Stan Korosi

From the beginning in the 1980s, parental alienation was a clinical presentation. Its strongest detractors began in the 1960s-70s gendered violence movement, which was and remains a political concept. Following these different pathways, proponents of parental alienation theory continue the evidence-based campaign for recognition as a form of non-gendered coercive controlling family violence and assessable mental health conditions.

Yet, its extreme detractors use political means to successfully advocate for structural changes, policies and legislation that defeat the concept and prevent remediations. Is a pivot required to orient the parental alienation field towards public policy?

Australia and the USA achieved the same political outcome of undermining the family and family relationships using different means. Australia's 2024 Family Law reforms annul the significance of a child's relationship with both parents. In the USA and Canada, Kayden's, Picqui's, and Kyra's Laws "ban the solution, rather than

the problem", prohibiting remediation of alienated parent-child relationships on allegations alone. These changes prioritise child safety above the children's families.

The changes in the USA and Australia used targeted political and public campaigns to construct a dominant social dialogue about violence against women and children. They disguise the real purpose to radically dismantle and alter the nature and structure of families and the State's role in children's lives. Parental alienating behaviours exploit power and relationships and are a political tool to fulfil this purpose.

This presentation discusses how parental alienation theory and practice counters such covert strategies and how policy advocacy can achieve family-oriented political outcomes.

Abstract

Severe cases of parental alienation present unique challenges when attempting family court ordered reunification between alienated children and the parents whom they have rejected. Children who reject a parent after divorce, who refuse or resist contact with a parent, or whose contact with a parent is characterised either by extreme withdrawal or gross contempt, represent one of the greatest challenges facing courts, separated/divorced families, and the professionals who serve them. FBAC was designed to help families whom family courts and therapists have traditionally viewed as beyond help. In such contexts, the relationship between the alienated child and their favoured/alienating parent is refractory to both conventional and modified family therapies. The presenters will outline the FBAC program as an innovative educational and experiential program that helps unreasonably alienated children and adolescents adjust to living with a parent they claim to hate or fear. The FBAC program operates successfully in the U. S. A, Canada, South Africa and now in Australia. The presenters will explain the key success factors of FBAC; how a team of two professionals, over four consecutive days, under the authority of the family court, facilitate what the participants need to restore a normal relationship.