When you have a Court Order or Agreement setting out your parenting terms but you still have lots of disputes and conflicts about enforcing it, or working it out, a Parenting Coordinator can help.  First they will try to work it out by facilitating a conversation between you.  If that doesn’t work, they are empowered by your contract with them to be the decision maker.  The benefit of this process is you do not have to start a new court action.  The Parenting Coordinator is enforcing your parenting plan.

Parenting Coordinators are Alternative Dispute Resolution professionals (ADR) who are child focused; and whose role is to help parents co-parent well, so that the level of conflict is lessened. Reducing conflict is beneficial to children as research shows that it is not divorce that hurts children, but it is the level of conflict between the parents that they are exposed to which is detrimental to their well being.

The Parenting Coordinator can help families deal with a variety of issues like disputes surrounding parenting time, holidays, telephone access, transportation of the child(ren), child care, exchange of information issues, and the children’s social, emotional, academic, and medical needs.

For Parenting Coordination to be successful, both parents should have similar expectations from the process. Parenting Coordination is neither therapy nor counseling so it is not the appropriate place to bring up past marital issues. It is to help you enforce and carry out the terms you got resolved already.

Typically, Parenting Coordination contracts are most often contracted for six months to one year and payments are arranged by hourly fee.  Parenting Coordinators work on a retainer system, and once the parties’ retainer runs out, hourly fees are then billed. The cost of the Parenting Coordinator’s services is shared equally between the parties in order to preserve the Parenting Coordinators neutrality.

If you want to hear more about this service, contact us at 519-946-0808 or by email to admin@bfc-mediation.com.

For more information about this Program, click below for our Information Flyer. For more information about our Parenting Coordinators, scroll down.

Parenting Coordination Information Sheet

Our Parenting Coordinators are Laura Kapetanov MSW, Samantha McKinley, MSW and Jennifer Suzor.  Laura has over twenty-one years experience working with children at agencies like Children First and separating families. Samantha has worked with families and children experiencing parenting difficulties and conducts therapy for families. Both Laura and Samantha have an exceptional ability to help parents focus on the needs of their children and facilitate resolutions to both small and large parenting disputes. For higher conflict work, Jennifer Suzor has decades of experience working through parenting disputes as a family mediator.

For more information about Laura and Samantha, click here.

For more information on Jennifer Suzor, click here.