What about the Children?
Parenting post separation and divorce
ISBN 978 0 7326 2420 0
Acknowledgements
The research team would like to thank the many
people who assisted in this study. Considerable
thanks are due to the clientele of the Frankston
and Mornington Peninsula Family Relationship
Centre who generously shared their problems of
parental separation and divorce with us over the
years of this study.
The staff at the Frankston and Mornington
Peninsula Family Relationship Centre, from
the reception and administration staff to
the mediation, counselling and community
development staff, were always most helpful,
tolerating many hours of questioning and
observation and giving many explanations
and contributing to many discussions.
Very particular thanks are due to the Manager
of the Centre, Jill Armstrong, under whose
leadership the Centre has prospered.
Many local services supported the research
and contributed their views and experiences,
particularly those represented on the Centre’s
Reference Group, the Frankston Municipal
Council, the Mornington Shire Council, the
Peninsula Community Legal Centre, the local
Centrelink Office, Frankston Legal Aid, Frankston
Child Support Agency, the Anglicare services,
the Good Shepherd Services, the Melbourne
staff of the Department of Families, Housing,
Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
(FaHCSIA) and the Federal Magistrates Court.
Most of all, thanks are due to Jo Cavanagh,
the Chief Executive Officer of Family Life who
commissioned the study. Her strong belief in
research-based policy, program and practice
development, has been a constant guiding
principle in her community service leadership.
Her brave initiation of this project as a three
year study detailing the development of one
Centre and its policies, programs and practice,
highlights the way that research can contribute
to service development and to underlying
theory about the problems the services are
addressing and managing their resolution.
The Family Relationship Centre is
An Australian Government Initiative
Thea Brown
Department of Social Work
Monash University Victoria
February 2010
Contents
Executive summary 4
Case studies 8
Chapter One – The new legislation, policies and services
11
Chapter Two – Research design
18
Chapter Three – The Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Family Relationship Centre
23
Chapter Four – Clients’ views and experiences of mediation
34
Chapter Five – Policy issues and recommendations
44
Bibiography
52
Appendix A – Survey 56
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Executive summary
In 2006 the Commonwealth government
introduced new family law legislation, the
Family Law (Shared Parental Responsibility)
Amendment Act thereby initiating a major change
in the way that the Australian community was
to approach and manage parental separation
and divorce. The legislation, preceded by
many inquiries in the previous eight years,
moved away from an adversarial model of
parental separation and divorce towards a
model emphasising collaboration and equal
responsibility in decision making between
former partners in the care of their children.
The new model was to be supported by further
changes. One change, vital to the success of
the implementation of the legislation, was the
creation (through expansion and re-structuring)
of a new family law socio-legal service system,
a stronger and more orderly service system
than the one that had arisen piece by piece
since 1975. A key feature of the new service
system was to be the development of a network
of services functioning as the foundation of
the service system, a network of 65 Family
Relationship Centres, spreading out through
Australia from 2006 to 2008.
the development of such a Centre as being a
much needed base for family relationship services
in a region with a high concentration of families
and many family problems. Family Life bases its
policy, program and practice development on
research and so it commissioned research on
the development of its then newest service, the
Frankston and Mornington Family Relationship
Centre, for a three year period beginning from
the time of the Centre’s inception.
This study tells the story of one of the first Family
Relationship Centres to be established, the
Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Family
Centre, auspiced by Family Life, an established
family welfare community services organisation
with its headquarters in Sandringham, a bayside
suburb of Melbourne, and covering the southern
bayside region from the City of Port Philip
Many criticisms had been made of the legislation
prior to and after its introduction and many
questions were posed as to the capacity of the
network of Family Relationship Centres. Could
they establish themselves as a new service with
new programs? Would they be able to cover
their localities and give all local citizens access
to their services? Would the mediation they
close to the city centre through to Frankston
and the Mornington Peninsula. Family Life is
an innovative organisation that has introduced
many new programs in Victoria. It has a strong
community strengthening philosophy and it saw
were empowered to offer suit families outside
of the small group of middle class clientele that
had previously used mediation, now termed
family dispute resolution in the legislation? How
could and how would they manage the tension
between family violence and mediation?
Page 4
The Family Relationship Centre was to be
responsible for leading the implementation
of the new model of parental separation and
divorce in the Frankston and Mornington
Peninsula area; it would have a substantial
role in introducing the changes to separating
couples, local professionals and local services
and in creating and consolidating the re-shaped
family law socio-legal service system locally.
Furthermore, it would have a substantial role
in helping separating couples plan for and
manage the ongoing care of their children and
in resolving disputes between family members,
(former partners, new partners, children and
grandparents), over the children’s care.
The Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Family
Relationship Centre had to work quickly to design
and commence its programs, all of which had not
been offered by any agency before, either in that
particular format or at all. The Centre determined
to work on a principle of empowering the clients,
knowing that the issues they faced in resolving
distressing separation issues for parents and
children would not end with the settlement of the
dispute brought to the Centre. Thus, within the
information sessions, special post–separation
parenting and grand-parenting seminars, and
the two pre-mediation or mediation preparation
seminars, clients were introduced to the notion
of self empowerment built on communication,
education and relationship strategies to achieve
it. Many local services were brought in to these
sessions to give clients much needed information
about the new legislation, its provisions and
its services.
The answers to the questions about the viability
and suitability of the Frankston and Mornington
Peninsula Family Relationship Centre lie primarily
in the clients’ experiences with the new service.
Their experiences cover all of the issues and
speak for themselves.
Only a few clients brought relatively small
problems and disputes to the Centre. One such
mother said, “We were able to undertake
mediation and resolve our differences quite
easily; we did not have many problems, but
then we had not been able to do it on our
own… I wonder why?” Staff also wondered
why this former couple had needed to come to
the Centre, but concluded, “I suppose if they
could have done it themselves they would
have.” Clients like this were rare. Almost all the
clients had a considerable number of areas of
dispute and many family problems; some had
struggled with these for many years.
As one late-middle-aged mother with two midteen children said “I have had mediation many
times [twice] and this is the only time we
have been able to improve things.”
Why did the Centre’s programs make a difference
for the clients who included mothers, fathers,
new partners and grandparents, ranging in age
from twenty to over sixty, and their children?
The clients’ satisfaction ratings of the services as
a whole and of the mediation process were very
high, as described in Chapter Four, but what was
it that made a difference? Clients commented
consistently on feeling empowered. They said
things like “I feel stronger within myself now”
(from a young mother with a disabled child);
“I know now I will cope” (from an older mother
with two pre-school children.) They thought
they had learned new ways of approaching their
situations, an indicator that they had gained a
sense of empowerment. One older father who
offered many humorous comments said he had
learned “a new approach… that of listening!”
and thought he was now “more mediation
like and more meditative… I can now see
another way.” He described how he had
originally seen all the problems as belonging to
his former partner but that he did not hold this
view now. Clearly the Centre’s investment in the
pre-mediation seminars and other education
sessions was very worthwhile.
Importantly, the investment in empowerment
knowledge and strategies assisted the clients
in maintaining their problem-solving efforts after
they had finished their engagement with the Centre.
The parents told the researchers that those who
did resolve their disputes through mediation at
the Centre and those who did not kept working
on their family relationships afterwards.
Page 5
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Executive summary continued
Those who did resolve disputes found they
encountered subsequent issues but reported
managing them, saying as one father did,
“Well, she didn’t do what she promised
in the mediation, but I was able to work on
that and we are keeping to our plans now.”
The amount of energy that the clients spoke
of putting into resolving their disputes was
substantial. Those who did not achieve initial
success continued working on their issues and
some half of these former couples did resolve the
disputed matters subsequently. Some did this
by themselves and some brought in private legal
practitioners to support them and to negotiate
for them. Associated with this commitment
to ongoing effort was a strong motivation to
managing these issues for oneself.
The clients used time to resolve their difficulties.
They did not merely let time pass but used time
to make plans, to come to decisions, to go on
and use new services, to reflect on what they had
been advised, to try out arrangements, to reflect
further and to keep on negotiating and working
together. One father spoke of nine months of
reflection after mediation, during which time he
thought about everything that had been said
by the various services and how that had lead
him to understand what he had sought originally
was impractical and unlikely to be supported by
anyone, finally even by himself, “I tried a lot of
things, and thought a lot, and realised what
I had first thought was not going to be able
to happen.”
Clients’ accounts showed that the reconstruction
of the service system allowed them to continue
moving forward; very few reported being caught
Page 6
in a dead end. Typically clients would begin their
post separation journey by using a service like
a government or a non-government telephone
information service (the latter used very frequently
by fathers who often made this type of comment
about them, “They were quite mad in their
advice but their information for fathers was
really good”), then move to a legal practitioner,
and often a counselling or health service, and
then on to the Family Relationship Centre. Most
stopped there, with only a small group (less than
20%) eventually going to court or resuming court
actions. The most common service used after
the partners had finished at the Centre was a
private legal practitioner, used by parents (more
mothers than fathers) to continue negotiating
arrangements regarding children. Many parents
wanted more services to be made available
to them, especially legal and other information
services. In addition, fathers argued for more
availability of counselling and for this to be
inserted into the mediation and mothers wanted
more time in mediation.
The question of family violence was a major
one for the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre. The catchment
area had high domestic violence and child
abuse rates combined with low secondary
and tertiary education participation rates.
The study was not designed to pick up those
who sought exemptions from mediation but
those seeking exemptions via the Centre were
low in number. People seeking mediation fell
into three groups regarding violence. Some
acknowledged domestic violence saying,
“I came for mediation about the violence.”
No parent reported child abuse even though it
was identified in some families. Some deliberately
concealed violence, saying later, “I just do not
want to go to court” and “My lawyer said I
should not take this [domestic violence] to
court.” Some were not aware of it because
it did not fit into what they saw as violence,
“He just chases me down the hall all the
time and spits at me and shouts and yells,
but that isn’t violence.” The clients who
were aware of the violence reported that the
mediation was still successful and some of these
suggested that the preliminary work dampened
it down in mediation; staff were of this view
too. Among those who failed to resolve their
disputes, violence to the children was given as
a reason by some mothers who were seeking
supervised contact because of violence. None
of these mothers went to court but negotiated
subsequently through a solicitor. One wanted
to go court but could not obtain legal aid due
to failing to meet the legal aid means test.
However many mothers saw a tension for
themselves between family violence and their
former partner’s demand for equal time.
They thought this exacerbated the disputes.
The clients’ feelings of having had their needs
met is supported by the statistical analysis of
their views described in the body of the report
in Chapters Three, Four and Five. The outcomes
they and the Centre achieved showed that the
Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Family
Relationship Centre, located as it was in a
catchment area that in many ways did not lend
itself to such a Centre, was embraced by the
clients and the local community.
Page 7
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Case studies
It may be difficult to read and understand
the report without having some idea of the
problems the families brought to the Frankston
and Mornington Peninsula Family Relationship
Centre. As a new component in a revised family
law socio-legal services system, service providers
and researchers may be unfamiliar with the
families coming to the Centre and the ways their
problems were presented and addressed. Thus
three brief case studies are presented here at
the outset of the report. None are case studies
of real families, but the descriptions reflect
the problems that the real families did bring.
Each of the three case studies shows some
particular themes in the families that came
to the Centre. The first case study is of a family
where the issue brought for resolution was
openly declared as long standing family violence;
the second one is where the issue presented
was equal shared time and where there was
much mutual suspicion between the former
partners but not of mediation; and the third is
one presented by two sets of grandparents
who had many problems around their ongoing
cooperation in the care of their four grandchildren.
The Brown family
The Brown parents had separated some eight
years ago. They had only the one daughter
now nine and so their daughter had had little
experience of living with her father. The mother
had left her husband because he had problems
with alcohol and because of his violence. During
the preceding years the mother had many
disputes over the father’s ongoing violence as
well as his unreliability with the arrangements for
his care of their daughter. Sometimes he would
do what he promised but often he would not.
Page 8
Over the years they had been to a family law
mediation service twice but these experiences
had changed nothing.
With the new legislation the mother initiated
contact with the Family Relationship Centre for
mediation to improve the father’s unreliability and
to stop him harassing her with abusive phone
calls. He had not re-partnered and was very
suspicious and jealous of the mother. He would
phone her on average some eight times a day.
He was always keen to maintain contact with
his daughter, his only child, although unreliable
about arrangements, and the daughter and her
mother were keen to maintain the bond too. He
lived some 20 minutes from the mother’s home.
The parents attended the assessment, the
pre-mediation seminars, further assessment and
three hours of mediation. The mother disclosed
the violence and her view was that she sought
mediation about the violence to her. In mediation
the father did not deny the harassment and the
previous violence. When contacted twelve months
after mediation had finished the mother thought
the mediation had been successful and that it was
the only episode of mediation that had been so.
