Page 7 - AFCC Australian Conference 2018

Plenaries
Friday 17 August 2018
Welcome and Conference Opening. The Changing Face of Australian Family
Law.
Justice Steven Strickland
Justice of the Appeal Division of the Family Court of Australia and President of AFCC Australian Chapter
Plenary 1 ‘ALLEN’ation – A Child’s View of Alienation. Dr Robert Simon
Psychologist, San Diego, USA
Mr Stephen Cohen
Chief Psychologist, Department of Communities, Western Australia
Chair: Justice Steven Strickland
Room: Ballroom 9.00 am – 9.30 am
Room: Ballroom 9.30 am – 10.30 am
Proudly sponsored by
An experiential presentation of a therapy session in a handover period between Allen and his parents. You decide?
Plenary 2 Parental Alienation: Social Contexts And Legal Responses.
Room: Ballroom
Professor Nick Bala 11.00 am – 12.30 pm
Professor of Law Queens University, Ontario, Canada
Chair: Justice Steven Strickland
Proudly sponsored by
High con ict separation cases that involve children resisting or refusing contact with one parent in the family courts are often highly complex cases, challenging for professionals, frustrating for parents and emotionally damaging for children. These cases may involve allegations of parental alienation, sexual abuse or domestic violence.
In some cases, the primary cause of the child resisting contact is alienating parental behaviour; most often children will be alienated as a result of the in uence of the parent with primary care, who is usually the mother, though fathers also often engage in alienating behaviour. In some cases, a child will be justi ably estranged from a parent who has been abusive or has serious emotional problems. While in a signi cant number of these cases it is clear that one parent is alienating the child from the other parent, in many cases both parents bear some responsibility for the situation. Many of the cases involve unresolved feeling of parental anger related to the separation. Professor Bala will discuss the social contexts and legal responses.
AFCC
AUSTRALIAN CHAPTER
afccnet.org.au | e: ausafcc@gmail.com 7.