Never, never, never give up.

In Reunification Therapy the focus is on nurturing the quality of the parent-child relationship. The goals for Reunification Therapy include fostering healthy child adjustment, and improving parent functioning and roles, as well as the following: 

• To restore contact between the resisted parent and his/her child(ren). 

• To work with each parent and their child(ren) to identify and separate the child’s needs and views from each parent’s needs and views. 

• To improve each parent’s ability to fully understand the needs of each child, and the negative repercussions for the child(ren) of a severed or compromised relationship with a parent in their young lives and as adults. 

• To work with each family member to form more appropriate parent-parent and parent-child roles and boundaries. 

• To address distortions/irrational beliefs and replace with more realistic perceptions that reflect the child(ren)’s actual experience with both parents. 

• To improve the child(ren)’s ability to differentiate himself/herself in his/her emotional development in age-appropriate ways. 

• To help each parent differentiate valid concerns from overly negative, critical, and generalized views relating to the other parent. 

• To assist the parents in resolving relevant parent-child conflicts. 

• To improve each parent’s parenting skills and family communication skills. 

A child who has been separated from a parent, whether due to the parent's absence or their own removal from the home and placement in foster care, may act out in a range of ways due to feelings of insecurity and disorganization. They may feel torn between loyalties to one or both parents and possibly to their foster families as well. When a child’s negative reaction to a parent is driven by the other’s alienation, they may become resistant, increasingly hostile, and eventually altogether rejecting of the targeted parent, a primary challenge for a reunification therapist. 

Also a parent whose child has been removed from their home or who has been court-ordered to stay away from a child for a certain length of time (pending completion of court-ordered classes, for example), may experience the shame of negative perceptions, real or imagined, of others in their extended family or community, as well as self-doubt about their ability to parent, along with the pain of being physically separated from a child and worries about the child’s feelings toward them. 

Regardless of the reasons why reunification therapy is necessary for your family, it is crucial that you choose a professional who will be a good fit for your situation. Although there is no perfect way to make sure that you will be 100% happy with your reunification therapist, there are some things you can do ahead of time to try to ensure that the reunification therapist is right for your family.

Research

Before you choose to work with a professional, be sure to do your research. Look at his/her online profile to learn a little bit about their background. You can also read online reviews, although online reviews should always be taken with a grain of salt. Keep in mind that the people who post these reviews may have a very different situation and different needs than you/your family have. If you have an attorney, ask them for their professional opinion about the potential reunification therapists.

Interview

Call the professional and vet him/her. Try not to give any specifics about your case, but ask him/her about the reunification therapy process, goals, etc. This conversation can give you a good feel for how the professional approaches the process and if he/she communicates well and you are connecting.

Ask The Right Questions

During the “interview” process described above, be sure that you are asking the right questions. For example, you should ask the professional how long he/she has been doing reunification therapy, if they have a safety plan in place if either the child or parent is uncomfortable with the speed, and under what circumstances such a plan would/would not be followed, etc. These are very helpful questions that may help you understand if this is the right reunification therapist for your family.

Follow Your Gut

If you have followed all of the above steps and something still doesn’t feel right about a specific professional, there is nothing wrong with saying no to them because of your instincts.

Remember, the goal of reunification therapy is to ensure the child has a healthy relationship with each parent and to help the family system get back on track. 

We are all human and make mistakes. We should always strive to be a better person today than we were yesterday and part of that is being open to change and self-reflection.