Supporting Children and Parents in Sweden through Collaboration Teams

• Date: 01 July 2019
• Author: Maria Eriksson,Marianne Gabrielsson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12427
• Published date: 01 July 2019

SUPPORTING CHILDREN AND PARENTS IN SWEDEN THROUGH

COLLABORATION TEAMS

Maria Eriksson and Marianne Gabrielsson

Coordinated, multidisciplinary collaboration teams have been developed in Sweden with the purpose of preventing or mitigat-

ing conflicts between parents and promoting effective parental cooperation. The screening and assessment tool, known as the

Family Law Detection of Overall Risk Screen (FL-DOORS), was used to assess the children’s and parents’situation and need

for support or protection. The overall results based on the children’sand the parents’situations and experiences demonstrate that

a collaboration team is a promising model. The development project (2014–2017) has demonstrated the importance of offering

children and families preventativesupport at an early stage in order to avoid prolonged and conflict-ridden separations.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

It is important to offer children and families preventive support at an early stage in order to avoid prolonged and con-

flict-ridden separations.

A number of children in this situationshow signs of risk or difficulties to the extent that theyare in need of specialist care.

A coordinated, multidisciplinary collaboration team can assist families in conflictual separations in a helpful way.

It is feasible to use the screening and assessment tool Family Law Detection of Overall Risk Screen (FL-DOORS) to

assess children’sand parents situation and need for support or protection.

The use of FL-DOORS can in some cases be an intervention in itself, as it triggers processes of mentalization (i.e.

the ability to understand your own and others’thoughts and feelings), and aids change from conflict-driven

approaches to cooperation.

There is a continuous need to increase children’s participation, including using a version of the FL-DOORS based on

children’sperspectives.

Keywords: Children’s Participation;Collaboration Team; DOORS; Parental Cooperation.

Every year, approximately 50,000 children in Sweden, or 3% of the child population, experience

parental separation or divorce (Statistics Sweden [SCB], 2013). Also, a group that has increased in

recent years comprises children whose parents have never lived together (SCB 2013). In total, about

a quarter of children in Sweden have parents who live apart. According to the National Board of

Health and Welfare (NBHW, 2011), about 14% of children who experience parental separation

become the subject of a legal dispute regarding custody, residence, or visitation.

As in many other Western countries, Swedish policy and law assume shared parenting and a high

degree of parental cooperation postseparation or postdivorce. Since the 1970s, a chain of changes

to both family and welfare law has aimed to reduce conflict between parents and to encourage out-

of-court agreements over visitation, custody, and children’s residence. Currently, it is possible for

parents to use municipal social services to make formal agreements with the same legal status as a

court order, and the social services are obliged to offer mediation to non-cohabiting parents who

want help to resolve conflicts regarding their children. However, there are still a number of parents

who end up disputing visitation, custody, or residence in court.

Correspondence: marianne.gabrielsson@allmannabarnhuset.se; maria.eriksson@esh.se

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits

use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original workis properly cited and is not used for commercial

purposes.

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 57 No. 3, July 2019 362–367

© 2019 The Authors. Family Court Review published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Association of Family and Conciliation Courts.