Forum PFI and Workshop Descriptions

The Pandemic has showed that Time can be experienced subjectively: Time both crawls and races by. Events seem to have occurred both yesterday and months ago. For divorcing couples, this dialectic is also true, making Time both friend and adversary to professionals navigating any couple's divorce, as well as an essential player in every Collaborative case. Like Grief and healing after Trauma, Time has its own pace - we can’t control it, but we can recognize its currents and plan a way to stay afloat and move efficiently on its path. This program reveals the concrete and abstract ways in which Time influences our clients (and us) and shapes our emotional capacities, reactions, even perceptions of reality. We will draw upon lessons from Grief and Trauma work to explore techniques that address the convoluted nature of Time and better help clients move toward successful resolutions with the least possible pain.

We Collaborative professionals sometimes forget how powerful and effective it can be to ask the right question at the right time. Well-chosen questions can open people’s hearts and minds. In this interactive workshop, David Hoffman will offer a framework for thinking about what types of questions we should consider asking at different stages of the Collaborative process. We will also do several exercises that explore our goals in asking questions and the impact those questions have on the recipients. In a stop-action role play setting, we will also brainstorm the questions that each workshop participant would recommend in challenging moments in a Collaborative negotiation. The workshop will conclude with a discussion of how mediators can get in touch with their intuitions, in the moment, about what types of questions are needed.
There are no handouts for this presentation.

How can we be effective advocates while remaining true to the goals and values of the Collaborative Process? The IACP Ethical Standards address advocacy including: our obligation to support client self-determination, set reasonable expectations, be mindful of the impact of our personal values and beliefs and avoid contributing to interpersonal conflict. This course will explore Collaborative Advocacy in light of s. 3.2 of the Standards. How do we use an interest-based model where there is little trust or goodwill and what is the role of the law? What does it really mean to set realistic expectations? How do we support client self-determination when clients are bullies, can't decide or we don't agree with the outcome? How do we avoid working from our own personal values and experience? How do we avoid contributing to interpersonal conflict without sacrificing outcome? This PFI will deepen participants' capacity to be more effective non-adversarial advocates.

Social psychology has provided abundant research findings on the prevalence of unconscious bias and tools for reducing biases, such as counter-stereotypical imaging, perspective-taking, individuation, and increasing opportunities for connection. This workshop summarizes the research and suggests techniques for applying it in the setting of Collaborative cases and professional practice generally.

This workshop welcomes anyone who would like to submit an article to the IACP journal, the Collaborative Review. The workshop will cover submission details, including the style sheet, the type of articles and areas of interest. This is your opportunity to get involved with the continued growth of the Collaborative Review.

Divorce is not a neutral event for minor and adult children. Legal, financial, and mental health professionals must understand the factors affecting children's adjustment to parental separation and divorce, to educate parents how to ensure their children's optimum adjustment. Children's drawings, videos, research, handouts, and interactive exercises provide multi-modal learning experiences.

The IACP Hague Convention Task Force presents the research it has conducted and its deliberations considered in the past months on the challenges and opportunities of using CP in international children abduction cases under the Hague Convention.

Thriving individual practices and a robust collaborative community depend upon professional relationships. Learn how to engage the collective wisdom of your collaborative community to make connections, stabilize the ebb and flow of collaborative groups, and sustain growth. Join us to learn the powerful magical formula to expand your collaborative world!

Children’s voices can be powerful in the divorce process. This workshop explores various ways in which child specialists work with children in a productive and protective manner. Content will focus on specific techniques to examine the most effective ways to integrate the voice of the child into the process.

This workshop teaches practical tools that participants can use throughout the collaborative process. As Collaborative neutrals with 1000’s of hours in collaborative work experience, participants will learn new skills to assist their clients working through being stuck or rigid, and be more regulated emotionally and definitive in their decision-making skills.

This workshop will explore some of the core difficulties, as collaborative professionals, of working with couples in conflict. A discussion related to empirical findings related to team burn out and what is means to shift from an sympathetic/empathetic mindset to one of compassion. This will be an interactive workshop with discussions requiring the need to explore self-awareness as a professional and exploring learning how to rebalance our mindset with compassion in order to re-energize and take problem solving to resolution.

The paradigm shift away from scarcity, mistrust, and fear and towards trust, integrity and self-determination requires a conscious engagement with conflict. The integration of Conscious Contracts® with collaborative practice creates unique tools to apply this paradigm shift to our work with our clients, our teams and our practice group communities.

This workshop will explore a different learning edge, one that goes past aspiring for more Collaborative work into a realm of doing all the Collaborative work you can possibly do and (hopefully) still do it well. A full Collaborative Caseload provides new opportunities for understanding our work at a deeper level.

There are some cases where no matter how experienced and cohesive a team may be, strictly adhering to all elements of the Collaborative Process just doesn’t work for the clients. This program will examine when it is appropriate to consider deviating from the traditional Collaborative protocols, differentiate between protocols that can and cannot be streamlined, identify potential costs and benefits of streamlining, and share creative ways to approach option-generation and evaluation that were developed in cases where the parties were having a difficult time participating effectively in the traditional Collaborative Process, and/or had limited financial resources to expend on the Process. We will also share easy ways to adjust your Collaborative practice so that every case is as streamlined as possible.

What is going on in the brain when clients are deeply emotional and stuck in conflict? What are some practical tools and techniques that lawyers and financial professioinals can use to help their clients move forward towards positive resolution? This workshop will provide an education on the neuro-science of the brain when it is in deep emotion and conflict. You will also learn and gain hands on experience on how to use some powerful tools and questioning techniques that will assist your client to access the highest functioning aspects of their brain. The result is that your client gains clairty on how they can move foward and become more capable of creating a positive resolution for themselves and their family.

Participants will be exposed to a variety of ideas related to intakes from three collaborative professionals. The participants will learn the reasons why intakes are important, method and format options to complete the intakes, and what to do with the information collected during the intakes. Specifically, interpersonal violence screening and system mapping will be taught.

The role of the child specialist in the one coach model will be explored in depth by an interdisciplinary team of professionals. How the child specialist interviews children, interacts with the team and provides feedback will be discussed and demonstrated. Reasons for including a child specialist will be highlighted.

The IACP Ethical Standards were revised and restated in June 2017 and created new standards and obligations for team communication, advocacy and responsibility for case management. This lively, interactive workshop will help you apply the new standards to your interdisciplinary teamwork whatever your discipline.