KIDS’ TURN Helping Kids Cope With Divorce

Rosemarie Bolen

Reported in this article is an innovaiive group program for children whose families are going through divorce. The program is sponsored by the San Francisco court system. This program provides an orientation for children to help them cope with divorce. The program also involves the parents. The goals of the program are to demystifi the separation process, provide a safe p k e for children and parents to discuss their feelings, provide a culturally sensitive context, provide information regarding other resources, and teach communication and problem-solving skills.

In San Francisco, parents come to the court and see a video that tells them that many times children feel responsible for the breakup of a parental relationship. “The more I listened to that tape, the more I thought about the fact that we have the parents come in here and see mediators, talk to their lawyers, and work out what is happening in their lives. But the children don’t have anyone to talk to and I surmised that most of these parents did not go back and explain anything to them.” These were the words of San Francisco Superior Court Judge h a Levin Gyemant, who, while assigned to the domestic relations court in 1988, had the opportunity to observe the devas- tating effects of divorce on children. She felt it was time to “give the kids a turn to speak our regarding their experience and at the same time learn about it.” Realizing that there were no services designed specifically to meet the children’s needs, she envisioned “Kids’ Turn,” a program that would give kids a chance to speak out about their experiences and help them learn the skills to cope with the breakup and reorganization of their family. Together with two active family law attorneys, Ann Van Balen and Jennifer Gordon, Judge Gyemant launched “Kids’ Turn.” The first sessions were held in January 1989.

Since those early beginnings, “Kids’ Turn” has developed into an ongoing program serving families throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Although the original intent of the program was to offer a kind of “rap session” for children, it became clear that the program would be much more successful and productive if parents were also involved. Therefore, a decision was made that the program would run concurrent groups for children and parents and

FAMILY AND CONCILIATION COURTS REVIEW, Vol. 31 NO. 2, April 1993 249-254 0 1993 Sage Publications, Inc.

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that at least one parent would be required to attend the program with their child(ren). There are always two groups for parents at each workshop session (allowing ex-mates to attend separate groups) that teach the adults how to avoid putting the children in the middle of their disputes. In this way, “Kids’ Turn” addresses the needs of the entire family.

The goals of “Kids’ Turn” are to (a) demystify and destigmatize the separation process in order to promote a healthier perspective, (b) provide a safe place for children and parents to discuss their thoughts and feelings about their experience, (c) provide a program that is sensitive to the cultural and ethnic diversity of the families served, (d) provide information to children and their parents about other services available in the community, and (e) provide children and their parents with communication and problem-solving skills to help them through the separation process.

To accomplish these goals, the program uses an education approach, incorporating age-appropriate games and activities to help the children learn most effectively. A staff of highly qualified education and mental health professionals help the children develop the skills to handle the emotional distress of their parents’ separation and teach the children to deal with their feelings of anger, loneliness, loss, and fear. Each of the children’s groups are co-led by a credentialed teacher and a mental health professional; each of the parent groups is led by a mental health professional.

The program is administered by a 1/4-time program director and a 1/3-time administrative assistant. Because of this limited staff time, the success of the program has depended since its inception on the participation of a highly active, involved, and hard-working board of directors.

Made up of judges, attorneys, and mental health professionals, influential business people, school administrators, past and present Family Court Ser- vices directors, and experienced community volunteers, the board is instru- mental in the development and ongoing operations of the program. Board and volunteer committee members have developed the very specific and successful curriculum used with the children and parents, have handled all public relations and publicity, and have staged twice yearly fund-raising campaigns within the private sector to keep the program afloat and growing. It is evident that without the existence of such a high-quality, caring, and involved board of directors, “Kids’ Turn” could not have succeeded as it has.

The “Kids’ Turn” program consists of six 90-minute sessions that span 6 weeks. Children are grouped by age: a preschool group of ages 4-6 years old, a school-aged groups of ages 7- 1 1 years old, and an adolescent group of ages 11-15 years old. As stated, two groups of parents meet concurrently with the children’s groups. Traditionally, the program has been run on Thursday afternoons from 4: 15 to 5:45 p.m. However, because many parents have

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expressed that this is a difficult time for them to leave work, we recently experimented with running a Saturday program from 10:30 a.m. to noon. The enrollment for this workshop has surpassed any previous session and we therefore plan to institute a Saturday workshop twice each school year. In addition, a summer program is planned for this year in which sessions will be held in the afternoon twice each week for 3 weeks in June, so that people can participate without having conflicts with July and August vacation plans.

The excellent cumculum, which is continually being refined and revised by an active committee of the board and staff, includes activities and materials that help children and parents focus on the difficult issues and experiences of parental separation. The workshop begins in the first session, with all parents and children together viewing a videotape called “Divorce and Other Monsters” in which a girl, approximately 10 years old, discusses with us, the audience, her experience of her parents’ separation, interspersed with vignettes of her life in relation to both parents, school, and friends. It is always amazing to observe the audience’s rapt attention to this video; even the young children are completely attentive and silent. This may be the first time for many children that divorce words and feelings are so well spelled out and aired. After the video, the children and parents go to their own groups, where they will meet separately for the next five sessions. Children and parents come together again only for the last 45 minutes of the final session, at which time a graduation and potluck pasty are held.

