High-Conflict Parenting Post-Separation: The Making and Breaking of Family Ties

High-Conflict Parenting Post-Separation: The Making and Breaking of Family Ties describes an innovative approach for families where children are caught up in their parents’ acrimonious relationship - before, during and after formal legal proceedings have been initiated and concluded.

This first book in a brand-new series by researchers and clinicians at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families (AFNCCF) outlines a model of therapeutic work which involves children, their parents and the wider family and social network. The aim is to protect children from conflict between their parents and thus enable them to have healthy relationships across both ‘sides’ of their family network.

High-Conflict Parenting Post-Separation is written for professionals who work with high-conflict families – be that psychologists, psychiatrists, child and adult psychotherapists, family therapists, social workers, children’s guardians and legal professionals including solicitors and mediators, as well as students and trainees in all these different disciplines. The book should also be of considerable interest for parents who struggle with post-separation issues that involve their children.

Prof Dr Eia Asen, MD, FRCPsych, is a consultant child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist who has worked for 40 years in the NHS. For many years he was the clinical director of the Marlborough Family Service, a systemically oriented child, adolescent and family mental health service based in the centre of London. Since 2013 he has been working as a psychiatrist and family therapist at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families and he also holds the position of Visiting Professor at University College London. He has published ten books and many scientific papers and frequently teaches in Europe, the USA and Asia.

Dr Emma Morris, DClinPsy, is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist who worked at the Marlborough Family Service with Prof. Asen before for ten years before moving to the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families in 2014. In her current role as Senior Clinician for the Specialist Trauma and Maltreatment Service at the Center she leads on several projects including a busy clinical service for contact and residence cases. She has published research in peer-reviewed journals and regularly provides teaching and consultation in academic and professional settings both in the UK and Europe.