Court-Ordered or Court-Involved Therapy

Written by Katie Whiting, MS, LMFT, March 27, 2023

What is the Difference, and What is Entailed?

There are two types of court-related therapy (CRT) cases: Court-Involved Therapy (CIT) and Court-Ordered Therapy (COT). Jennifer Ritter, LCPC, defines them as the following:

• CIT is psychotherapeutic treatment of an individual, parent, child, couple, or family who is, at any time during the treatment, involved with the legal system.

• COT is when an individual or parent(s) has been ordered by a court of competent jurisdiction to meet with a therapist who has been appointed by the court to provide and facilitate COT to the individual, parent(s), and/or child(ren).

Individuals and CRT

When certain crimes are committed, judges can order or recommend the individual seek help from a mental-health professional. These CRT cases are often simpler than ones involving children due to fewer individuals and relational perspectives to consider. There may be specific goals the court wants the client to achieve in therapy or a set timeframe for treatment. Depending on the orders, the client and therapist will determine how to fulfill the orders as well as address the deeper emotional or mental reasoning that created space for the crime to be committed in the first place.

Children and Families Involved with CRT

When there are children involved, either type of CRT is a specific form of family therapy, which often addresses contact resistance/refusal or estrangement between a parent and a child, usually in cases where parents are living apart. It is often sought out when a child is resisting contact with a parent.

Jennifer Ritter, LCPC, explains “There are many reasons why a child may be reluctant to have contact with a parent. Possibly, a parent and child never had a well-established relationship or the difficulties may be newly emerging. Sometimes events have hurt a parent and child’s relationship, including stormy or violent parent interactions or child mistreatment. In some situations, one parent, knowingly or unknowingly, undermines or interferes with the child’s relationship with the other parent. Many times a child is reacting to the stress of being caught in the middle of parent conflict or to differences in the parents’ styles of parenting, and has aligned with one parent to relieve their internal distress. Usually, there is a combination of factors at play.”

The role of a CRT therapist starts with conducting an impartial, social, and comparative information-gathering phase. The intake process varies depending on the role the therapist will have with the case. No matter the role, the therapist will focus on exploring and understanding important historical information as it relates to (primarily) reunification between a child and their rejected parent. After the assessment phase, the therapist will formulate a treatment plan designed to address the issues contributing to the child’s avoidant reactions with the party the therapist has stewardship over. Through the identification and targeting of these contributing factors, the therapist will strive to help the client make changes, which will lead to healthier and more satisfying parent-child relationships.

There are four common roles a CRT therapist can have in family cases.

• Individual/couple therapist: provides therapeutic support for a parent, current marriage, or a child on a personal level. Helps with coping, venting, and working on deeper issues. Only works with one part of the system.

• Family therapist: in charge of the conjoint or reunification process. May meet with all parts of the system individually and in a variety of relational settings.

• Co-parenting therapist: works with the parents of the child(ren) involved and seeks to improve their interactions when and where realistic.

• Treatment coordinator: oversee treatment goals and helps get roles filled while keeping the court updated on the case’s progress. Does not engage in psychotherapy with any part of the system.

The objective of CRT is not to determine whether it is in the child(ren)’s best interests to have contact with one of the parents. Rather, the purpose of CRT is to help the child(ren) establish and maintain healthy and meaningful relationships with both parents. Accordingly, the goals of CRT may include (list compiled from Jennifer Ritter, LCPC, Pruett and Drozd in an AFCC training in 2019, and Katie’s clinical experience):

• Overall Goals

  • Provide a brave place

  • Foster overall healthy child adjustment

  • Keep conversations on track

  • Minimize talk of the past

  • Focus on solutions and proposals rather than problems

  • Redirect aggressive language

  • Move forward with new chapter

  • Work on accountability for all

  • Develop family communication skills and effective approaches to problem-solving

  • Restore or facilitate contact between parent(s) and child(ren) who have become estranged

  • Assist the parents and their child(ren) to identify and separate each child’s needs and views from each parent’s needs and views

• Goals for Children

  • Build strong positive therapeutic alliance with family members

  • Create tools for their tool box that help with healthy boundaries and development of sense of self

  • Increase resiliency factors

  • Increase appropriate taking of responsibility for own, not other’s, behaviors, including differentiation of self/others

  • Encourage healthy risking-taking

  • Encourage problem-solving

  • Regulate emotions

  • Manage anxiety by moving from avoidance to approach

  • Express anger appropriately so it can be heard

  • Correct the child(ren)’s distortions and replace these with more realistic perceptions reflecting the child’s actual experience with both parents

  • Assist the child(ren) to differentiate self from others and exercise age-appropriate autonomy

• Goals for Favored Parents

  • Encourage children to have a voice, not total choice for their stage of development

  • Teach children skills to face and manage problems, not avoid them (conflict resolution rather than cut off)

  • Set appropriate limits and expectations

  • Set healthy boundaries in parenting

  • Diminish enmeshment

  • Encourage age-appropriate separation and individuation (join peer groups outside of family)

• Goals for Rejected Parents

  • Look at their part in the problem (Rejected parents are often angry and blame the favored parent for the rupture.)

  • Learn to:

    • regulate emotions

    • take responsibility for their contribution

    • see the long game

    • listen without reacting

    • respond in a welcoming way

  • Accept small steps

  • Engage in negotiation, not demand

• Other Goals

  • Facilitate the implementation of the previously agreed-to or court-ordered parenting time schedule

  • Restore, develop, or facilitate adequate parenting and co-parenting functioning and skills

  • Assist the parents in resolving relevant parent-child conflicts

  • Assist the parents to fully understand the child(ren)’s needs for healthy relationships with both parents and the negative repercussions for the child(ren) of a severed or compromised relationship with a parent in their young lives and as adults

  • Work with each family member to establish more appropriate parent-parent and parent-child roles and boundaries

  • Assist each parent to distinguish valid concerns from overly negative, critical, and generalized views relating to the other parent

While parents may have different views about the causes or reasons for their child(ren)’s reluctance or refusal to have contact with the rejected parent, for CRT family therapy to be successful, and not demanding on resources, each parent needs to agree on supporting the process and have a desire for each person to be a part of the solution to meet the goals that will be defined in the family’s treatment plan. It is also helpful when each parent acknowledges and agrees that it is in the best interests of the child(ren) to have meaningful relationships with both parents.

This process can be as simple as four sessions: individual intake with mom, dad, and child (3 sessions). Then a conjoint session with the rejected parent and child. Often situations are not that straightforward and can require additional steps before conjoint sessions with the child and the rejected parent start. After the individual intake sessions, it may be appropriate to have a follow-up individual session with each parent to go over the treatment plan and hold space for questions and concerns. A few relational sessions with the child and favored parent might be needed. Sometimes additional individual sessions with the child to build rapport can be helpful. There may also be a need to have individual sessions with any member of the family throughout the process to make sure each part of the system is functioning the best it can to support the goals identified in the treatment plan.

Article Sources:

• Katie Whiting LMFT, MS, clinical experience

• https://jenniferritter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Court-Ordered-Therapy-Packet.pdf

• AFCC training (2019) by Pruett and Drozd

If you feel like CRT is something you, your family, or someone you know would benefit from, reach out to Treasure Valley Therapy, LLC, to schedule a free 15-minute consultation or to schedule an intake appointment. When you contact us, identify that you are interested in CRT services, so we can schedule you with the right therapist.