The preschool group begins with a discussion of what happens in a divorce and who and what cause a divorce in order to reassure children that they are not to blame and that they will be cared for. In later sessions, the children learn about what happens when parents argue or feel sad and about what might happen in the future. Books such as Dinosaur’s Divorce and Martha’s New Daddy are used as starting points for discussion and activity about topics related to separation and divorce. Activities include drawings of things the children like to do with each of their parents or of the differences or similarities in the two households, puppet shows that illustrate a family before and after divorce, and a game in which each child can be a superperson and make a wish.

In the school-aged group, children learn and become comfortable with words that describe their feelings and words relating to divorce, such as custody and visitation, child support, mediation, and court. They are visited by afamily court judge to whom they can ask questions in order to demystify the legal process. They learn to better communicate with their parents about the changes in the family and the feelings they experience as a result. They write a newsletter to the parent group that expresses how they feel when parents separate, what they want from their parents, and how they have

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learned to help themselves during this family reorganization process. Through role-play, they learn problem-solving and communication tech- niques, such as what to do when they are placed in the middle of a parental dispute.

The adolescent group sees another video in which teenagers frankly discuss their feelings about and experiences of divorce. This serves as a discussion starter for topics about marriage, divorce, and family reorganiza- tion. This group does a great deal of role-play, exercise, and drama to assist them in coping with the pressures exerted on teens at the time of a parental separation. They deal with topics of increased responsibility, loyalty con- flicts, being asked to carry messages between parents, and parental dating. They also are visited by a family court judge in order to learn more about the legal process and about their own rights in this process. They are given information about where they can go in the community for additional help and how to use each other for support.

The parent curriculum is extensive and ambitious and cannot always be completely covered in the span of the six sessions. However, because workshop leaders are highly skilled, allow for discussion, and make good use of numerous handouts that can be read at home between sessions, parents are given a tremendous amount of information regarding their children’s expe- rience, ways to keep them out of the middle, and how to improve communi- cation and family structure. Parents learn of the stages and tasks in dealing with divorce, both for themselves and for their children. They learn effective techniques for communication and discipline, how to help build their children’s self-esteem, and how to better care for themselves. They also learn some techniques for dealing with the other parent in a civil and businesslike manner.

At the last session, a graduation is held, and each child and parent receives a diploma in a very celebratory ceremony in which all participants are given applause and appreciation by the entire group. Finally, a potluck party takes place in which children and parents often exchange phone numbers in order to continue to offer each other the support they have developed.

The workshops are held at a local elementary school and are open to residents of the San Francisco Bay Area. Some special workshops have been held on-site of a private school or community organization. Except for special workshops, the cost of the program is a minimal $10 per parent for the entire 6-week session. There is no charge for children, so the maximum fee for any one family at this time is $20, and this fee is waived on request. Thought is being given to establishing a sliding fee schedule in the future. Snacks are provided and served at each session. Workshop leaders are paid between

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$300 and $400 per workshop series, and each new leader is expected to attend an orientation and training session.

Families are diverse and come to “Kids’ Turn” in various stages of the separation and divorce process. Many are referred by Family Court Services or by their attorneys. As a result of recent outreach and public relations efforts, more are being referred by school nurses and counselors or other mental health professionals. Some have come in response to both television and radio news spots that have aired recently. Some families come within a week of the separation and others after several years of divorce. Some children’s parents were never married, and some never even lived together. Some of the children have frequent and regular contact with both of their parents, and others have little or no contact with one parent. Some children come from families in which there are highly contested divorce issues, litigation in process, and ongoing disputes; others come from families in which the separation is relatively amicable and conflict free. In general, this provides a good balance in which children and parents can learn from each other and can also have some very universal feelings and experiences validated.

At this time, there have been no long-term outcome studies on the effect of the program. At the end of each session, written evaluations are done by all but the pre-school-aged group. Responses are overwhelming positive and cite as the most valuable aspects of the program the support from other group members, an increased understanding of the separation and divorce process, an improvement in both parent-child and parent-parent communication, and a more positive and helpful outlook on the future. Not surprisingly, the program appears to be most effective in families where both parents attend the workshop, and recently, more and more families are participating in this manner.

The major obstacles or difficulties for the program have been recruitment of families, although recently, with major publicity and public relations efforts, the program is filling in advance of each session and there has been a waiting list for the last two sessions. Other difficulties involve maintaining a roster of group leaders, as all have jobs outside “Kids’ Turn” and therefore are not always available for each session. It has proven successful to do ongoing interviewing of potential leaders and to maintain a pool of qualified professionals from which to draw at each new session. Financial support is, of course, an ongoing issue, and a great deal of the energy of the board of directors goes into fund-raising. It is hoped that in the near future a fund-raiser will be able to secure a grant to ensure ongoing and adequate funding for the program. Last is the difficulty of the program not being able to respond to

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the many communities outside the San Francisco Bay Area that call to request the program in their cities. A plan is being developed in which the program would be franchised and communities would be trained both in the board develo@ment and program delivery of “Kids’ Turn.”

Rosemarie Bolen is a social worker in private practice. She is the former director of the Napa:County Conciliafion Court and has worked for the Statewide office of the AOC to coordinate training and program within the 58 counties in Calijornia.