Professional Development
Training Seminars for Family Law Professionals
CE and CLE credits available. Designed for attorneys, mental health professionals, and allied practitioners.
Register Now — Coming Soon
Secure your spot — registration is now open for the following seminars.
Basic Training: Foundations in Parenting Coordination
Next offered February 11–13, 2027
The essential starting point for practitioners entering the parenting coordination field. This three-day online course covers the types of orders needed, ethical obligations, professional liability, and how to effectively manage high-conflict cases from the outset. Includes all course materials, required reading lists, and exercises. Registration fee: $720. Online Only.
Through the Eyes of the Child
Next offered September 24–25, 2026
Designed for practitioners who are ready to deepen their parenting coordination skills. TEC faculty including Drs. James McHale and Debra Carter use real-world case examples and interactive exercises to help you apply advanced techniques for working with high-conflict post-divorce families. Participants learn to help parents recognize the critical importance of co-parenting cooperation and communicate more effectively about child-related issues. Enrollment includes virtual training and all course materials.
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Future Offerings
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Parent-Child Contact Problems: Current Concepts, Definitions, and Controversies
Understanding the continuum of contact problems and risk factors
This seminar will focus on the continuum of parent-child contact problems and the risk factors in families where children resist or refuse parental contact. Common traits of the favored and rejected parent will be identified and focus on interventions for mild to severe cases. The role and functions of a Parenting Coordinator (PC) in these cases will be addressed along with essential structural elements of the process to increase likelihood of success in repairing ruptured parent-child relationships.
Involving Children in the Parenting Coordination Process
A protocol for safely including the child's voice
Appropriate and safe involvement of children in parenting coordination has been controversial and fraught with lack of guidance. This seminar presents a protocol for determining when, if, and how to bring the child's voice and perspective into parenting coordination while considering confidentiality and risk management. Research from other dispute resolution processes which include the child's voice will be highlighted along with specific procedures for maintaining the child's trust and ensuring appropriate boundaries.
Conflict Transformation: Building a Pathway to Peace
Moving high-conflict coparents beyond stalemate
This seminar covers the phases of intractable conflict development and resolution, including transformative elements in the PC process that help coparents move beyond stalemate. The role of the PC in managing high-conflict coparenting dynamics and the tools that support constructive parent interactions as they learn to disengage, emotionally and behaviorally, from ingrained patterns of dysfunction are presented. Timing of interventions and techniques to deal with non-compliance are addressed along with techniques for helping parents build a peace pathway.
Facilitation & Ethical Decision-Making: Avoiding Bias & Writing Good Agreements
Strategies for clear, enforceable parenting agreements
PCs use strategies and tools to facilitate resolution of parenting disputes, but sometimes a PC must perform a decision-making function. This seminar examines the consequences of moving to a decision-making phase along with considerations for timing and enforcement. A model for ethical decision-making will be presented along with strategies for writing clear and enforceable agreements. The court's role in oversight and review will also be covered.
Disruptions of Attachment: Implications for Parenting Coordination
Empirical research on attachment and its impact on families
This workshop focuses on empirical research on attachment throughout the lifespan and how disruptions impact stability in intimate partnerships, parenting, and coparenting relationships. Clinical and empirical definitions of attachment across the lifespan will be presented along with implications for interventions with individuals and families who may be impacted by disruptions of developmental and relational attachments. Application to Parenting Coordination processes and collaboration with the court and legal professionals will be highlighted.
Risk & Protective Factors for Children After Divorce: Implications for Intervention
Research on outcomes and intervention options for children
This workshop incorporates empirical research on factors associated with risk in children following divorce, including parent conflict, quality and type of parenting, loss of relationships, multiple transitions, and protective factors associated with better outcomes. Research on parental adjustment post-divorce will also be highlighted to assess parents' readiness to develop an effective and sustainable coparenting relationship. Includes an overview of intervention options including divorce education programs, family mediation, and special interventions for managing high-conflict parents.
Danger's No Stranger: Managing Parental Pathology in Parenting Coordination
Monitoring mental health and ensuring child safety
Parents engaged in chronic high-conflict coparenting dynamics and litigation may experience heightened symptoms of mental illness or distress. This workshop describes the vital role of a Parenting Coordinator in monitoring parents' mental health and providing support and guidance to help them provide safe and stable parenting. Developmental disorders in children and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can also contribute to stress and family dysfunction. Data-driven goals to improve safety for children will also be addressed.
