Parenting coordination

Parenting after a separation or divorce is not always easy. A parenting coordinator may be able to help if you are finding these decisions about your children difficult to conclude.

Parenting coordination is a child-focused dispute resolution process designed to help families where there is a high level of conflict in implementing agreements and arrangements about the children.

A parenting coordinator will work with a family to resolve disputes efficiently by educating parents about their children’s needs, helping them to improve communication and reach agreement where possible and, if necessary and with the agreement of both parents, making decisions on disputes. The process is designed to minimise the amount of conflict for the child or children and to help parents to parent cooperatively or to minimize the opportunity for conflict to arise.

A parenting coordinator is a neutral third party, so the suggestions they make are unbiased but are always focused on the children. In many cases, a parenting coordinator will meet with both parents separately, and possibly the children, to better understand the family and the issues they face.

A parenting coordinator's role will vary depending upon the needs of the family they are working with.

In helping co-parents to resolve conflicts, a parenting coordinator will also work towards helping families to stay out of court.

We are fortunate that one of the first parental coordinators trained in the UK works within our family and children team. Claire Molyneux, a specialist child lawyer, trained in 2018 and has seen first hand the practical and emotional benefits parental coordination can bring to families. To read more about parenting coordination, do visit https://parentingcoordinators.co.uk, a website designed to provide parents with lots of information about parenting coordination and co-parenting.

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