My Practice
My practice is aimed at supporting children, adults and families during transitions and crises, whether through direct services or through consultation to therapists or legal professionals who’ve encountered complications in their efforts to help those families.
CONSULTING
Expert testimony
I provide court testimony only under conditions that are consistent with the highest standards of professional ethics and the children’s best interests. This may include topics such as methodological issues within a parenting assessment or the congruency of the evaluation results with the offered recommendations. Testimony may also be more generally about such topics as long term outcomes for children who have a disrupted relationship with one parent, evidence-based treatment planning following an evaluation or the court’s orders, or the essential interface between the parent-coordinator, court-involved therapists and attorneys.
Consultation to family law attorneys
With over 40 years of case experience, I offer assistance in identifying psychological issues or risk factors in complicated, high conflict family law matters. This includes review of parenting evaluations, ensuring that treatment-planning tracks with actual court-findings, analysis of allegations of abuse or alienation and ensuring the services being delivered actually address the findings of an unfavorable report.
Consultation to mental health professionals
I provide regular case-consultation to providers serving in complex, court-involved therapy roles as well as more general therapists who are uncertain about the appropriate interface between their therapeutic role and unfolding family law litigation involving their patients.
I have also presented widely to mediators, judicial officers, collaborative and mental health professionals related to developmental considerations for children with high-conflict parents, interviewing children, “resist-refuse dynamics” or parent-child contact problems, the effect on children of a parent using coercive control tactics with the other parent and the interface between family law and family therapy.
Consultation to parents
As both a former evaluator and a current therapist, I am able to assist parents in understanding both the favorable and unfavorable findings of a parenting time evaluation, and suggest ways for parents to increase their emotional attunement to their children, personal warmth and ability to set modulated and appropriate boundaries with their children.
DIRECT SERVICES
Co-parenting, parent support and Collaborative child specialist work
These services are more structured and behaviorally-focused on helping parents shift from being former partners to their new roles as co-parents, which is a more narrowly focused sharing and investment in their children. This work strives to stay child-focused, without dragging the adults’ pre-separation adult conflicts into the new circumstances. Rather than dwelling on history, this work is guided by what is in the short- and long-term best interests of the children.
Individual, couple, or family therapy
When relationships are faltering, it can feel lonely and isolating. My therapy practice is kept small so that I can prioritize helping you or your family to untangle painful issues and begin a way forward. It draws upon my training in couple therapy, child psychology, special needs and family systems therapy. My practice offers brief, confidential therapy with adults, couples and families, including for disrupted parent-child relationships or contact problems.
There are no guarantees of specific outcomes in therapy, but it creates an opportunity to care for yourself and those you love, to bring you closer to your best version of yourself and to create more satisfying, meaningful relationships.