Family separation
About the pathway
Welcome to the Family separation pathway. This pathway is for health, social and community service practitioners who have contact with parents during separation and divorce, but who work outside of specialist counselling and family dispute resolution services.
Parents are highly influential in how children experience parental separation and the effect it has on their everyday lives. Although difficult, parental separation doesn’t have to be distressing or traumatic for children.
Non-specialist practitioners – including GPs, social workers, allied health professionals and teachers – can often be the first or only impartial people that separating parents see during this period. By making children’s wellbeing a central focus in your conversations with parents, you can help buffer children from the potential impacts of separation and divorce.
This pathway will increase your understanding of the potential impact separation can have on parents, the parent-child relationship, and children’s mental health and wellbeing. It will help you to consider the different contexts that affect a family’s experience of separation and divorce, and to explore different approaches to supporting the whole family through the separation process.
Learning outcomes
As you progress through this learning pathway you will build your understanding and skills across a range of key areas, including:
- the potential impacts of separation on parents, the parent–child relationship, and children’s mental health and wellbeing
- common assumptions about separation and divorce and their impact on parents and children
- how to make children’s wellbeing a central aspect of your conversations with parents who are navigating separation or divorce; and
- ways to extend your existing practice skills to support parents’ wellbeing, to support parents in parenting their children, and to support children through parental separation.