Overcoming Barriers’ (OCB) Board of Directors recently held its annual retreat to review our past 10 years and plan for the future. Our work continues to receive ever-increasing interest from families and court-involved professionals. We continue to try to support the needs of families in crisis by utilizing our resources in the most impactful way.
In 2017 we plan to focus our organizational resources on
Training, Publications & Planning for a 2018 camp.
We will not be hosting a 2017 camp as we take the opportunity to look at all aspects of our programs with a view to expand and improve our 2018 camp, future camps and other direct service program offerings.
We are very excited about developing an online training for mental health professionals entitled, High Conflict Coparenting: Interventions for Children’s Alignment and Resistance, to learn about working with the entire family system through reunification strategies. Training professionals globally will give families access to intervention locally and earlier in the conflict.
In addition we are authoring a companion book to our coparenting guide, entitled, Overcoming Strained Parent-Child Relationships: Coparenting Nuts and Bolts, that will provide parents with pragmatic tips about how to work as an effective post divorce family keeping the best interests of the children in mind.
We received a grant from AAML National and will be producing a training module for attorneys and judges.
Finally, we are in the process of updating our website to make it mobile friendly and the information easier to access by our users.
These efforts will meet the goals of our mission and purpose and provide a broader range of support options to families geographically and financially. Stay tuned for more information about all of our endeavors.
Overcoming Barriers Resources
Our first publication, Overcoming the Co-Parenting Trap, was released in early 2015. The book is unique because it describes the challenges for both resisted and preferred parents, providing important insight and concrete solutions for moving forward. Lawyers and mental health professionals have been recommending this practical guide to their clients.
Our newest academic book, Overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems, published by Oxford University Press is providing the forensic world with a detailed look at working with High Conflict families where a child is resisting contact with a parent. It encompasses information on topics such as intake, current research and characteristics of the families and uses the Overcoming Barriers’ Family Camp as one intervention example.
We are offer our online training, Legal Interventions When a Child Resists a Parent in collaboration with the Steve Frankel Group.
10 Year Accomplishment Highlights
We have:
- Run 8 family camps and intensives servicing 75 families Trained 55 mental health professionals in the Overcoming Barriers’ Approach – 22 in immersion at Camp and 23 in live training about how intensive interventions
- Trained 30 program staff – Green Shirts – to work with these families
Videotaped our 2 day live training providing us with raw footage for future online trainings - Published two books and many articles about the issue of parent resistance
- Provided trainings with CEs and CLEs for legal and mental health professionals live and via video recordings and mp3s
- Hosted awareness raising events for judges, attorneys and mental health professionals in CA, MA, NY and AZ
- Performed program evaluations utilizing an independent researcher at camp in 2014 – 2016
