Volume 12 – 2019, No. 1

In the early days of (co)parenting coordination in the United States (US), the pioneers came from the field of mental health, mediation, and family law. Each of these professionals contributed with their professional knowledge to the work as (co)parenting coordinators (PC), but this was insufficient to perform this new hybrid role competently. The purpose of this paper is to review the areas of specialization and the legal requirements that have been described in the US and Canada, as well as to advance some concepts to stimulate debate in the context of the future regulation of the professional role of the (co-)parenting coordinator in Spain. The authors propose to establish a requirement model based on the proof of the necessary competences (knowledge, skills and attitudes), both fundamental and functional, as well as the commitment to case supervision, in view of their complexity, and to ongoing education.

The development of Parenting Coordination in the USA is recent (since the 90’s) and in Spain is even more recent (the first court decision was passed in 2012 and the first pilot project was implemented in 2013). The experiences conducted at a territorial level are all based on what the North American authors wrote and follow to the guidelines published by the AFCC and APA. However, the Spanish context has specific features, which make the proposed models to be necessarily adapted. Nothing in relation to how intervention should happen is final or decided yet, as we are going through a trial-error and study period and we keep learning. It seems necessary to analyse the reality we want to cover and what is offered and not by services specialised in couple breakdown processes. It is also important to reflect upon the ability to provide these services and their efficiency as well as that of the practitioners that can or could perform this function, and the basic requirements to implement coordination, among other issues.

High intensity conflicts between fathers and mothers when they are about to break up cause difficulties that might compromise children’s wellbeing and interests. When parents do not manage to solve their conflicts after professional assistance or Court intervention, Parenting Coordination give them the possibility to adequately manage family issues. Of the different fields of action of a Parenting Coordinator, this paper will focus on decision-making, a key task for fathers and mothers to exercise parenting.

According to the AFCC task force (2005), Parenting Coordination is understood as a conflict resolution alternative process, focused on the child and aimed to the formulation and implementation of a Parenting Plan. One of the features that distinguish Parenting Coordination from other kinds of interventions (Mediation or Therapy) is that the Court allows the Coordinator to somehow make decisions about times and/or visitation days, as long as the total timing stipulated by the divorce decree is not substantially altered. The goal of this paper is to point out the specific characteristics that determine the role of the Parent Coordinator and compare it to the intervention of other agents involved in the resolution of family conflicts.

When a couple decides to break their relationship they must bear in mind that that situation will not only affect themselves but also the children they are in charge of. For children, parents break up is usually complicated, and when the separation entails a long court process and the relationship between the parties deteriorates, their normal evolutive development is seriously disrupted. Therefore, the participation of a third party, the Parenting Coordinator, is to be envisaged so that they can assist the parties to ease court-driven relationships and pacify the relationship for the sake of children.

The goal of this paper is to explain to readers what is behind the parenting coordination process in terms of the procedure, methodology and analysis observation entailed by the objective and subjective part of the process in which there are very diverse elements such as courts, affectivity, internal dialogue, inconsistency in how parents, and all their family system, exercise parenting in detriment (often unaware) of the children wellbeing, in order to accompany them to reencounter in the exercise of parenting under the auspices of a judicial designation.