Citation

Schepard A. Fam. Court Rev. 2008; 46(3): 431-433.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1744-1617.2008.00211.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This very special "special" issue focuses on the key challenge facing the 21st-century family court--balancing self determination and empowerment in family dispute resolution with the risks to safety that domestic violence presents. The interdisciplinary authors in this issue, some of whom have never written together before, are nationally and internationally acknowledged experts in the field. They collectively give readers a state-of-the-art roadmap of what we know about domestic violence and the family court and what we must learn about that subject in the future in the never-ending quest to provide better services to families and children in a time of increasing cases and diminishing resources. Their articles alone would make this issue of great importance. This issue is the product of collaboration between two organizations, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) and the Family Violence Department of National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (FVD/NCJFCJ). The AFCC and the FVD/NCJFCJ address the problem of domestic violence and the family court from different perspectives and with different constituencies. The FVD/NCJFCJ is a leader in the domestic violence advocacy movement. The AFCC is a leader in the movement to develop alternatives to litigation for parents and children in family court, especially mediation, parenting coordination, custody evaluation, and parent education. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)