and how trauma impacts the brain’s growth. Understanding resilience, supports for development, and the role of the caregiver. Understanding the impact of trauma on academic success, physical health, mental health, relationships, and social well-being. Explaining how a caregiver’s past trauma increases their risk for perpetrating child abuse and neglect. Defining trauma informed practices.

Domestic Violence, Coercive Control, and its Traumatic Effects through Peaceful Households

  • Defining domestic violence and coercive control, how to recognize signs of abuse and ongoing abuse throughout system work; defining trauma and the developmental impact on the brain trauma has, including ACE’s, in relationship to domestic violence and controlling relationships; understanding intergenerational trauma, stigma, barriers related to domestic violence and coercive control tactics; understanding resilience, supports for development and the roles of non-offending caregivers and the role of providers; understanding trauma informed practices and support for survivors

Medical and Emotional Considerations of Child Maltreatment: Child and Sexual Abuse MDIC

  • Physical and sexual trauma are real and horrifying. Equally harmful and very difficult at times to assess is psychological maltreatment. In this presentation, we review the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, learn about the ways in which psychological trauma and abuse impact the child’s developing brain and body, and what it looks like to observers. We will explore what we mean by child abuse, domestic violence/coercive control, and alienation and how they impact children and adults systemically as well as psychologically. The legal system plays a role in all of this, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill, and we will be talking about ways to work within the system to be as effective as possible for children. Understanding the medical aspects of child maltreatment is important for all practitioners involved in domestic relations matters. In this presentation, we will explore how to recognize the medical aspects of child abuse, and what to do if and when signs abuse arises. This presentation will also focus on how sexual abuse presents in children: disclosures, recantations and language children use around sexual abuse based on age and development. Finally, we will discuss medical child abuse, neglect, failure to thrive, and the effect of substance abuse on children.

What Every Evaluator Needs to Know about DV and IPV through MDIC

  • Coercive control- what is it; how it impacts children; treatment for perpetrators and victims; New views on the cycle of domestic violence; Protection orders; Risk assessment for domestic violence; Intimate partner violence; What the impact of domestic violence (IPV) on the best interest factors under C.R.S. 14-10-124 is; As PRE/CFI, what sources of information are available to assist with evaluation; As PRE/CFI, what treatment sources are available to families where IPV/DV is present; The latest developments/research in DV/IPV for the PRE and CFI; Dealing with safety issues for children- how to facilitate parent-child relationship with a parent when DV is present; How to avoid a parentified child who attempts to protect the victim; How to avoid the child who identifies with the perpetrator; How to distinguish ongoing verbal/emotional abuse from what happens between parents at the end of the marital relationship.

Virtual Custody Evaluator Domestic Violence Institute

  • The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), in partnership with the U.S. Department of

    Justice, Office of Violence Against Women (OVW), and the Battered Women’s Justice Project (BWJP) for custody evaluators guiding their work with families experiencing domestic violence. Evaluators will learn from a team of judicial officers, custody evaluators, and civil-legal advocates experienced in handling these cases and developing creative solutions to the challenges they present for evaluators. Participants will leave this training with a nuanced understanding of how domestic violence impacts family dynamics and a framework for approaching their work and minimizing the harm to the adults and children involved.

Understanding and Addressing Domestic Violence in Domestic Violence Relations Matters Crisis Center

  • Topics of training included: understanding the importance to address domestic violence in DR cases; recognizing and responding to domestic violence; drafting, negotiating separation agreements, and parenting plans on behalf of victims of domestic violence

Effectively Working With Survivors of Domestic Violence Crisis Center

  • Topics of training included: domestic violence power and control, cycle of abuse, trauma, trauma reactions, triggers, trauma informed treatment, techniques: working effectively with survivors, and communication

14th Symposium on Child Custody AFCC

  • Topics of training included: Overcoming the Alienation Crisis: A Team Model; Things My Cousin Vinnie Taught Me: Trial Skills for Mental Health Professionals and Attorneys; Stacking the Deck in Favor of Children: What to Do When the World Goes Haywire; Parenting Time Paradigms Meet the Pandemic; Drug and Alcohol Testing and Parenting Agreements in Child Custody Cases

  • Playing Defense: Tips for Designing Custody Assessments to Withstand Attack; Teens in the Digital World: What Professionals Need to Know; Betting on the Voice of the Child in Parenting Disputes; Interviewing Children in Custody Evaluations When There Are Allegations of Abuse or Intimate Partner Violence; Forensic Methods of Gathering Data via Telehealth

  • Encapsulated Delusion? How Do We Identify It and What Do We Do?; The Silver Spoon vs. the Spork: Child Custody Evaluations on Any Budget; Resisting Simplicity to Understand Child Resistance: Alienation Meaning in the Field of Family Law; Parenting Coordination During Custody Litigation: Challenges and Opportunities; Affirming LGBTQ Children in Custody Matter

  • Decision-Making about Services for Families: Needs, Gaps, Better Models?; Thinking Differently about the Value of Collateral Information; Hearing the Evidence of Children: Rights and Remedies; Deception and Malingering in Child Custody Cases: Research-Based Strategies; Safe, Appropriate, and Workable Parenting Plans; A High Conflict Case: Trauma’s Impact on Memory, Children, Parents, and the Courts; Viewing Counterintuitive Conduct in Interpersonal Violence