She no longer received any phone calls other
than those about the parenting arrangements
which she thought were going well although not
perfectly. She is prepared to tolerate what she
calls his unreliability more than previously. Her
concern is to maintain contact between the child
and her father and she thought that she was
succeeding in this.
The Smith family
The Smith parents separated only six months
prior to contacting the Centre. The father
contacted the Centre because he wanted to
have the two children, aged 4 and 6, on an
equal time basis. He said he knew this was in
the new legislation and that was what he wanted.
He was concerned about mediator bias to
mothers even though the legislation “was on
his side”. He was a young father of 34 years,
a self employed tradesman and doing well,
and his former partner was 28 and working in
Sales part time. He did not seek legal advice
beforehand and following the pre-mediation
seminars he said he thought he was still right
and able to handle things himself.
They reached agreement very quickly and this
was surprising to them both, as he wanted 50:
50 time with the children and his wife was quite
opposed. They agreed on 50:50 time even
though the mother was concerned about this
being difficult for such young children. However,
after only 6 weeks, the agreement broke down
and she would not give him any time, let alone
50:50. She felt he wanted 50:50 only to reduce
child support.
To his surprise his partner instigated more
mediation at the Centre. During the mediation
each said they believed their parenting
arrangements were going to have to last a
long time as the children were so young.
They each wanted to do the best they could.
In the mediation some of the underlying
obstacles to agreement were identified mostly
those that lay in their relationship generally,
including the suspicions that each had about
the other, in this case regarding the motives
for their parenting arrangements.
The Smiths reached an agreement again
that gave the father considerably less than a
50:50 time arrangement. They reported to the
researchers that they have been able to keep
this arrangement or six months. They have
both agreed that they will have to review these
arrangements constantly as the children’s needs
will change over time, beginning with the younger
child starting school in a year. Each remains
happy with the mediators and their support for
each parent. He says mediation was a “positive
experience for him” and she says that she
“is happy with the outcome”.
The Vandenberg and Bourke families
Gary Vandenberg, the only child of the
Vandenberg seniors, had married Fran of the
Bourke family fourteen years ago. They had
four children, now aged from seven to fourteen.
After the Gary and Fran married, both sets of
grandparents moved away from Frankston; the
Vandenbergs to Geelong and the Bourkes to
Coolangatta QLD. Ten years later, Gary and Fran
collapsed. Gary was hospitalised with severe
mental health problems and Fran was convicted
of burglary offenses due, she said, to her need
to maintain an income for the children as Gary
could no longer work.
Both parents were institutionalised. The
Vandenberg seniors returned from Geelong
and the Bourke seniors from Coolangatta.
They agreed to jointly care for their grandchildren
for what they believed would be for three years,
the term of Fran’s sentence. Both sets of
grandparents went to the Federal Magistrates
Court seeking joint guardianship with residence
to the Vandenbergs and regular overnight access
to the Bourkes. Both children agreed to this and
the arrangements were formalised as consent
orders in the Federal Magistrate’s Court.
Page 9
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Case studies continued
The dispute the grandparents brought to the
Centre was over the access that the Bourkes
said the Vandenbergs were now allowing Gary
to the children. Gary was out of hospital and
visiting his children regularly. The Bourkes
believed he was the cause of all the family’s
problems, those of the grandchildren and of their
daughter, and that he was too unstable to see
the children. Fran had been released from prison
but refused contact with her parents or her
children as she had re-partnered and left Victoria.
The Vandenbergs and the Bourkes sought legal
advice and were referred for mediation.
All the grandparents and Gary attended the
pre-mediation seminars and mediation was
arranged for them all. Agreements were made
giving Gary a small amount of contact. However
the Bourkes returned to the Centre some months
later, saying that Gary was seeing more of the
children than agreed and that the oldest child
was increasingly disturbed by this. Their solicitor
referred them for mediation again. Further
mediation was undertaken with Gary gaining more
contact and then all were referred to counselling
within the Centre. The oldest child was referred
for mental health assessment and care. Some
nine months later all adults were maintaining the
arrangements believing that they cannot achieve
any better arrangements but fearful of the future.
Page 10
Chapter One
The new legislation, policies and services
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter One –
The new legislation, policies and services
Introduction
Mounting concern for change
In Australia approximately one in three marriages
break down and the marital partnership ends.
Some 50.1% of these marriages include
dependent children (ABS, 2009). There is no
precise data available regarding the numbers
of de facto partnerships, the rate at which
they break down and the numbers of children
involved, except that children born into de facto
partnerships are 30% of children born today
(ABS, 2009). However, the proportion of de facto
marital partnerships that break down is believed
to be higher than in legally married families. Thus
Australia has a high separation and divorce rate
amongst those who are legally married and also
those in de facto partnerships, and many children
are involved.
Concern about post separation parenting
continued and then escalated in the last decade
of the twentieth century. Despite the many
amendments to the 1975 legislation, the last
of which occurred in 1998, the Commonwealth
government felt sufficiently pressured to instigate
seven enquiries into various aspects of family
law legislation and the family law socio-legal
services between 1998 and 2005 (Harrison,
2007). In 2006 the Commonwealth government
enacted further family law legislation that
represented the greatest change since the
1975 legislation. The new legislation abandoned
the former adversarial model of separation and
divorce and introduced instead a collaborative
model for parents to adopt in their post separation
parenting, underpinning it with a restructuring and
an expansion of the family law socio-legal services
system to support the change.
Separation and divorce in Australia
In 1975 the Commonwealth government took
control of divorce from the states and territories
and in their first family law legislation introduced
a policy of no fault divorce hoping that removing
fault would remove the acrimony between former
partners and reduce the distress of parents
and children during and after separation and
divorce. Nevertheless, over the next twenty years
concern emerged as to the way that parents
managed their relationships with each other
after separation and how they undertook their
responsibilities for the care of their children.
That the end of the marriage is the end of the
partnership came to be exposed as a myth
shattered by the reality of the next decades
of parenting post separation and divorce.
For, the decades showed that after separation
and divorce, the partnership continues, albeit
in another form, when there are children.
Page 12
The report
This report is a study of that change; in particular
it is a study of one element of that change, the
introduction of Family Relationship Centres as
a key part of the new national network of family
law socio-legal services. The Family Relationship
Centres were to share, even lead, in shouldering
the responsibility for driving the change in
the culture of separation and divorce that the
government sought. This report tells of how one
Centre, the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre, one of the first
established in the new national network, carried
out its role of social change in its local community.
The new legislation, the Family
Law Amendment (Shared Parental
Responsibility) Act of 2006
The new legislation, the Family Law Amendment
(Shared Parenting Responsibility) Act of 2006,
had grown out of dissatisfaction regarding many
issues relating to post separation parenting,
including dissatisfaction
• that fathers were treated less well than were
mothers in disputes about parenting,
• that fathers were not sufficiently involved in their
children’s lives following separation,
• that domestic violence was not being addressed
appropriately,
• that the child support formulae were not fair,
especially to second families,
• that the family law socio-legal services system
was confused and confusing with no clarity
or consistency,
• that that system did not provide sufficient
mediation resources,
• that legal practitioners inflamed rather than
calmed partnership disputes and
• that recourse to the courts to settle such
disputes was expensive, slow and not
necessarily beneficial for parents and children.
From these various and sometimes contradictory
discontents the government crafted the new
legislation. The legislation abandoned the
adversarial and legalistic model of divorce and
introduced one aimed at supporting parents
in achieving a long term and cooperative
relationship with each other in order to continue
their parenting after their separation and divorce.
The legislation introduced the notion of equal
parental responsibility whereby both parents
were to be equally responsible for decision
making in the health, education and religion
of their children (Faulks, 2008; Redman, 2008).
Also the legislation introduced the notion of
a more equal division of time to be shared
between each parent in their care of the child
so that there would be an assumption, unless
proved otherwise, that the child should spend
approximately equal amounts of time with
each parent (Rhoades, 2008). In their publicity
promoting information about the new legislation
the government asserted that the changes
were “Putting the Focus on Kids” (Australian
Government, 2007. A new Family Law System.
Putting the Focus on Kids).
The new family law socio-legal service
system
Supporting the new policies was the expansion
and re-shaping of the services system. Central
to the re-shaping of the service system was the
creation of a national network of a new agency,
the Family Relationship Centres, that were to be
a new first port of call or entry point (Australian
Institute of Family Studies, AIFS 2007) to other
services; where information, referral and advice
were to be provided and where family dispute
resolution (or mediation) services were to be
available. Some fifteen such Centres were
established in the first funding round in various
suburban and regional locations across Australia
and ultimately some sixty five Centres were
established in the years from 2006-2008.
The Centres were at the heart of further changes.
The legislation introduced the notion of pathways
for couples separating and the Centres were
to be part of the start of the various pathways
that people could take.
Page 13
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter One – The new legislation, policies and service system continued
Couples with parenting disputes after separation
were not to be allowed to progress immediately
to the two tier family law courts structure but,
unless granted an exemption, they had to go
first to one of the Family Relationship Centres
or to another recognised dispute resolution
service and attempt to resolve their disputes
through mediation. The first three hours of
mediation were to be provided free at the Family
Relationship Centres. Other family law mediation
centres were not provided with funding for this
purpose. Although separating parents could
consult legal practitioners these practitioners
could not be directly involved in the mediation.
This was to become a source of dissatisfaction
(Field 2004; McCoy, 2005) and to be changed
eventually. If mediation failed or if a parent could
gain an exemption from mediation on account
of family violence, (domestic violence and or
child abuse) they could then progress to court.
These changes left Centres as the prime location
for change. It was here that the new model of
separation and divorce with its emphasis on
collaborative parenting would be interpreted,
introduced, explained and carried out. It was
here that the ideas of equal responsibility and
shared time were to be introduced, explained
and implemented.
Moreover the Centres had to manage family
violence; they had to screen for it and make
decisions as to whether any family violence
identified precluded mediation and necessitated
the parents going direct to court and whether
any violence identified required a mandatory
or voluntary referral to another service.
The Centres had to grapple with other changes
stemming from the legislation. These included
the raising of the profile of grandparents as
members of the family with a role in post separation
parenting and in dispute resolution (Australian
Government, 2007). Also the child support
Yet another change was the introduction of
new policies in the Family Court of Australia.
In keeping with the policies of the new legislation
and introduced within it but conceived before
it, the Family Court had introduced the Less
Adversarial Trial (LAT) program after a pilot of
formulae was changed to allow, or to encourage,
more equal sharing of time and the formulae
was adjusted to give greater benefits to the
non residential parent who gave more time (Child
Support Agency, 2008).
the preceding program, the Children’s Cases
Program (CCP) during 2004-6. LAT moved the
court away from an adversarial model in resolving
parenting disputes towards a more inquisitorial
model like the Magellan program introduced
Page 14
The Centres had to meet further challenges.
The Centres were to be sponsored by
community services organisations with a
capacity to undertake the new role and those
sponsors that won the tenders for the Centres
had to find suitable premises, fit them out, set
up policies, procedures and programs and
obtain staffing (that met the Commonwealth
government’s standards) in the short time
between winning the tender and being required
to open. Furthermore the Centres had to settle
themselves into a service system grappling with
many new features. One of these was the new
Commonwealth government services, such as
two telephone advice lines, that were expected
to be a support and a possible channel for
clients to the Centres. Another change was an
expansion of some existing services for post
separation parenting like contact centres and
parenting orders programs (Brown, 2007).
as a pilot program in the court in 1999 and as
a national program from 2002 (Brown et al,
2001; Brown and Alexander, 2007; Higgins,
2007). LAT aimed to defuse family conflict and
promote collaboration between parents. In this
program the court adopted more informal court
procedures allowing parents a more participative
role in the court. The Court also adopted the
Child Responsive Program (CRP) to complement
the LAT program and this program gave a
stronger emphasis to the inclusion of children’s
views and consideration of their needs (Harrison,
2007). At the same time the Federal Magistrate’s
Court continued as the second tier of the court
system with no special programs introduced as
a result of the new legislation. Thus the Centres
had to integrate with new court programs and
with the existing ones although there was no
mechanism created initially to achieve linkage
and smooth the way for clients from the Centres
to the court or back again.
Past discontent and Family Relationship
Centres
Looking back, as this report does, the question
arises as to why the government introduced this
new national network of front line services and
what they expected from them; did the past
discontent suggest such reforms or not?
As mentioned there were many new policies
expressed in the 2006 legislation, not all of which
were compatible with each other, but which
were nevertheless introduced simultaneously.
The underlying philosophy that parents should
separate with less rancour and go forward to
cooperate with each other in post separation
parenting is one that had held attention in the
separation and divorce literature for many years.
