The High-Conflict Support System: PC, Counsellor, and Co-Parenting Team
Navigating high-conflict separation requires a dedicated, multi-faceted support system. My Parenting Coordination (PC) method at kelownalawyer.com is designed to integrate the expertise of different professionals to ensure you and your children achieve lasting peace.
While my role as the PC focuses on structure and resolution, you often need the focused expertise of other professionals to achieve the personal and interpersonal shifts required for success.
1. The Individual Counsellor: Personal Healing and Insight
The journey begins with you. Your individual counsellor's primary focus is on personal healing and insight. They work to address underlying trauma, establish healthy boundaries, and teach personal calming techniques. This is essential because it gives you the emotional capacity to respond calmly instead of reacting to conflict.
Key Outcome for You: Achieving personal peace and stability.
The importance of this relationship is why my PC Agreement authorizes the PC to communicate with your counsellor. This ensures that the parenting behavioral goals we establish align with your personal growth journey. The counsellor helps you move out of the victim-perpetrator-rescuer dynamic by addressing the origins of your triggers.
2. The Co-Parent Counsellor: Interpersonal Skill Building
Once you have gained individual insight, co-parent counselling provides the specific, neutral tools required to manage the shared business of parenting. These sessions are targeted and focus on essential skills, such as:
High-Conflict Communication Scripts: Learning techniques like the "BIFF" method (Brief, Informative, Firm, Friendly) to replace emotional exchanges with business-like protocols.
Emotional Regulation: Practicing conflict de-escalation by identifying triggers in real-time and using the "Pause and Redirect" technique.
Boundary Maintenance: Explicitly separating the "co-parenting partnership" from the past relationship to ensure all communication remains strictly child-focused.
Key Outcome for You: Establishing an effective co-parenting partnership.
As your PC, I often initiate the referral to a co-parent counsellor—who is often a better trained, lower-fee, no-GST medical professional whose services may be tax-deductible. The PC may then takes on the role of overseer and guide, setting the expectation for attendance and ensuring the skills learned are practically applied.
3. The Parenting Coordinator (PC): Structure and Resolution
As your PC, my role is to stand back and look at the larger picture—the best interests of your child. My focus is always on creating structure and achieving resolution.
Communication Agreement: I guide the implementation of our established Communication Agreement, which dictates the rules and methods for how parents interact.
Handouts: I provide handouts and resources that offer specific guidance on common parenting issues and behavioral modification.
Oversight and Guidance: I ensure that all professional support is integrated, that communication is happening according to our protocols, and that you are attending and applying the skills learned from your specialized counselling.
Ultimately, my role is to help you reach a resolution. When parents are at an impasse, I use mediations to help find consensus. If resolution through mediation is impossible, I have the authority to issue binding determinations to prevent further conflict and protect the child from exposure to dispute.
Key Outcome for You: Accountability, clear structure, and final decisions when needed.
Often, it only takes a few targeted sessions with the right professional for the insight and skills to kick in. The PC ensures this work translates directly into a better outcome for your child.