Child Family Investigation Training 2019 through Ralph L. Carr Colorado Justice Center

  • Topics of training included but were not limited to the CFI Role in Colorado; Parenting Time Statutes, Chief Justice Directive 04-08; CFI Appointments: Forms, Policies and Procedures; Mental Health Basics for CFI’s, Parent/Child Relationship Problems, Statutes, Case Files, Fact Scenarios, CFI Eligibility and Complaints, De- Escalation 101, Intake Interviews and Role Play;

  • DV Dynamics and Parenting Considerations: Risk and Lethality and Comings and Goings; Confidentiality; Interpreter Issues; Safety Tips and Home Visits; Trauma and Brain Development; Child Abuse: Identifying, Reporting, Assessing; DR and D&N Interplay and Restriction of Parenting Time; Child Interviews and Roleplay; Parenting Plans; Investigating Collateral Sources; Bench Perspective; 

  • ·Fact Analysis; Writing the CFI Report; Analysis and Relevant Factors; Implicit Bias, Diversity, and Cultural Humility; Testifying in Court, including Evidence; Perspectives of the Examiner, the Examined and the Decider; Roleplay: Direct and Cross Examinations. 

Reunification Therapy 2019 through Jamie Darr, Barbara Shindell, and Jane Irvine

  • Reunification Therapy is a sub-specialty of family therapy utilized by the Courts, where children are estranged and/or alienated from a parent or there has been an absence and subsequent breakdown of the parent-child relationship. 

  • Reunification Therapy is used as a resource by the courts in these complex or high-conflict cases. This course is a combination of education, case consultation and support for mental health professionals providing or wishing to provide this service. It is aimed at professionals with experience working with families in conflict.

  • Areas of training included family and mental health models and theories, red flags/danger zones, the importance of paperwork, assessment, techniques to engaged resistant individuals, creating safety, the court process and termination of the process

Colorado AFCC 2018-2019

  • COAFCC is a statewide interdisciplinary association of professionals dedicated to improving the lives of children and families through the resolution of family conflict.

  • COAFCC promotes a collaborative approach to serving the needs of children among those who work in and with family law systems, encouraging education, research and innovation and identifying best practices. 

High Conflict Personalities in Family Law 2018 through Bill Eddy 

  • Understanding high- conflict personalities with an overview or personality disorders and behaviors, including family violence and alienation. Topics also including blaming, negative advocates, connecting with EAR Statements. Managing high conflict people with the CARS Method. Impact of high conflict people on domestic violence, child abuse and alienation. How to best help families in conflict. Ethics and Risk Management. 

Member of Metropolitan Denver Interdisciplinary Committee 

  • MDIC is an organization of attorneys, mental health professionals and other professionals, including mediators, arbitrators, judges and court personnel, dedicated to meeting the needs of families in transition, including dissolution of marriage, legal separation, dissolution of domestic partnerships and other domestic actions involving adjudicated and consensual allocation of parental responsibilities. 

  • MDIC works to educate professionals to develop the skills and knowledge to apply a comprehensive and professional approach to meet the needs of families. 

Mediation Training through Bear Wolf Consulting and Mediation Services 2017

  • Conflict Analysis and Mediation

  • Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)

  • Effective communication and mediation

  • Ethics

Family Law Basics 2017 through Colorado Bar Association CLE

  • Including but not limited to basics of ethics, jurisdiction, rule 16.2, disclosures, mediation, trial preparation, evidence and trial tactics, property division, maintenance, child support, collaborative law, juvenile issues in domestic cases, parental responsibilities, childhood development, separation agreements, low income issues, bankruptcy, criminal law/family law intersection, protective orders, contempt, and financial issues

Comprehensive Training for Parenting Coordinators and Decision-Makers 2017 through Coates and McNamara

  • Understands the dynamics of high conflict

  • Parenting coordination and decision-making models, roles, skills and best practices

  • Understands ethical issues and legal challenges of serving as a PC/DM

  • Specializes in cognitive, behavioral, physical, and psychytrtic problems within in PC/DM and Supervised Visitation

Specialities

  • Including but not limited to family dynamics in separation, divorce, domestic violence and child abuse

  • Geographic relocation, equitable distribution, child support, law of modification, parenting time adjustment, law of relocation, law of due process law of ex parte communication and law of privilege

  • Trained in listening, assertive communication, self analysis and dealing with conflict

Case Management

  • Supervising and implementing reunification and transition for families

  • Observation and evaluation

  • Monitoring and supervising visitations among families to ensure safety, scheduling, confidentiality, communication among all parties involved and resolve conflict

  • Creating and implementing a routine including diet, exercise, therapy, social activities, medical, sleep and scheduling

Education and Diversity

  • Teaching parenting psycho-education material to increase parental skill base

  • Providing and implementing families with appropriate resources and family plans

  • Conflict coaching

Cognitive, Behavioral and Psychiatric problems

  • Special needs including but not limited to ADD/ADHD, Auditory processing, autism/aspergers, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, development delays, down syndrome, emotional/behavioral disorders, personality and other mental disorders, disabilities, mood problems, short and long term memory loss medical and mental illness, seizures, brain injuries, strokes, visual impairment, tourettes

  • Adulthood and aging

  • Child development (experienced with infants, toddlers, young children, and teenagers)

  • Attention, memory, language, visuospatial/constructional ability, executive function, information processing, perception, decision making

  • ABA, CBT, and DBT