Therapeutic work - Court proceedings

We provide therapeutic work for families involved in court proceedings, usually the family court. If you would like more information about what kind of support and interventions we offer, please get in touch. At the moment, it is most likely that this work will take place with Dr Gemma Parker.

If enough people get in touch requesting a particular type of therapeutic approach, Dr Parker will look into new ways of working with a larger number of people, so please do get in touch and let us know what you need.

A note from Dr Parker on working with separated families: 

My background / training is as a clinical psychologist. Since qualification, approximately 15 years ago, I have also trained in additional systemic models, including non-violent resistance (NVR), emotionally focused therapy for couples (EFT) and the Family Ties model for separated parents.  

I use these models flexibly to meet the needs of families that I work with who have often experienced separation and relational ruptures. 

NVR is a model that empowers parents to develop a greater sense of presence with their children and address relationship ruptures that are leading to behaviours that others are finding challenging. EFT is particularly useful for helping parents to understand the conflict between them (and sometimes between them and the children) and to find alternatives to this negative cycle, reducing the impact on the children. The Family Ties model encourages parent to develop a shared narrative of events relating to their relationship, separation and conflict in a way that creates and maintains a positive relationship between the children and both parents and reducing distortions to this narrative that might have been taken on by the child or children. This narrative is shared with the children in a family meeting, allowing the child or children to ask questions that the parents have prepared themselves for as far as possible. There is a strong "mentalisation" basis to this work, helping parents to understand the mindset and needs of their children in order to meet them rather than continuing to be caught up in harmful conflict. 

There is no set structure to this work as every family's needs are different and levels of complexity vary. However, I usually tell families to expect to have a minimum of 10 sessions, the majority of which will be for the parents and not the children. If the parents are able to have conversations together, this helps. But I will meet parents separately if they are not (yet) able to be in a room together - virtually or face to face.