This philosophy was expressed in many of the
post 1998 reports and one example of this was
the report of one of the seven enquiries, the
Family Law Pathways Advisory Group (FLPAG),
“Out of the Maze”. This report suggested that
Australia’s current family law socio-legal service
system promoted conflict on many fronts, for
example by the prominence of adversarial legal
practitioners in the separation process, by an
excessive reliance on courts, by a dearth of
supporting alternative services, including low
cost mediation, by out of date child support
formulae, and by the confusion of a fragmented
services system (FLPAG, 2001). The formation of
the Family Relationship Centres network was a
logical response to these dissatisfactions in that
the Centres could be the organisational agent
for this social change in the culture of separation
and divorce. They could promote it at the local
level, they could be the first port of call and help
set people on a clear pathway, they could be
the information and referral agency, they could
provide early intervention outreach and they
could provide free mediation.
There was also dissatisfaction with the way that
family violence, particularly domestic violence,
was handled in separation and divorce. Much
of that dissatisfaction was expressed towards
the Courts. The Family Court of Australia had
introduced a specialised national program for
parenting disputes where child abuse was alleged
as from 2001 (Brown et al, 2007, Higgins, 2007).
These types of disputes were treated separately
and contained within a proactive structured, time
limited, judge lead program supported by interorganisational cooperation from state Legal Aid
authorities and Child Protection authorities.
Page 15
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter One – The new legislation, policies and service system continued
However there were no similar programs for
parenting disputes where domestic violence
was alleged, although the state of Western
Australia in its state based family court had
introduced the Columbus program to cover this
gap in 2001. There were a number of states
and Commonwealth funded domestic violence
services for victims that related to the courts,
like refuges, contact centres, parenting orders
programs, but there were no specialised pathway
for separating couples with domestic violence.
A complicating factor was the presence of state
courts that handled domestic violence, including
the new specialised domestic violence courts
such as those in Victoria. These state courts did
not interface with the Commonwealth courts.
With no specialised pathway, victims relied on
legal advisors to obtain protection for them and
their children through private agreements or
through court orders. In fact, as had been shown,
the incidence of domestic violence in Australia
and its role in separation and divorce had meant
that family courts had become pre-occupied with
parenting disputes involving family violence (Brown
et al, 2007; Moloney at al, 2007). At the same
time mediation services reported couples using
family law mediation despite domestic violence in
an effort to gain a less expensive and a quicker
solution than could be won by going to court
(Batagol and Brown, 2010).
The new legislation recognised domestic violence
and child abuse and ensured that these issues
be taken into account in decision making by the
courts (AIFS, 2007). It also recognised that family
violence would not be resolved by mediation
and set up a pathway taking those affected by
family violence direct to court. However it did
Page 16
not consider that some may not want to go to
court. Neither did it recognise the large numbers
affected by family violence and how these
numbers might challenge, even overwhelm, the
new service system. The legislation introduced
cost penalties for so-called false allegations of
family violence although the research indicated
these were far less frequent than commonly
believed (Brown et al, 2007; Moloney et al,
2008), but it did not introduce corresponding
penalties for what became termed as false
denials of domestic violence or of child abuse
that had been identified in an examination of
cases from both tiers of the court as extremely
frequent (Moloney et al, 2008). Furthermore
the government did not appreciate the tension
that would arise between the shared parenting
provisions, the family violence provisions and the
new child support formulae and how common
problems around this tension might be.
Thus Family Relationship Centres were placed
in a difficult position with regard to family
violence. They could screen for it and grant
exemptions for it. Screening for such violence is
not easy because many conceal it. Some do not
recognise it even though they are involved in it.
Some conceal it in order to try and use mediation
despite it. The Centres were not able to bring
in legal advisors to mediation for such parents
placing them in potential conflict with the legal
profession. Thus the Centres were subject to
attack before they began on the issue of family
violence. Critics from the legal profession and
from domestic violence services doubted that the
Centres could manage family violence without
further oppressing its victims (Domestic Violence
& Incest Resource Centre, 2007; Astor, 2007).
Conclusion
The 2006 family law legislation introduced
a new model of separation and divorce; the
legislation abandoned the long standing
adversarial model of divorce and introduced
a collaborative parenting model of divorce that
emphasised ongoing cooperative parenting
arrangements with equal decision making
responsibilities for parents in relation to Children’s
health, religion and education and with greater
sharing of time as between parents in caring
for their children. To implement this change,
along with the many others instigated by the
legislation, the Commonwealth government
created a national network of Family Relationship
Centres as a new entry point to the family law
socio-legal services system and as a place for
mediation in parenting disputes. As part of a
newly establishing network the Centres faced
many challenges in their role of leading these
changes at the local level. Some doubts as to
their ability to carry out this role were expressed
and these lay around the issues of whether
the new service could establish itself and its
programs in the required time, whether the new
Centres would provide sufficient access to any
area’s relevant population, whether mediation
could be satisfactorily extended to cover a
much larger group of people, including people
atypical of those who had sought to mediate
in the past, and whether family violence could
be managed both in terms of the proposed
certification by the Centres for exemptions
to mediate and in mediation itself if couples
entered into mediation with a history or a current
presence of family violence either acknowledged
or unacknowledged.
Page 17
Chapter Two
Research design
Chapter Two – Research design
Introduction
Focus of the research
The announcement of a new network of Family
Relationship Centres throughout Australia,
as a major new entry point offering a variety
of services within the re-shaped family law
socio-legal services system, lead to Family Life
tendering to provide one of the Centres with
related early intervention services of counselling
and relationship education for the Frankston
and Mornington Peninsula. This was in 2005 in
the first of the three waves of funding planned
for the establishment of the new network.
In the first wave the tender included provision
for research to be funded within the Centre
grant in partnership with a research agency like
a university. Family Life proposed in its tender
brief that it conduct research in partnership
with the Department of Social Work, Monash
University, with Professor Thea Brown, who had
been active as a researcher and academic in that
area over some years. The research brief was
concerned with the Frankston and Mornington
Peninsula Family Relationship Centre and was to
be conducted at the same time as the AttorneyGeneral’s Department funded the Australian
Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) to undertake
a large evaluation of the changes of the new
legislation that covered all the family law sociolegal services and professional groups, including
all the Family Relationships Centres in Australia.
With the government’s commissioning of
the large AIFS research study of the 2006
reforms, it was logical for this research to
focus on the local elements of the wider reform,
the creation of the Frankston and Mornington
Peninsula Family Relationship Centre within
the new national network. Obviously the policy,
program and practice questions raised before
and just after the introduction of the legislation
would be answered in large part by how well
the Centres succeeded in their local contexts.
A study of any one such Centre would not
reveal all relevant issues but could reveal the
most significant issues for any particular local
context. In addition, investigating one Centre’s
development might reveal an amount of detail
that the broader brush AIFS study could not;
and a study that ran continuously over the
three years of the Centre’s life might show more
than the large study reviewing events in all
Centres less frequently. A study of a local
Centre might lack national aspects, but taking
national and local studies together a fuller
picture could emerge. Unfortunately although
the local studies and the national study originally
linked together, that linkage faded during the
evaluation’s three years.
Page 19
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Two – Research design continued
Research questions
The research design
The research questions were:
The relevant research design was a descriptive
design in which the events and people being
studied are described in detail and, in this
case, over time (Grinnell, 1997). As a new
service in the Frankston and Mornington
Peninsula locality, there was much descriptive
detail needed to describe the locality, the new
service, the development of the Centre within
the local service system, the client group, their
needs, their use of the Centre and their views.
Some of this information could be used to gain
some assessment of the Centre’s successes
and evaluate it in terms of its own goals and
the Commonwealth government’s goals. The
study had evaluative elements but it was not a
complete or a formal program evaluation.
Could the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre establish itself in its
local catchment area and provide the programs
that the Commonwealth Government wanted
from it as it played its part in implementing the
2006 reforms, and,
To what extent could it succeed in this
pioneering role?
Considering the comments criticising the notion
of Family Relationship Centres and their role
and relationships in the changed family law
socio-legal services system could the new
Centre tailor its development and services to
its locality and in particular could it:
Establish itself and design and implement a
full program complement?
Provide accessibility to clients?
Introduce clients to the ideas underpinning
the new model of separation and divorce?
Operate a mediation service and gain its
patronage from a population that were not
accustomed to using mediation?
Develop ways of managing family violence,
domestic violence and child abuse, both
outside mediation and possible within it?
Page 20
Data collection
Many different data collection techniques were
used as the questions posed covered many
aspects of a new service in a developing
service system.
Firstly, data was collected from the Centre’s
client enquiry and registration data to determine
who was using the service over the three years
and whether it could be said that the Centre
was managing accessibility in terms of the
various family members and family locations.
Also, referral data was taken from the Centre’s
own referral data that comprised both where the
clients came from and what had happened to
them once they made contact with the Centre.
Secondly, data was collected by observation and
attendance at the Centre’s various programs, at
its initial planning meetings, its staff meetings, its
staff education meetings, its information seminars
with clients, its pre-mediation seminars with
clients, its phone contact with clients, and its
reference group meetings.
Thirdly, data was collected from surveys of clients
and then from follow up interviews with clients.
Fourthly, data was collected from interviews
with staff, individually and in groups. Informal
interviews were held with many of the services
in the local service network. The researcher had
other projects being carried out in the locality
and she was sometimes approached about
the Centre in the course of other work.
Some 140 surveys were posted out and 13
were returned as not known at this address;
most of these (9) were fathers with a few (4)
being mothers. The posting of the survey was
followed by three phone calls from fathers, one
of whom was anxious to ensure his answer was
received by the researcher and two who said
that they had not completed mediation. The
response rate of the survey was 60% (76
clients) with more mothers, 53%, than fathers,
40%, replying. Some 7% of replies came from
grandparents. The grandparents, actually a
couple but replying as if they were one person,
were counted as one person as that is how they
replied. Most respondents were aged between
30-49 years of age, (94%), with equal numbers
in each of the two age groups, 30-39 and 40-49.
Only 6% of clients, fathers and grandparents,
fell outside this age group.
The client survey
Clients who had progressed from contacting the
Centre through the various information, education
and pre-mediation seminars to mediation during
the period December 2006 to August 2008, were
surveyed with a mail out survey (see Appendix
A). During this time some 280 clients had
completed the entire process, enquiry, preliminary
assessment, the two seminars, final assessment,
mediation, and final checking. Half of those, 140,
clients had agreed to allow research follow up.
The 140 who agreed to engage in research
contained slightly more men than women.
Of those people, some 70 people were once
partners to people in the survey, whereas 24
women and 46 men were registered for the
research without their former partner. Among
this group were some grandparents who did not
register as a couple, but in one or other’s names,
but were in fact a couple as could be seen from
their responses.
Telephone interviews
People who had completed the survey and
agreed to be phoned subsequently were
interviewed on the telephone by a research
assistant, Ms Alison Lundgren, some six months
after the survey. Some 11 people, 14.5% of the
total group, were contacted in this way. There
were 7 mothers and 4 fathers in this group; they
were selected to represent the categories of
people emerging from the survey – those who
said they had resolved all or most of the issues
in dispute, those who said they had not, including
those who said they had or would proceed to
court, and those who said they would not.
They were approached to pursue the issue
of what had taken place with their family
relationships after mediation, particularly to
learn what those who reported not reaching
any resolution of their dispute went on to do.
Page 21
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Two – Research design continued
Ethics
The plan for data collection was presented
to and accepted by the Monash Standing
Committee on Ethics in Human Research.
No complaints were received from any client
during the research.
Undertaking the study
There were no problems encountered in
undertaking the study. Local residents, local
clientele, local service providers and the
Centre’s staff and sponsoring organisation
were most cooperative and the Centre’s clientele
were extremely enthusiastic in working on the
study even though they were volunteering details
of their private family lives. The study was time
consuming in some ways because of the use
of observation but doing this work was a most
enjoyable experience for the researchers and
they felt they were regarded and treated very
well by all.
Conclusion
The study was set up to answer specific
questions as to the ability of the new Centre
to establish itself and serve its potential client
group and questions were directed to cover
some of the criticisms identified before the
Centres began. Data was collected in many
ways and from many sources and the client
group, the Centre staff and the local services
were most cooperative with the study’s work.
Page 22
Chapter Three
The Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Three – The Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre
Introduction
Looking at the establishment and the
achievements of the Frankston and Mornington
Peninsula Family Relationship Centre over the
period 2005-9 provides a picture of just one such
Centre. Nevertheless many of the challenges
addressed by this Centre were likely to be
experienced by any one of the new Centres.
