NCJ Number
136632
Date Published
1991
Length
41 pages
Annotation
The New Zealand Family Courts Act 1980 created the role of counseling coordinator, responsible for organizing counseling and related services for clients of the Family Court. Counseling coordinators have personal contact with clients as well as with court personnel and professionals who provide services to the Court. This paper is based on a group discussion held with six counseling coordinators working in three courts.
Abstract
This project was conducted to obtain an understanding of the opinions and experiences of counseling coordinators with custody and access cases in the Family Court. The counselors all agreed that counseling was essential to parental self-determination and that clients who were taught skills at an early stage to enable them to make decisions about their children were more likely to go back to counseling on their own initiative rather than go to a lawyer and through the court system. The group also discussed their perspectives on compulsory counseling. Their main comment regarding lawyers was the increase in the number of adversarial lawyers who have not had the benefit of multi-disciplinary training programs that most lawyers underwent 10 years ago. The counselors touched on issues relating to counsel for the child, case managers, and Department of Social Welfare reports. Counseling was seen as a way to avoid delays in the court process. Participants talked about their personal safety at the Family Court, opportunities for cost savings, and guidelines for custody and access. 1 appendix