Substance Misuse Disorders: Implications for Children & Time-Sharing
Detection, intervention, and monitoring in parenting coordination
This workshop provides an in-depth understanding of the impact of parental substance abuse on children. The adverse effects on a child's physical and emotional health, behavior, and social functioning will be discussed. Participants will learn about strategies for early detection and intervention, drug testing options, and the current state of recovery indices. The role of Parenting Coordinators in monitoring the effects of substance abuse on parenting time and working with oversight entities to modify parenting plans will be highlighted.
Helping Families and Avoiding Vicarious Trauma: Implications for Parenting Coordinators
Tools to combat bias, safeguard objectivity, and prevent compassion fatigue
Parenting coordination can be an emotionally challenging profession, which may involve professional threats, assaults on competence, and harassment. This workshop provides professionals with the necessary tools and strategies to combat biases, safeguard objectivity, and heighten risk management while working with high-conflict parents. The workshop will also focus on what it means to be multiculturally competent, along with tools to recognize signs and mitigate risks of compassion fatigue.
Mental Health Essentials for the Family Law Professional
Child development and its application to parenting plans
Understanding child development is essential for those involved in deciding and influencing decisions about the best interests of children whose parents cannot agree on what is best. This workshop looks at child development along cognitive, emotional, and social lines, specifically focusing on applying this knowledge to foster a successful and sustainable coparent alliance and produce detailed parenting plans for children.
The Threads that Bind: An Ecosystem Approach to Parenting Coordination
A holistic, child-informed framework for evolving family formations
With parenting coordination practice now in its third decade, different models have emerged as social scientists examine the efficacy of this intervention. This workshop describes an ecosystemic approach to parenting coordination, emphasizing a holistic view of families in transition, and presents a framework including techniques and interventions to expand perspectives and depict an evolving family landscape. Rationale, theoretical underpinnings, and potential pitfalls will also be examined.
Children and Families with Extra Challenges
Adapting parenting coordination for developmental and mental health needs
When developmental and mental disorders are present in children and/or parents, some of the typical parenting coordination interventions and strategies do not work or need to be significantly modified. This seminar presents a framework for understanding the continuum of mental health, including illness and wellness factors, and how to apply this knowledge to essential life functions, including parenting. Common patterns of symptoms, appropriate safety guardrails, and the impact on parenting plans will be analyzed.
Building Resilient Families through Trauma-Informed Parenting Coordination
Trauma-informed frameworks for post-separation intervention
Parenting Coordination has emerged internationally as a vital post-separation intervention designed to reduce high-conflict parental dynamics, protect children from ongoing conflict, and help parents build sustainable co-parenting relationships. Despite clear evidence that many families entering the family law system experience complex trauma, family violence, or cumulative stress, trauma-informed frameworks for PC remain underdeveloped in many jurisdictions. This workshop addresses that gap.
From Conflict to Connection: Transforming Parenting Coordination Through the Use of AI
Digital tools, AI, and ethics in modern parenting coordination
Participants will examine how digital tools and platforms can help overcome traditional barriers to accessing parenting coordination services, particularly for parents with limited resources. The workshop highlights and compares traditional solutions for resolving parenting time disputes with tech-based solutions including the current landscape of AI and electronic tools and apps. Content also addresses the importance of digital literacy for PCs and parents, along with important considerations around ethics, digital equity, privacy, and user experience.
Guiding Families Through the Storm: The Shepherd's Role in Parenting Coordination
Coordinating services across the arc of the family law case
From the time a couple decides to separate and divorce, stress, doubt, and fear intensify as the impending storm of family litigation looms. This workshop describes the phases and tools of intervention for PCs during the beginning, middle, and end of the family law case. Parenting Coordinators can assist each parent, their children, and other interventionists by coordinating services, determining appropriate timing, and monitoring all family members for red flags and risks until litigation is resolved.
Untangling Trauma from Drama
Trauma-informed practices and data-driven goals in parenting coordination
This workshop provides an overview of how trauma and chronic adversity impacts human development and functioning and outlines the role of the parenting coordinator in helping untangle trauma from drama. Tools to support trauma-informed practices and interventions in parenting coordination will be reviewed along with a guide to the use of data-driven goals to improve safety for all. Research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the impact on family functioning in the context of high-conflict interparental dynamics will be presented.
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