The AIFS evaluation study covering the many
changes introduced by the new legislation
including all the Family Relationship Centres was
planned to provide a broad national picture of
the changes and their impact. By way of contrast
this report was planned to provide a detailed
picture of one Centre over those years. The study
collected data over three years and so it had the
advantage of being able to tell of the changes
over time. It showed how the Centre was tailored
to the local community and how the Centre,
created as part of an Australia wide network of
services based on a national model of service
provision, succeeded in a local community,
especially one where it might be less likely to
succeed than in many others.
The Community of Frankston and the
Mornington Peninsula
The community of Frankston and the Mornington
Peninsula in Victoria, located between 70 to
120 kilometres from the CBD of Melbourne,
welcomed the possibility of a Family Relationship
Centre when the new program was announced.
The sponsoring agency, Family Life, was a
child and family welfare community service
organisation that had been founded in an
adjacent bayside area, a little closer to
Melbourne. Initially, Family Life met with many
other local services, including the councils
Page 24
of Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula,
the Peninsula Community Legal Centre and
Peninsula Community Health, to consider a
proposal. It made its proposal and won the
tender for the new service in the Frankston
and Mornington Peninsula catchment area.
The area to be covered by the new Centre
was not one where such a Centre could easily
establish itself but one where the Centre
was much needed. The catchment area was
a seaside locality that had begun life in the
nineteenth century as a string of seaside fishing
villages and beachside holiday resorts set in
the rolling hills of rural surrounds. The area
remained sparsely populated, except in the
summer holiday seasons, for some fifty years.
After the Second World War it grew more rapidly
as several public housing estates were built in
and around Frankston and Mornington. The area
attracted UK and Dutch migrants but otherwise
was remarkably untouched by the European post
war migration and later migrations to Australia.
Even today it is far less diverse racially and
ethnically than other Melbourne areas. It has
recently gained a small number of African
refugee families. It is a low income area with
two of the lowest income earning suburbs in
Australia (Vinson, 2007). It has a low high school
completion rate as compared with the state
average and it has a low participation rate in
tertiary education. It is an area with high family
violence rates, domestic violence and child abuse
rates, and it has been the scene of some tragic
instances of serial homicides. It is an area with
a high proportion of families with children and
is a community that is therefore vulnerable to
partnership breakdown.
Its largest town, Frankston, sits at the gateway to
the Mornington Peninsula. As the urban scenery
of Frankston fades into the more rural areas
of housing in Mt. Eliza, Mornington, and Mt.
Martha and further down the coast, more wealth
becomes visible in the large houses set along
the seaside cliffs of these suburbs. At the end of
the Peninsula is one of the wealthiest Australian
suburbs, Portsea, a contrast to one of the
poorest seaside suburbs, Rosebud West. In the
last twenty years many holiday homes have been
converted into cottages for retirees. Its industry
includes agribusiness, agri-tourism and seaside
tourism. It has little secondary industry with the
exception of one steel works, some light industry
and a naval base. Transport routes are primarily
highways and freeways and many rural roads.
The train line stops at Frankston. Buses run from
Frankston down the length of the Peninsula but
there is a lack of public transport that links up all
the many small settlements below Frankston.
The area has a history of having a poor infrastructure of health and welfare services. While
both public and private health services have
been poor they have been improved by increased
Commonwealth and state funding for all health
services in the last decade, including the
incorporation of the local health services into
the Monash University’s clinical health teaching
programs in medicine, nursing and occupational
and physiotherapy. However, other community
services remained poor until Frankston Council in
cooperation with other local community service
agencies was able to obtain state funding to
expand child and family welfare services recently.
Some of these services covered the wider area
as well.
As can be seen from a description of the locality,
clear challenges existed for the new Family
Relationship Centre. These included challenges
of providing access to services to a dispersed
population, challenges of family violence,
challenges of poor complementary services,
challenges of low education levels, challenges
of low incomes and associated family problems
like unemployment and challenges of obtaining
professionally qualified and experienced staff.
To these challenges must be added those that
faced all the Centres as they began, the physical
set up of a new service and the creation of new
programs and procedures in a very short time.
The Centre opens
The Centre opened on 1st July 2006 as required.
It was placed in an area of the Frankston CBD
adjacent to many other government services
such as Centrelink, the Municipal Offices and the
Library Buildings. The Centre complied with the
government’s policies as to clear government
signage and accessible location. It was within
walking distance of the train station, several bus
stops and a large council car park. It was also
adjacent to the CBD retail area. The government
had required the Centre to be distant from legal
and court precincts and the Centre was placed
away from them. The government had released a
discussion paper setting out these requirements
including how the Centres should look and how
they should incorporate facilities for children.
Page 25
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Three – The Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre continued
The challenge of obtaining professionally
qualified and experienced staff
With no university professional courses relevant
to the family law socio-legal service system
being based in the local area, except Nursing
and Primary School Teaching, the Peninsula
had long-standing difficulties in recruiting
relevant professional staff. Professionals had
always focused their employment in the inner
urban areas but in recent years had moved to
middle ring suburbs as new Universities were
established in the western, northern and the
south eastern suburbs of Melbourne. However
the Peninsula was a distance from those middle
ring suburbs and struggled to gain professional
staff. Also, at the time of the creation of the
Centre, the state government had expanded
local community services in child protection
and the Commonwealth had done similarly in
family relationship services and staff were at a
premium. The Peninsula did not have a large
professional mediation staff group; it had only
one part time family law mediation service
prior to the new legislation.
Family Life was able to recruit new staff beginning
with their first Centre manager who had worked
previously in the Council’s youth services.
Mediators were recruited but they were not as
experienced in domestic violence or in child
protection as the later mediators that the Centre
recruited as it became more established.
The challenge of staff training
The tender brief had set out qualifications for
the mediation staff. The requirements were to
meet the five-day mediation training requirements
set out by the Commonwealth government.
In addition the Centre obtained the services of a
training group, Core Communication, (Miller and
Page 26
Miller, 1997) to provide education for the staff to
develop strategies of empowering separating
couples through education and mediation in the
long term management of their joint parental
responsibilities. The Core Communication training
was delivered in a sequential series of workshops
provided over several days at a time to teach the
staff ways of helping clients develop more effective
ways of communicating with family members in
the context of family conflict following parental
separation and divorce. The training aimed at not
only assisting clients with managing immediate
issues but more importantly at strengthening
their ability to negotiate issues independently
in the future. This aspect of the program was
incorporated into the pre-mediation seminars that
the Centre ran that are discussed in greater detail
later in this chapter. Since the clients were being
assisted to work together to overcome interpersonal conflict with their former partners, it was
vital to find some way to support and expand their
ability to do this. Feedback from staff in interviews
suggested that the training gave the staff
confidence and structure in managing the conflict
they encountered in the mediation, as well as
giving them the communication knowledge and
strategies as taught explicitly in the workshops.
The training was delivered annually so as to reach
any new staff and to refresh existing staff.
The challenge of program design
Family Life, the sponsor of the Centre, was an
organisation known for its innovative capacity,
its community development philosophy, its
professionalism and its wide range of programs.
Its expertise in innovative program design was
to prove extremely valuable as new programs
had to be designed and implemented quickly.
It was a pioneer in services for family violence,
for victims, for perpetrators and for their children
and considering the prevalence of family
violence in the area to be served and in parental
separation and divorce, this expertise was
particularly important.
The seminars rotated around the Peninsula’s
small and larger Centres, sometimes being held
in offices of related services.
Family Life was also successful in tendering to
provide the additional suite of early intervention
counselling and relationship education services
for Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula
and it offered a service model whereby these
programs were integrated into the other
programs at the Centre. The integrated service
Although not necessarily conceived as such in
the Commonwealth’s program thinking for the
Centres, these seminars became the place where
clients were introduced to the change and all the
features of the new legislation. Thus it was not
surprising that they were expanded as the staff
discovered more about what the parents needed
to know. The seminars explained to parents the
new separation model with its emphasises on
the need to develop an ongoing relationship with
the former partner and to maintain joint parenting
of the children over time. The seminars adopted a
child focus as evidenced by the cut outs of many
children’s hands and feet that now cover two
of the Centre’s internal walls. This is a principle
that has been used successfully in the Parenting
Orders Programs for parenting post separation
problems (Brown, 2008). The sessions gave the
clients information about the services in the new
family law socio-legal services system and many
of the services were included in the seminars; for
example the local Child Support Agency, the local
Legal Aid office and the local Centrelink came to
the seminars to give information and show a face
to the community. The sessions talked about the
clients’ difficulties and likely experiences post
separation and gave emotional support; they
introduced them to new ways of thinking about
their situation and their children and to new ways
of communicating and negotiating with former
partners and their children. The seminars were
to help clients to gain effective entry and use of
the Centre’s services and entry and use of other
services where they were needed. Most of these
seminars were targeted at parents but some
special seminars were targeted at grandparents.
model allowed services to be accessed through
one phone number and one service gateway, the
Family Relationship Centre. The Centre provided
a service stream that incorporated information,
advice and referral and family dispute resolution
or mediation with internal referrals to counselling,
support groups and relationship education
programs. All programs had built in client
feedback and so over time the design of the
program stream could be developed according
to the client feedback and to observations from
the staff about the program.
Program components: enquiries
By the end of 2008 the program stream for
clients included a telephone enquiry and referral
service that was operated by a duty worker
from the mediation team. This service undertook
preliminary screening to assess the clients’ need
and readiness for service.
Program components: education
and information preparation for
mediation seminars
The Centre also offered what began as one
preliminary or preparatory seminar to parents
and family members, such as grandparents,
who may move on to mediation. Eventually
these seminars proved so valuable that over time
they grew to two x two hour seminar format.
Page 27
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Three – The Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre continued
Program components: family dispute
resolution or mediation
The Centre also offered family dispute
resolution services that in the past have been
termed mediation services. Mediation has a
long history within family law disputes and
the Commonwealth government had funded
community service organisations to provide
mediation services for couples with post
separation conflicts in relation to either children
or property issues for many years. It has been
estimated that some 13% of couples separating
had used these mediation services pre 2006
(Batagol, 2008). Mediation has many models
and the one advanced in the 2006 legislation
was facilitative mediation where the service was
to assist couples in resolving their disputes rather
than to offer psychological help for relationship
issues (Batagol and Brown, 2010). However
the mediation model used at Frankston did
acknowledge the strong emotions involved
in separation and divorce and it did seek to
empower couples through teaching the use of
negotiating strategies for the longer term. So, in
this respect it showed features of transformative
mediation as used in high conflict disputes
(Smyth and Moloney, 2003).
Mediation rests on the use of a neutral trained
mediator whose role is to provide a satisfactory
process but not to intervene in the outcomes
or the content of the dispute. At the same
time, mediation in the family law context has
to consider the best interests of the child and
this can detract from the notion of complete
neutrality. Thus the mediation is not within
the complete control of the couple or of the
mediator, as it is constrained by the legislation
and the program requirements set up by the
Commonwealth government flowing from it.
Page 28
All mediation has a set of procedures to guide it
and the mediator is the person who keeps the
process working according to those procedures
and keeps it on track (Batagol and Brown, 2010).
At the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre mediation followed
after the two seminars and the components were
sequentially linked to operationalise a theory of
change program model. The program design
expected that the participants needed new
knowledge and skills in order to interact in new
ways so as to increase the potential for results
to be achieved through mediation. Further, if the
participants, parents, grandparents and new
partners could interact productively through
mediation they would have learned and practiced
skills to assist the ongoing communication and
problem resolution required as the children grew
and developed. Parenting agreements were
expected to require change and modification
according to needs and circumstances over
time. The stage for this more flexible and
adaptive behaviour was set by the seminars
creating different expectations for cooperative
child-focused interactions to promote the best
interests of the children.
After the seminars an appointment was offered
to those seeking mediation for another interview
and screening prior to mediation. Screening,
particularly for family violence, was maintained
throughout the entire program using an iterative
and cumulative process as outlined recently by
Janet Johnston a mediator and researcher from
the USA (Johnston, 2008, 2009). Her approach
suggests that information has to be sought
constantly in order to have sufficient reliable and
rounded information to make decisions about the
existence of the violence and the ways to best
deal with it. After the interview and its screening
(in which explicit questions were asked about
the existence of domestic violence and child
abuse), arrangements were made for mediation.
Mediation could be undertaken as a joint
mediation with both parents in the one room;
or it could be undertaken as shuttle mediation
with each person in a separate room and the
mediator shuttling between them. Mediation
was always child-focused and could be
child-inclusive, with the child or children being
interviewed and aspects of their views reflected
to their parents but only with both parents’
permission. Sometimes mediation took place
as a teleconference because while one partner
was on the Peninsula, the other was not. This
was not an easy process as each Centre had to
pre-arrange the mediation with consideration for
the other’s policies and procedures for mediation.
The Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Centre
found this quite difficult at times. The Centre
decided to split the mediation into two sessions
believing that one three-hour session was too
long. Also it decided to instigate a shorter third
and subsequent session to allow people to
try out new arrangements and to review them
before a final formalisation of agreements for
the parenting plan.
The challenge of access to services
One of the earliest anticipated challenges was
that of access to services. With such a scattered
population and no real community centre apart
from Frankston (which was located at one
end of the community) it was anticipated that
there would be difficulties for the new service in
engaging with clients from all of the area. From
the outset, it was decided to place some services
in the smaller centres and suburbs by having
them go to these other locations at pre-arranged
times to engage more of the community. Thus
information sessions that included representation
from the Frankston Family Relationship Centre,
Frankston Legal Aid and Frankston Child Support
Agency were held not only in Frankston but also
in outlying areas strung out along the Peninsula
on a rotational basis. Also parenting and grand
parenting education programs were rotated
around the community similarly.
It was clear from the analysis of client presentation
data in the first year of the operation of the
Centre that almost all initial enquiries (over 90%)
were made by telephone. Few came in person
and very few used fax or email. As the area
has good phone coverage this worked well.
In the first six months fathers presented far
more frequently than mothers and both more
frequently than grandparents. As time went by
differences between mothers and fathers evened
out, then went up and down, with fathers underrepresented at various times (3:5 and 4:5). After
July 1st 2007, when using a Family Relationship
Centre became mandatory in a parenting
dispute, the proportion of men rose to 50%;
sometimes since it has been a little over.
Referrals
Gaining referrals from a wide variety of sources,
both local and national, was an indicator of
success in achieving a good access to services
for clients and in judging how well the Centre
was establishing itself in the re-shaped family
law socio-legal service system in the local
community. Some of the critics of the new
Centres had expressed the view that referrals
to the Centre needed to come from many
sources, as clients have been shown to start
their search for advice on separation from a
wide variety of entry points, and many services
would need to be linked with the new Centres
to facilitate accessibility to the Centres and the
broader system (Batagol, 2008).
Page 29
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Three – The Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre continued
As mentioned previously, the Frankston and
Mornington Peninsula socio-legal family law
services had begun meeting regularly from the
time of the announcement of the possibility of
Family Relationship Centres. Once Family Life
won the tender it sponsored a new series of
meetings of the same agencies to keep them
informed and involved in the development of the
new local service. As the Centre was about to
open and in months afterwards the Centre ran
many information seminars for local services
in order to continue the development of a well
informed and strong local network of services.
The Centre established a Reference Group of
local services that included its two councils,
Legal Aid, Peninsula Community Legal Centre,
Centrelink, Child Support Agency, the Family
Mediation Service, and Lifeworks, a family
relationship service in Frankston, Anglicare, the
Good Shepherd and more recently the newly
funded youth mental health services. In the early
days the reference group met bi-monthly and
then later it met quarterly.
An examination of all referrals covering the
first fourteen months of the Centre’s life was
undertaken. It showed a great variety of referral
sources indicating a quick spread of knowledge
about the nature of the new service system.
Presenting the referrals for the month after the
use of the Centre became mandatory, August
2007, showed a picture that was typical for
2007-2008. In that month there were:
• 42 self referrals with no note of any other
service involvement,
• 70 local services referrals and
• 14 national service referrals.
Page 30
(The actual total of new clients was higher than
the total of referral sources of 112 as some
sources were not noted in the Centre’s records.)
The most common service referral source was:
• 25 private legal practitioners
• 8 Legal Aid
• 3 Courts
• 3 Peninsula Community Legal Centre
• 5 Centrelink,
• 2 Child Support Agency
• 1 Navy
• 12 Family Relationships Advice Line
• 2 Department of Human Services Victoria
• 1 Family Law Mediation Centre
• 4 Anglicare
• 4 Family Life
• 2 Lifeworks
• 3 OzChild
• 1 General Practitioner
• 1 Police
• 6 others
Additional services as sources of referrals in
other months were Relationships Australia,
GordonCare, Parent Zone, Frankston Hospital
and local schools.
The outcomes for these new referrals were
allocation to:
• 42 mediation or family dispute resolution
• 13 counselling
• 9 referral to external family dispute resolution
• 5 external counselling
• 5 certificates of exemption for mediation (all of
which had been sought)
• 1 referral to another FRC as out of this area
• 9 not in area and no local FRC
• 8 referral to a local legal service
• 10 referral to a contact service
• 31 Left messages that were not answered,
a common problem in all Centres (Caruarna,
2007)
• 5 referral to a domestic violence service
Overall the sample of one month’s referrals
showed the picture of a busy Centre emerging
where screening and assessment and a strong
knowledge of the local and the broader service
system was leading to diverse referral outcomes
matched to the assessed needs of the clients.
The challenge of family violence:
domestic violence and child abuse
Family violence, domestic violence and child
abuse, are troubling issues in the context of
parental separation and divorce. Some two
thirds of people seeking separation say that
family violence was the cause of the separation
(FLAPG, 2001) and some half of applications
regarding parenting disputes in the Family Court
of Australia and the Federal Magistrate’s Court
contain allegations of domestic violence and or
child abuse with domestic violence being cited
as the more common allegation (Moloney et
al, 2007). Such reported incidences were from
data that was either nation or state wide and
with the high incidence of domestic violence and
child abuse in the Frankston and Mornington
Peninsula area it was possible that the local
presentation of clients with family violence would
be very high indeed.
Many commentators had suggested that
the legislation’s emphasis on mediation was
inappropriate considering the high incidence
of family violence in separation and that the
Centres’ use of mediation would place vulnerable
women at risk of unfair outcomes (McCoy,
2005; DVIRC, 2007). Others had suggested
that mediation might be possible in such
circumstances if a vulnerable client could use
a legal practitioner as a support person in the
mediation (Batagol, 2008; Field, 2004) so as to
protect the partner who had been a victim of
family violence from further abuse by balancing
the power equation and ensuring an equal
playing field in the mediation process. However
the legislation did not provide for this and during
the time of the research legal practitioners were
excluded from participating in the mediation.
A further issue was whether a client would disclose
family violence when it existed. It has been
suggested that some victims do not recognise
what is happening to them, especially since
the perpetrator typically denies it; some are too
ashamed to talk about it; some mention only the
less serious aspects of it and some calculate that
they can manage mediation despite family violence
as other pathways, such as proceeding to court,
do not appeal (McCoy, 2005, DVIRC, 2007).
Page 31
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Three – The Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre continued
The Commonwealth government in its tender
requirements had asked for each tenderer to
develop a screening tool for family violence so
that all clients would be assessed in terms of
family violence as to their suitability for mediation.
As an organisation that had developed services
for victims and perpetrators of family violence,
Family Life had developed such screening tools
previously and the Centre, and its inaugural staff
together with Family Life, produced a screening
instrument. The instrument relied on asking
clients direct and detailed questions about family
violence rather than waiting for such issues to
emerge over time. However, staff said again and
again that the use of a one-off screening tool did
not prove sufficient and the staff had to continue
their vigilance for family violence throughout the
entire process.
The staff found that people with histories or a
presence of family violence did present in very
high numbers to the Centre; they estimated that
some 80% of all clientele were in this category.
They soon realised that by giving certificates of
exemption from mediation, clients had in effect
become excluded from the information and
learning provided in the preparation for mediation
seminars. These clients were therefore excluded
from:
• learning about the wider service network
considered as being particularly important
for this group of clientele,
• gaining knowledge about separation and
divorce,
• gaining new approaches, and
• gaining support.
Page 32
Thus a decision was made to begin including in
these seminars the people seeking certificates
who met specific criteria. This was successfully
implemented. A little while later another problem
arose in that parents who had been given
certificates were referred back to the Centre
for mediation by the Federal Magistrates Court
despite their unsuitability. A third unexpected
problem was the disinterest the state child
protection service showed in referrals from
the Centre. As with many of the referrals from
family law services to child protection, staff at
the Centre and staff in the Reference Group
from the wider local service network reported
there was little response from Child Protection.
Subsequently the Commonwealth Government
instigated research into this problem and ways of
improving the interface between the two service
systems separated by different jurisdictions and
by different levels of government.
As time progressed attendance at the Centre
became mandatory bringing additional service
demands and complexities. Staff left the Centre
and new staff arrived. Recruitment focused
on increasing expertise and more of the staff
recruited were experienced in family violence,
both domestic violence and child abuse. Some
had worked in child protection and domestic
violence services previously. Subsequently family
violence became a more commonly discussed
topic and strategies for managing it were given
even greater priority. The high incidence of clients
with histories of family violence did have a major
impact on the Centre and the staff sought to
include these clients wherever possible rather
than automatically exclude them from the
Centre’s services.
Conclusion
From the time of preparation for the new Centre
to the opening of the Centre the pace was
rapid. The sponsoring agency was one that
was experienced with the family law socio-legal
services system and with family violence. The
Centre quickly initiated outreach to the local
community, to the local services and to the
potential clientele; it supported its operations
with a Reference Group made up of many local
agencies and services that had not previously
been brought together to consider parental
separation issues. Thus it forged the Frankston
and Mornington Peninsula family law sociolegal service system. It developed many new
programs for its clientele based very often on a
strong educative and empowerment philosophy.
It found the primary intervention point for the
change of culture they were seeking to introduce
to the community to assist former partnerships
develop a long term cooperative parenting
relationship with their former partner regardless of
past disputes, was primarily in the pre-mediation
seminars, that were to grow in length and
content over time.
Page 33
Chapter Four
Clients’ views and experiences of mediation
Chapter Four – Clients’ views and experiences of mediation
Introduction
The views and experiences of the clients who
sought services at the Frankston and Mornington
Peninsula Family Relationship Centre are
presented in this chapter. They tell of what
the clients say they gained from the service to
assist them in forging new arrangements and
new relationships with their children and their
partners post separation. The clients responded
most positively to the opportunities the research
team gave them to express their views, in the
survey and then in the telephone follow up. Their
stories were those of considerable distress but
also of their strong motivation to build family
relationships again. Some comments were wry,
such as the man who said that the burdens his
children carried were “her stubborness and my
alcoholism”; some were modestly inspirational,
like the mother who said that “I have learned
that I love the children more than I dislike
him” and a few were bitter like the mother who
said “my mother in law is mad and should
stay out of the kids’ lives as they do not
want any time alone with her ever.”
Changes in the families’ outlooks
The new legislation had given Family Relationship
Centres a leading role in introducing families to
the new model of ongoing and collaborative post
separation parenting focused on their children
and supported by a cooperative relationship with
their former spouses. Thus it was vital to ask
respondents a variety of questions about whether
they had gained an ability to cooperate with
their former partners, whether they were able to
focus jointly on their children and whether they
had developed any change in their view of post
separation parenting flowing from their use of the
Centre’s services.
A large number, some 67%, reported they
had achieved new ways of viewing the
relationships within their families, with their
children and with their former partners.
These responses were split evenly between
fathers and mothers (50:50), demonstrating
that the Centre had been able to assist most
parents in moving to new ways of thinking
about their post parenting situations, regardless
of whether they were mothers or fathers.
The type of comments parents made about this
change implied that they felt they had acquired
new attitudes and behaviours concerning
themselves, their partners and their children.
Some comments showed more insight than
others, but all stressed putting the children ahead
of themselves and their feelings about their
former partners. Typical comments were:
“I learned to see things (reluctantly probably)
from another angle”, (an ironic Mother)
And
“I felt stronger from coming to the Centre
and doing something positive about things”,
(a Father who saw himself as empowered from
using the Centre’s services)
And
“I learned inner strength to go on even
though my son and I were abandoned”,
(a Mother whose partner had drug and alcohol
issues and had left her a year ago when their
child was a little baby).
Page 35
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Four – Clients’ views and experiences of mediation continued
Looking at the nature of the overall changes in
detail, some 47% of the respondents believed
the changes in outlook they gained included a
stronger focus on their children, a change that
was important given the government’s aim for
the legislation. A few more mothers than fathers
reported this (58:42). Comments about learning
to focus on the children were the most frequent
comments received and included:
“I learned knowledge that I had to have
my son’s best interests at heart always”,
(a middle aged Mother),
And
“I learned that children are very much
affected by what I do and that sometimes
this is delayed”, (a young Father).
The same proportion of parents who gained
a stronger focus on their children, 47%, also
reported better communication with them as
well, another important gain given the need to
develop good communication between parents
and children to establish and maintain their new
family form. These were mostly mothers (71:29)
but included is a comment from one father:
“It made me think a lot about the kids…
about what I said to them too”, (an angry
Father who wrote very poorly of his former
partner and who wrote also with great surprise)
“I didn’t know a mediation service could
be so good!”
