Court Counsellor's Role in Conflict Resolution (From Role of Psychologists in the Criminal Justice System, P 90-98, 1983, Grant Wardlaw, ed. - See NCJ-92075)

• NCJ Number: 92081
• Author(s): P Mark; F Smyth
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 9 pages
• Sale Source: Australian Institute of Criminology; National Institute of Justice/
• Language: English
• Country: Australia

Annotation

The role of court counselors associated with Australian family courts is to guide disputants in a family conflict into conciliatory rather than adversarial postures, so that flexible and innovative approaches to problems involving children can be adopted in contrast to inflexible win-lose impositions by the courts.

Abstract

The court counselors help disputants develop a sense of direction growing out of a rational examination of the problems underlying their conflict. The overall strategy of counselors is to direct disputants toward a workable alternative to court action that the parties themselves have chosen. Counselors operate under the belief that submissions of conflict resolution to the courts involve the parties in the anxiety and often debilitating postures of having lost control over the management of their lives as the court imposes an inflexible structure for family interactions. By using the forum provided by court counselors, strategies for dealing with family conflict remain under the control of both parties involved, and conflict resolutions are more likely to be creative and helpful to both clients. A principal aim of the counseling is to take the disputants out of blaming postures into a problemsolving perspective where the parties may view their problems realistically and begin to cooperate with one another in setting directions for the future that are mutually satisfying. Also, so as to relieve tension, clients are assisted in finding alternative ways of dealing with personal stress.