ABSTRACT
High-conflict separation, divorce, and parenting harm children and youth and are difficult for practitioners. In an inherently adversarial legal system, parents in high-conflict separations are often told what to do by many professionals, and services for high-conflict parents are typically highly structured and directive. Although services such as parent education, mediation, and parenting coordination may help to reduce conflict, these families require skilful intervention and a perspective that permits the practitioner to avoid being drawn into the conflict or aligning with one parent over the other. Solution Focused (SF) practices are invaluable for this. In this chapter, I will describe the difficulties of working with high-conflict divorcing parents and how maintaining an SF presence and using SF practices can help therapists working with this difficult population.