Some 40% reported they had gained better
communication with their former partner, again
important since on-going parenting would rest
on the quality of the communication between
the former partners. The numbers reporting this
Page 36
were in equal proportions between fathers and
mothers (50:50). As one mother said:
“I was able to develop a business-like
relationship with him that eased the pressure
on the kids and let us make arrangements
and plans for the children together.”
It should be noted than no grandparents
reported gaining new ways of looking at any
aspect of the family situation and many of
them expressed great dissatisfaction with the
behaviour of the members in their family. The
absence of any grandparents reporting changes
in outlook may have related to the problems they
were confronting being less liable to resolution
from a change in their outlook or to the fact
they could not see any need for change on their
part since they often identified the problems as
belonging to other family members, such as their
children, their children’s partners or to the other
grandparents.
Satisfaction
Clients were asked what level of satisfaction they
felt about the service as a whole and in relation to
their mediation experiences. Such measurements
do not fully indicate service efficacy but do give
some sense of it. A similar proportion to that
indicating they had gained new ways of looking at
their situation indicated their satisfaction with the
service taken as a whole. That is the vast majority
of clients, some 67%, thought they had gained
from the service, with 40% of respondents saying
they had gained a lot from the service and some
27% of respondents saying they had gained some
things. Some 33% thought they had not gained at
all and these included mothers and grandparents,
with grandparents being disproportionately
represented among this group again.
It should be noted that the levels of satisfaction
expressed overall did not related to the outcomes
that people achieved. A comment making this
point was a father who did not achieve the
kind of shared time he sought but who said
nevertheless “It was a great service even
though I didn’t get everything that I wanted
and I would not suggest any changes in it
at all.” He continued negotiating after mediation
finished through his and his former partner’s legal
practitioners; twelve months later they still hoped
to reach some agreement in this way.
Clients were asked in further detail about their
views of the mediation process, how supportive
and how neutral it was, how well the mediator
listened and how helpful it was. The greatest
satisfaction was expressed regarding the
mediator’s ability to listen to the respondent, with
an overwhelming number of clients, 87%, rating
their ability to listen favourably. Some 50% rated
the capacity of the mediator to listen as high,
and some 47% rated it as medium; no one rated
it as low. (A small proportion, 3%, did not rate it
at all.) Fathers, mothers and grandparents were
proportionately distributed in their satisfaction
with listening. The next level of satisfaction was
expressed about the mediator’s helpfulness. A
large majority, some 64%, saw them as helpful,
with 32% or respondents rating the mediator as
high on helpfulness and some 32% rating them
as medium on helpfulness. Some 25% rated
them as low on helpfulness. Mothers and fathers
were equally represented across all groups but
grandparents were concentrated in the group
rating the mediators as low on helpfulness.
The level of satisfaction expressed with the
neutrality of the mediators was high, taking the
total proportion expressing satisfaction into
consideration. Some 73% of respondents in total
were satisfied with the neutrality, with 27% rating
neutrality as high and 46% rating it as medium.
Some 25% rated neutrality as low. More fathers
were more satisfied with neutrality than mothers.
Again grandparents were disproportionately
represented among those rating the mediators’
neutrality as low. Neutrality received the most
negative comments of any aspect of the
mediation. One type of comment reflected a
generalised suspicion that was never allayed and
that must have been very difficult for mediators
to deal with, as this comments indicates:
“I caught her (the mediator) out in lying
before the mediation started and she
continued to do it in the mediation”
(a middle aged Father).
Another common type of comment on neutrality
related to shared care where the respondents
believed the knowledge the mediator imparted
about shared care was a form of bias rather than
a form of information.
“She kept talking about shared care”
(a Mother who had separated seven years
previously and who wanted her former spouse
to accept more responsibility for their child in
school, social and financial arrangements and
who greatly regretted instigating mediation
because of encountering the notion of shared
care when she has come to pursue a different
understanding of equal parental responsibility.)
Despite the issue of bias, clients continued the
pattern of high levels of satisfaction with the
mediators with 80% rating them positively on
supportiveness; some 20% rated the mediator
as high on supportiveness and 60% rated them
as medium. Some 20% rated them as low.
Page 37
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Four – Clients’ views and experiences of mediation continued
Taking all of these measures together the client’s
view was a strongly positive one of the mediators
and the mediation process, with satisfaction on
the various aspects of their work ranging from
87% of the clients rating them favourably on
listening ability, to 64% rating them favourably
on helpfulness, to 73% rating them favourably
on neutrality and 80% rating them favourably
on supportiveness. Grandparents were the
least satisfied of all adult family members with
the process.
The clients’ accounts of the outcomes
of mediation process
Collecting information about the clients’ views
as to the outcomes of the mediation process
was undertaken in two stages, first a mail out
survey of clients and the second a follow up
by telephone of a sample of the clients. At this
point the results of the first data collection will be
considered and then the second data collection
and the processes it revealed subsequently.
To set out the backdrop against which the
Centres services were perceived by the
clients, respondents were asked about their
expectations. All believed they had come to
the Centre with parenting disputes that they
expected to resolve there, at least in part. All
were optimistic and 86% expected to resolve
some issues and 14% expected to resolve all
the issues in dispute.
The expectations of the majority of the clientele
were met at this point and the proportion whose
expectations were met increased in the second
data collection. In the survey some 60% of
clients said they did achieve the resolution of
some or all of the issues in dispute. Firstly, some
14% reported they resolved all the issues they
Page 38
brought for resolution. This group included
equal number of fathers and mothers, rather
than being all mothers as had been the case
among those expecting complete resolution.
So, more fathers gained complete resolution
than they had expected and fewer mothers
gained the complete resolution than they had
expected. Secondly, a further 46% of clients
obtained agreement on enough issues to give
them satisfaction and to allow them to progress
onwards. This group included equal numbers
of mothers and fathers and a small group of
grandparents.
On the other hand some 40% did not resolve any
issues at this point, although the second data
collection showed that half of these subsequently
did resolve these issues in dispute. This group
included twice as many fathers as mothers and
a disproportionately large group of grandparents.
Grandparents succeeded the least; none won
agreement on all issues and they were underrepresented in those who won an agreement on
some issues and over-represented among those
who obtained no agreement.
These outcomes cannot be compared with
previous mediation outcomes as the changes in
the legislation made such a contrast irrelevant.
Nevertheless, that a substantial majority of clients
reached agreement on many of the parenting
issues in dispute indicated considerable success,
especially taking into account that the catchment
area was one where education levels were low
and where verbal negotiation may not have been
ingrained in the community. As a low income
community, mediation might have appealed
to the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
area because of its low cost but the area had
been known as a litigious area, unlike that of
neighbouring Dandenong which was equally
low in income but with a more diverse ethnic
mix (Kimm, 2008). A study undertaken in the
Joondalup and Mandurah areas of WA, areas
sharing some similarities with the Frankston
and the Peninsula area although with a more
prosperous population base, found the same
agreement rates immediately following mediation
(Hannan and Bracebridge, 2008). When further
research is carried out it will be interesting to
see how the Frankston and the Peninsula area
measures against others in the incidence of
agreements reached.
The duration of the resolution of the
disputed issues
The resolution of the disputed issues was a
lasting one for most clients as reported in the
surveys. Some 77% of those with complete or
partial agreement over disputed issues reported
that these agreements were still working well.
The periods that they reported for lasting
agreements ran from three months to eighteen
months, with most being 12 months. This group
contained almost equal number of fathers and
mothers. For some 23% the agreement did not
last and mothers were the most common parent
who reported this with a few grandparents who
achieved some resolution of disputed issues
also reporting a breakdown in disproportionate
numbers.
Analysis of those reporting no resolution
of issues in dispute
The numbers who did not appear to reach any
resolution of their parenting disputes, a minority
group, warranted further investigation to see if
any analysis of their situations could suggest
further or different kinds of intervention.
The 40% who had not reached any agreement
fell into two groups. The first group, the smaller
group of 7%, were those people who indicated
that despite achieving no resolutions of any
issues in dispute they would not seek any further
intervention. They did not plan to proceed to
court, although they were eligible to do so.
The second group, the larger group of 33% (of
which 60% were fathers), said they had either
gone to court or that they intended to do so.
A few people who said they had either gone on
to court or were intending to go to court said
that they were part of the way through court
proceedings when they commenced mediation
as an alternative; few of these people succeeded
at mediation.
Three clear differences were found between
these two groups. One difference was that
among those who had gone or said they would
go to court, fewer had consulted legal advisors
before, during or after the mediation, a somewhat
surprising finding given their trajectory towards
court. Possibly legal practitioners do have a role
in keeping people out of court (McClean, 2009).
Another difference was that those who said
they would go or had gone to court were less
satisfied with the mediation process, not in terms
of what they gained from it in outcomes, but in
terms of their satisfaction rating of the mediation.
They saw it as less neutral but equally helpful,
supportive, and showing a listening capacity.
This group also cited a different set of problems
obstructing mediation. They cited problems
lying within the conflict rather than those being
external to it. The obstacles were not insufficient
time but the partner’s lack of compliance with the
agreement, or insufficient child inclusiveness with
children subsequently taking a strongly different
point of view from that of one of the parents.
Page 39
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Four – Clients’ views and experiences of mediation continued
Some of these respondents suggested a need to
weave counselling into the mediation to make it
more effective. As one father said “I think if we
could have had spells of counselling with
the mediation it might have worked for us”.
Clients’ progress after mediation
Six months after the survey a sample of the
respondents were telephoned to see what had
developed in their family relationships over time.
During those six months clients had not ceased
their efforts to achieve a resolution of their
parenting disputes despite their disappearance
from the Centre’s mediation processes. During
these months clients had pursued further
advice, sought further services, made parenting
arrangements, tried them out, sought further
advice and services and made further decisions.
Also many respondents now regarded their
situations somewhat differently; the situations
may not have changed but the clients’ views
of them had.
Clients who initially resolved no
parenting issues in dispute
The first group of people contacted were those
who said they could reach no agreement as to any
issues in dispute. However, despite the answers
they had given in the survey almost two thirds of
these had progressed to reaching an agreement
on all issues bringing the proportion of those
now reaching agreement from 60% to 83%. In
retrospect, more time and some sequencing of
mediation with counselling and legal advice may
have assisted these people to reach agreement.
In such families agreements were eventually
obtained by the couples’ own efforts.
Page 40
For example one father had brought, what his
legal advisor from Legal Aid and his mediator
told him, were too many issues in dispute to
mediation. Although he and his partner did
resolve many issues in the mediation he regarded
the outcome as a failure as the full resolution
he sought had not eventuated. Consequently
he refused to sign even a partial parenting plan.
Afterwards he thought of proceeding to court
but decided the court would not regard him well
for seeking their intervention for a small number
of unresolved issues of the lesser importance
(emergency care of the children) when the couple
had successfully maintained the current parenting
arrangements for 9 months. His final position,
at the time of the interview, was that there was
substantial agreement and he did not seek to
make any further changes.
Another, somewhat different, example was that
of a mother whose ex-partner was violent. She
did not disclose it in mediation believing that
it was only “emotional violence” and that this
was not what was meant by violence. Although
she described it as “emotional violence” when
pressed for details her description demonstrated
it was clearly frequent physical violence to
herself and to the children. As the children were
frightened of their father she sought supervised
contact only. She and the father reached no
agreement over the time spent with the father
and the manner in which it was spent, because
she saw a need for supervised contact. After
mediation failed she went back to her solicitor
who, over twelve months, was able to set up
a successful supervised access regime that
the father agreed to. This mother now allows
the children unsupervised access but watches
carefully and thinks she will always have to watch
for violence.
Yet another example where agreement was not
reached was that of a father who was dismissive
and suspicious of the mediation throughout. He
believed it had been useless and he would not
recommend it to anyone. After mediation failed
he returned to the court action that ultimately
cost him $100,000. He sought equal shared time
with two children aged four and six but his former
partner wanted him to have no more than every
second weekend and one mid week time. She
alleged he was abusive and he voluntarily signed
an agreement to remain at a set distance from her
at all times. He succeeded in obtaining orders for
more time than his spouse had wanted but less
than he had wanted but he was very happy with
the decision. He thought the court intervention
and the Centre’s information and parenting
education were helpful but nothing else.
A final example is one where the parents had
reached no resolution of any issues in mediation
and had not achieved progress despite
efforts since. The youngest child was disabled
and the mother reported that the father had
uncontrollable outbursts of verbal rage expressed
to her and the children. The mother rejected the
father’s desire for equal time with the disabled
child because she believed the child could not
cope with it. They had reached no agreement
in mediation and now are negotiating through
solicitors. She finds this difficult as she is no
longer eligible for Legal Aid. She believes they
will resolve these issues.
Thus all of these examples show that families
continue to work after mediation has not
succeeded. Most of them (some two thirds)
gained successful parenting arrangements by
agreement, by reflection, by a reframing of the
situation and by further use of services. Some
continued on or returned to court. Only one
family’s dispute remains unresolved at this stage.
Clients who did resolve issues in dispute
at mediation
The next group of parents contacted were those
who said they had reached agreement. Their
lives had not remained static either, as parenting
issues emerged and the former couples had to
solve new parenting problems. Many of these
families reported they had problems but thought
they were managing them.
One example of this was one father who reported
that he went into mediation feeling very negative.
He wanted equal time. The first mediation
produced an agreement for this but it broke
down quickly. The family returned to mediation
and made the same agreement again but, armed
with more mediation, the agreement has lasted
this time. The father thinks that they are all
managing the issues that keep emerging better.
Some reported changes that meant their
situation was working better than expected.
One mother reported that the father’s desire
for equal time, with an eleven year old and a
twelve year old, initially opposed by her, had
been successful overall. However she expanded
by saying that agreement per se had not been
maintained as the children had cut back the
equal time themselves. As this was the children’s
wishes the former partner accepted their actions.
Some 20% of those telephoned who had said
they had reached agreement through mediation,
all of whom reported reaching only a partial
agreement, reported that this agreement ultimately
did not work as agreed but that their situations
were sufficiently satisfactory to leave things as they
were. For example one mother who had obtained
an intervention order prior to mediation did reach
agreement in mediation with her ex-partner
over increasing his time with their only child.
Page 41
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Four – Clients’ views and experiences of mediation continued
He agreed, as did she, to enrol in a Parenting
Orders Program. She did enrol and attended
but he did not. The child still has contact with
the father but due to his denigration of the child,
their child has reduced the contact. The mother
interprets the outcome of the mediation as a
failure in many respects but as the father still has
contact and accepts the return to the former
shorter contact regime, she is satisfied and
neither parent wishes to take any further action.
In another family the father reported seeking
equal time and also had property issues
unresolved. In mediation he stepped back from
the demand for equal time and agreed to 4
days a fortnight. However other agreements
over special days have failed. He has returned
to using a legal practitioner for these two issues
and hopes that he will be able to avoid going to
court. In yet another family, family violence, equal
shared time, and the father’s alleged drug and
alcohol use are long term issues that may lead to
failure of the agreement. The father wanted equal
time with two daughters aged nine and eleven
and the mother agreed in mediation. She felt that
her problems with the father’s violence and drug
and alcohol use were not taken into account
in mediation and, while she is maintaining the
agreement, she is most unhappy about it and
she believes it is likely that it will not last.
So for most of these families the agreements
have lasted; for some the arrangements have
not lasted but other arrangements have been
made in their place. For others, a smaller group,
the disputes have re-surfaced and while the
parents are working on these conflicts they are
not resolved as yet. What does seem clear is the
ever-changing nature of family relationships that
demand constant adjustments over time.
Page 42
Problems in mediation
Having read the many case examples in this
chapter it is obvious that the clients brought
difficult problems to the Centre and their
views of the problems they encountered in the
mediation process reflected some aspects of
the personal problems they had. The two most
frequent problems cited by the respondents
concerning the mediation were insufficient
time and an imbalance of power. Some 30%
reported the time allocated for mediation was
too short regardless of whether they were able
to resolve their dispute or not. Furthermore, the
most common reason given for failure to gain a
resolution was shortage of time. Also, some 30%
said they believed their partner had an advantage
over them in the mediation negotiation. In terms
of these two issues, equal numbers of fathers
and mothers raised them. Just as many men
as women thought that insufficient time was an
obstacle in mediation and that they were less
powerful in relation to their partner in the mediation.
Conclusion
The clients’ accounts of their problems, their
disputes and experiences at the Frankston
and Mornington Peninsula Family Relationship
Centre showed that the aim of the legislation
in developing collaborative post-separation
parenting was being achieved. A very substantial
majority of clients, some 83%, had overcome
their disputes in parenting by using the Centre’s
services and most clients, some 67%, were
satisfied with the services at the Centre. Clients
expressed considerable satisfaction with the
various aspects of the mediation, with listening,
helpfulness, support and neutrality. Clients did
learn new ways of looking at their families and
post – separation parenting and made very
explicit comments showing they had done so.
Furthermore the particular aim of the Centre
of empowering clients and enabling them to
be child-focused was being achieved. The
necessity for this approach was made very clear
by the clients relating of their experiences after
mediation finished. Problems emerged and
family relationships changed and all needed to
be managed by the former partners. Mediation
could not stop time and the changes that time
brought. The families were impressive in their
continuing efforts to manage their lives during
and after using the Centre’s services.
Page 43
Chapter Five
Policy issues and recommendations
Chapter Five – Policy issues and recommendations
Introduction
The study, while looking at the planning,
the establishment and the operations of the
Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Family
Relationship Centre, inevitably watched the
re-shaping of the family law socio-legal services
system during the same period. The study
saw many changes in the service system and
identified some problems that occurred in the
particular locality that may have developed
elsewhere as well. Some of these problems,
like family violence and shared care, had been
identified as likely to cause some tensions but
others, like the place for legal services in relation
to the new mediation processes or interface
issues between the Centres and the courts or
between the Centres and child protection, had
not. This chapter presents some of these issues
that emerged during the study, in particular,
family violence and equal shared time, the
inter-relationship between the mediation process
and legal resources, between the Centres and
the courts and between the Centres and child
protection services.
The inter-relationship between the
Centre’s mediation processes and legal
practitioners and legal services
One of the criticisms of the family law sociolegal services system in the past had been of
its legal practitioners who had been pictured as
being excessively adversarial and insufficiently
encouraging of mediation and parental
collaboration (Kimm, 2008). Also, they had been
criticised as being too expensive for many clients
(FLPAG, 2001). The legislation established a new
position for legal practitioners and legal services
in the family law socio-legal services system.
The legislation’s adoption of the three separate
pathways for clients to follow through the family
law socio-legal services system, namely the
self help pathway, the supported pathway
and the litigation pathway as recommended
in the FLPAG report of 2001, tended to
separate lawyers from mediators and legal
services from mediation services.
Nevertheless collaboration and an interrelationship between the two groups of
professionals and services was seen as desirable
(Rhoades, 2008), but it was not developed in
either policy terms or in practice detail with the
legislation, it was merely expected to happen.
Earlier research had shown that most of those
who mediated using community-based mediation
services combined legal advice with mediation
- some two thirds. However their legal advisors
were often not professional family lawyers and
so the source of their legal knowledge, clearly
desired by them, was not entirely reliable (Batagol
and Brown, 2009). In addition some family
lawyers had been trained or untrained mediators.
Now family lawyers could not participate directly
in the free mediation processes of the new Family
Relationship Centres. Also the certification of
clients as being unsuitable for or unsuccessful
in mediation lay in the hands of the mediators at
the Centres and not in the hands of the lawyers
who would go on to represent the clients after
certification and exemption from mediation.
The Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
Family Relationship Centre addressed the
need for an inter-relationship between the Centre
and local legal services by including the Peninsula
Community Legal Centre and the Frankston Legal
Aid Office as members of their planning group
prior to the winning of the tender. Subsequently
those two services joined the reference group
supporting the development of the Centre.
Page 45
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Five – Policy issues and recommendations continued
Furthermore the Centre set up local information
seminars to include local legal professionals.
When designing the pre-mediation education
and information seminars the Centre decided
to include a considerable amount of legal
information as the legal requirements post 2006
would be unfamiliar to the clientele. So into
the five hours of pre-mediation seminars they
inserted legal information provided by Legal
Aid. Also in the general information seminars
they inserted a large amount of legal information
provided and delivered by Legal Aid, bringing
those two services quite close together. Thus all
clients using mediation had more legal advice
and information than those who previously
used community based mediation prior to the
2006 legislation, but it was in the form of group
seminars and information sessions rather than
as one-on-one professional consultations.
In the telephone follow up fathers and mothers,
rather than grandparents, continued to use
legal professionals for up to twelve months after
mediation as they worked on their parenting
arrangements.
However the amount of legal advice and
information that clients used proved to be
greater than that. The study found from the
survey that 86% of the respondents had sought
advice from a legal professional at some stage
in the mediation process and, considering the
predominance of private legal practitioners as
sources of referral to the Centre, it was likely
that most respondents had used private legal
professionals, rather than Legal Aid or the
Peninsula Community Legal Centre. Just over
half of the respondents used legal professionals
before the mediation began, 53%, and here
mothers predominated, (5:3). Only mothers
used a legal professional during mediation,
some 6%. Some 27% used legal professionals
after mediation and at this stage grandparents
predominated over mothers and fathers (1:1:2).
Family violence was referred to by those
answering the survey by some 23%. It included
punching, hitting, rages with verbal abuse,
harassing phone calls and stalking and for 5% of
the respondents it was seen as a consequence
of drug or alcohol problems. It should be noted
that all of these clients who reported family
violence proceeded through a mediation process
and only one client reported that she thought
it wasn’t handled well, although she resolved
the issues in dispute. However in the phone
calls further family violence was revealed. It was
identified in some 50% of people telephoned, none
of whom were sampled because of the possibility
of family violence. It was more common among
those who did not achieve an agreement, being
75% of that group, and less common among
those who did reach an agreement, being 30%.
Page 46
At the same time some 20% had said in the
survey that they did not have sufficient legal
information and mothers felt this more than
fathers, (2:1). Also some 20% in the survey
thought they needed further information in other
areas and again there were more women in that
group than men (2:1). Thus mothers rather than
fathers felt they were missing legal information
and resources and this may have contributed
to their sense of being disadvantaged in relation
to their partner.
The tension between family violence
and equal shared time
One issue that arose from the issue of family
violence was that of equal time. Where family
violence had been identified some 75% of
fathers sought equal time, the same proportion
seeking it where violence had not been identified.
Allegations of violence did not affect any fathers
from seeking equal time. None of these families
proceeded to court. Those who were interviewed
and who went to court did not report violence.
When asked why those who had not gained
any resolution of disputed issues thought that
this had happened the most common reason
given was the background of family violence and
what was seen as an inappropriate request for
equal shared time with the children. The tension
between the two factors was a problem as there
appeared little understanding from fathers or
mothers that the existence of family violence
could affect the time spent with each parent and
the way that time was spent in the arrangements
made for the children.
Staff confirmation of tension between
family violence and equal shared time
Staff reported they encountered a considerable
amount of family violence and, when it was
combined with demands for equal time with the
children put forward aggressively, mediation was
difficult. Staff reported that the insistence on
equal time was more difficult to manage than
any other issue. Staff found the mediation training
around communication very valuable in relation
to the family violence and equal time tension.
They saw fathers as being less able to
communicate effectively than mothers and so
used the communication training to assist fathers
handle their responses to issues in mediation.
Staff believed that some 80% of the clients
showed involvement with some aspect of family
violence; this was a greater proportion than that
revealed in the survey or the call back interviews
but the staff were also dealing with people
who sought certification and exemption from
mediation. As time went by the Centre became
more protective of its clientele and of its staff in
relation to potential violence. The staff thought
that the notion of a one-off screening for family
violence was not satisfactory and that they had
to keep screening for it throughout the contact,
through the initial assessments, the two parenting
seminars and the subsequent assessment and
the mediation itself. However they also thought
that the parts of the program preceding the
actual mediation dampened down expressions
of violence.
Power imbalances between partners
Both mothers and fathers (in equal numbers)
had reported a sense of a power imbalance
in the mediation and many of those reporting
this also reported thinking afterwards that they
should have sought more legal information and
more information on other issues. Staff agreed
there were many families where there were
power imbalances between parents but thought
this was not as gender determined as they had
expected. Sometimes women had more power
in mediation, especially in better communication,
and sometimes men had more power, from
greater demands and expectations. They linked
the problem in men’s expectations to the publicity
around the new legislation in relation to equal
shared time. The staff found it less difficult than
they expected to manage power imbalances
around violence because it was an overt issue
that they screened for rigorously and continuously
and for which they had many strategies.
Page 47
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Five – Policy issues and recommendations continued
The power imbalances staff were most
concerned with were those between parents
and their children. Though starting slowly with
child-inclusive practice the staff had come to
value its use; it was a powerful motivator of
parents and a powerful tool for overcoming
apparent stale mates and obstructions. Childinclusive practice, where the child is interviewed
and where his/her views are fed back to the
parents, acts as a tool for increasing parents’
recognition of their children’s needs; it confronts
them with what the children say. Quite often it is
not what they expect the children to say (Smart
et al, 2001). Children must agree to be involved
and so too must both of their parents agree that
they be involved. Parental agreement is meant to
be a protective factor but refusing agreement can
mean that one parent stops the child expressing
their views under the banner of protecting the
child. This was of concern to staff.
Systems interface issues
Clients and staff reported systems interface
issues for their clients. These also emerged
at Reference Group meetings. The first of
the interface issues were with the Federal
Magistrates Court. That court was returning
couples to them for mediation where they
had been given certificates of exemption from
mediation. Also the court was returning families
who had tried mediation but where it had failed.
Centre staff did not regard these families as
suitable for mediation. However, noting how
families can improve through mediation even
after it has failed previously and after they have
sought further services that have assisted in
some change, the court’s actions are more
understandable. However, the interface between
the Centres and the court did not allow for
reports as to why the court was taking this action.
Page 48
Such reports would be helpful to the Centres
and also some joint work on when this might be
a strong strategy to use in dispute resolution.
Some registries are developing some protocols
to assist here but it is not a national policy as yet.
The staff also reported that the courts were
referring back for child-inclusive mediation. One
can understand why they might do this as it is
a powerful change tool. However it is a time
consuming strategy for the Centre and cannot be
done without both parents’ agreement. Similarly
joint work between the court and the Centres
about this issue would be useful.
The second of the interface issues was with the
state child protection service as it was seen as
unresponsive to the Centre’s referrals and to
referrals from other family law socio-legal service
system services, for example Contact Centres.
The interface between child protection and family
law service systems has long been reported
as problematic by parents, professionals and
services in the family law socio-legal services
system (Hume, 1997; Kelly and Fehlberg, 2002;
Brown and Alexander, 2007). It is a complex
problem but at its simplest the child protection
services rate referrals in the context of separation
and divorce as low in priority because the service
believes the child has at least one protective
parent, thus discounting the problems that parent
is experiencing in maintaining that protection,
or believing in the Parental Alienation Syndrome
that proposes parents make up allegations of
child abuse in this context (Brown and Alexander,
2007). Despite a considerable amount of work
that has improved the interface through the
Magellan Program the situation is still problematic
at the local level for Magellan comes into play
only after one or other parent has progressed
to a legal service and then on to court.
However work begun by FaHCSIA mid 2009
and the new National Framework for Protecting
Australia’s Children may assist with this issue in
the future.
Time and difficulty issues
Both clients and staff thought that one of the
unresolved difficulties is the issue of time. Both
groups thought most clients can manage in the
time allocated to the mediation component of the
program but some cannot. In this locality finance
limits peoples’ ability to buy more mediation and
counselling thus throwing emphasis on the need
for more time in mediation. The problems that
both clients and staff thought required more time
were when the child had a disability, when shuttle
mediation was required and when child inclusive
mediation was required.
Staff reported some problems as extremely
contentious, not easy to resolve in mediation and
certainly very difficult in the time available. These
were relocation when one parent wants to shift to
another location and live at some distance for the
other parent. This has emerged as a major issue
flowing from the new legislation. Another similar
issue was overnight stays for the under two year
olds, for they are too young to be able to report
any difficulties this might bring. Mothers reported
this as a problem too particularly if it was linked
to a former partner with drug and alcohol
problems or violence problems. Another problem
was time sharing with the very young, such as
babies, and the question arose as to what extent
this was really in the child’s interest. One resource
used with fathers with babies and young children
was local services that could educate fathers in
the care of young children.
Grandparents
Grandparents were the group less likely to
obtain any resolution of their disputes with
their children or children-in-law over their
grandchildren. They were the most dissatisfied
of all family members and many did not
achieve any sense of empowerment or report
success after further efforts but rather increased
dissatisfaction. They had many serious family
problems. One type of family situation was
where they had been forced to assume the
responsibility for the full time ongoing care
of their grandchildren and where they had to
manage relationships between themselves and
their grandchildren, themselves, their children or
children in law and the grandchildren, and with
the other grandparents who may have been
sharing some of the care of the grandchildren
with them. These were an extremely complex set
of relationships. Furthermore, drug and or alcohol
problems were often involved. The other type of
family situation was where the grandparents had
a poor or failed relationship with their child and
or their children-in-law and so contact between
the grandparents and their children and their
grandchildren had stopped.
Recommendations
Some policy issues emerged in the research at
the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Family
Relationship Centre that need further research
and consideration. These were:
The need to further investigate and improve
the linkages between the legal professionals
and services and the mediation and counselling
professionals and services.
Page 49
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Chapter Five – Policy issues and recommendations continued
This is not just a need to consider the role of
legal practitioners in mediation in a presumed
need for protection of some clients but a need to
achieve a wider and tighter integration between
the mediation and legal services overall. Clients
need more legal information and legal services
and further consideration should be given to
how and when to place more legal information
at the disposal of clients through the use of
private legal practitioners, the use of community
legal centres and the use of Legal Aid in both
education seminars, individual and group
problem seminars and through the use of Family
Relationship Centre staff in introducing additional
legal information. Further investigation of network
integration between legal services (private and
governmental) and the other local services is
required, including investigation of how and when
clients can use legal information and combine
it with other service and family relationship
information and the consideration of extensions
of legal aid grants to parents where domestic
violence and child abuse are a consideration and
how such legal representation can be combined
with child protection services and Centre services.
The need to further investigate and
improve ways of addressing problems
for grandparents
The problems of grandparents do not currently fit
well into a Family Relationship Centre time limited
funding model. This group has special problems
of their own. They have family problems and
disputes of great complexity and the problems
and disputes can be longer standing. They
may have less optimism at the outset as well.
Research needs to be undertaken into what
aspects of services being mounted from Family
Relationship Centres are of use to grandparents
and how service impact might be improved.
Page 50
Undertaking such an investigation needs to be
combined with reviewing related services to
grandparents, such as those from Centrelink
and grandparent lobby groups, who share this
client group.
The need to further investigate and
improve systems interface issues
There were two major systems interface issues
identified in the research. First was the poor
relationship between a Centre and the local
Federal Magistrates Court. Clients were being
moved between the two without planning
and consideration by both services. The
policies developed from the 2006 legislation
did not consider this interface but it does
need investigation and integration. Some
local registries of federal courts have reported
beginning work on this but it needs to include
all registries and Centres services. Second was
the poor relationship between the Centre and
the local Child Protection Service whereby the
Child Protection Service did not take up and
follow through with referrals from the Family
Relationship Centre. This is a longstanding
problem. FaHCSIA has initiated investigation
of this issue and it is to be hoped that they will
take the matter further in 2010.
The need to investigate and improve
managing family violence and the
tension between family violence and
equal shared time
Many of the clients, supported by staff’s similar
estimations, reported family violence, especially
domestic violence although the researchers
noted that this extended to child abuse at times.
Many mothers were reluctant to disclose this
and believed it was more important to avoid
court and the presumed likelihood of having to
share time equally between themselves and a
violent spouse. Thus they proceeded through
mediation as the best option. Many succeeded in
this despite its potential undesirability. However,
others felt a pressure from the supposed principle
of equal shared time as the priority factor in court
decision making. In some cases any time without
supervision at that stage was not advisable but
the mothers struggled to obtain this, especially if
they could not afford legal representation.
There is still a considerable amount of investigation
needed to determine what are the types and
causes of power imbalances as reported by staff
and clients. They are heartfelt but are not always
what one imagines they will be.
Conclusion
A number of issues have emerged from the
research at one local Family Relationship Centre
that do not spring from the services of the
Centre but from the design of the national
network and the way it integrates with other
parts of the family law socio-legal services
system and the way that it addresses certain
common family problems. These are national
issues and need to be considered further.
They need further investigation to determine
what service improvements would deal with
these problems better.
It is acknowledged that the Commonwealth
government has instigated a number of enquiries
regarding family violence and equal shared care
that are due to be concluded in early 2010 and
these may lead to changes that alleviate these
problems.
The need to consider extensions of time
in mediation for certain problems with
appropriate funding support
A number of clients thought that their problems
and disputes might be resolved with more time
in mediation. This was seen as being needed
for certain problems, including the care of very
young children and of disabled children where
many details have to be worked out. Further
investigation is required to see if the possibility
of an extension of free time would assist in certain
selected families and what family problems
might be resolved in this way and whether any
other sequencing such as mixing mediation with
counselling might also be more effective.
Page 51
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The Changing Experiences of Childhood,
Families and Divorce, Polity Press, Cambridge
Smyth, B., and Moloney, L. (2003). Therapeutic
Divorce Mediation, Journal of Family Studies,
Issue 2, pp 161-186
Vinson, Tomy (2007). Dropping Off the Edge,
Catholic Social Services, Sydney
Miller, S., and Miller, P. (1997). Core
Communication: Skills and Processes,
Interpersonal Communication Programs Inc.,
Colorado, USA
Moloney, L., Smyth, B., Weston, R., Richardson,
N., Qu, L., and Gray, M. (2007). Allegations of
Family Violence and Child Abuse in Family
Law Children’s Proceedings: A Pre-Reform
Exploratory Study, Research Report 15,
Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne
Redman, J. (2008). Practising the Law on Shared
Parental Responsibility, a Paper presented to the
Shared Parental Responsibility in Family Law
Seminar, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, May
Rhoades, H. (2008). The Dangers of Shared
Care Legislation: Why Australia Needs (Yet More)
Family Law Reform, Federal Law Review,
Vol. 36, pp 279-299
Rhoades, H . (2009). Exploring Collaboration
Between Professionals Who Work With Separating
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Their Vulnerabilities, International Conference,
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Page 55
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Appendix A
Survey
Frankston Family Relationship Centre Study
This survey is part of a research study conducted by Professor Thea Brown from Monash University to
explore the new Family Relationship Centre and its services in Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula.
The letter accompanying this survey explains the study in greater detail.
We would greatly appreciate your filling in this survey and it you have any difficulties with it please
contact Professor Thea Brown on 0419 329 216 or on [email protected]
1. Please tick or circle your marital status …… Separated Parent
…… Divorced Parent
…… Separated or Divorced Grandparent
…… Married Grandparent
…… Other (please explain)………………
2. Please tick or circle your parenting status
…… Father
…… Mother
…… Step Father
…… Step Mother
…… Grandfather
…… Grandmother
…… Other (please explain)………………
3. Please tick or circle your relationship to your
children
…… Residential Parent
…… Contact Parent
…… Residential Grandparent
…… Contact Grandparent
…… Other (please explain)………………
4. What is your age?
5. How many children are in your family?
Page 56
6. What are their ages and genders?
7. What is your post code?
8. Were you referred to the Family Relationship
Centre or not?
9. If you were referred by another service, which
one was it?
10. If you were not referred by another service
how did you learn about the Centre?
…… Learned from a Friend
…… Learned from a Relative
…… Learned from Advertising
…… Learned from the Web
…… Other (please explain)………………
11. What issues did you want help with from
the Centre?
12. Had you already sought help from a lawyer
or from Legal Aid for these issues?
13. Do you have a lawyer advising you now?
14. How many times did you attend the Centre?
15. Please tick or circle what services you
received from the Centre?
…… Advice
…… Information
…… Counselling
…… Mediation
…… Making a Parenting Plan
…… Referral to another service
…… Other (please explain)………………
Page 57
Parenting
Post separation and divorce
Appendix A continued
16. If you received mediation how often did
you attend?
17. If you were referred to another service did
you go to that service?
18. Please tick or circle how satisfied you were
with the service of the Family Relationship
Centre.
…… Satisfied
…… Mostly Satisfied
…… A little dissatisfied
…… Very Dissatisfied
…… Other (please explain)………………
19. What do you think were the best aspects
of its service?
20. What do you think were the worst aspects
of its service?
21. What recommendations do you have for
improvements in the Centre?
22. What recommendations do you have for
any other improvements in services for
separating parents?
23. Any other comments?
24. Would you be prepared to be interviewed
by the researcher to discuss the Centre
and its services further?
…… Yes
…… No
25. If you would be prepared to be interviewed,
would you write in your telephone number
on the next page separately attached so
that we may contact you.
Please post back in addressed stamped enclosed envelope to Professor Thea Brown
Page 58
Frankston Family Relationship Centre
Consider the Children – Children’s Wall
Sandringham
197 Bluff Road Sandringham
Victoria Australia 3191
Phone +61 3 8599 5433
Fax +61 3 9598 8820
Southern Family Life Service Association Inc.
ABN 37 712 782 209
Frankston
37 Playne Street Frankston
Victoria Australia 3199
Phone +61 3 9770 0341
Fax
+61 3 9770 2906
Chelsea
Suite 2, 450 Nepean Highway
Chelsea Victoria Australia 3196
Phone +61 3 9782 7800
Fax
+61 3 9773 4624
[email protected]
www.familylife.com.au