Articles

New Ways: History and Future Plans

By Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq.

New Ways began in April, 2008, when I was asked to speak to a California statewide Family Law Institute for family court judges and commissioners. I had been invited to give a seminar for the same conference in April 2007 about Managing Cases Involving High Conflict Personalities in family court. They found the information helpful and requested information about Managing, Assessing and Treating Borderlines and Narcissists in 2008. They particularly wanted to know what kind of therapy orders would really help these highly distressed parents.

The night before the program, I realized that they needed to make court orders for therapy that focused on the future, rather than fixing the past, so I added a new slide to my presentation. I said they needed to look at “new ways” of thinking, new ways of managing emotions and new ways of behaving toward their spouse and child. I had no ideas then about structure of this therapy – just that it needed to be more focused than “getting over the divorce” or “letting go of your anger” or other vague and punitive sounding goals of therapy that are so common in family court orders and routinely have no success.

Time for a Manual

Then, in July 2008, I was giving a seminar on High Conflict Personalities in San Diego and I made this same point about focusing on new ways of behaving in the future. One of the participants, Tobias Dejardins, LCSW, said I should write a manual for therapists saying how this therapy should be done. I said that I had always believed that therapists wanted to be left alone to do what they thought was best with each client, and that has always been the way the courts have treated therapy as well. But Tobias said therapists really want direction on how they should work with these clients, and really encouraged me to write a manual.

That fall, I wrote a manual for therapists (Professional Guidebook) and also the Parent’s Workbook. My seminar business partner, Megan Hunter, objected to the name New Ways Counseling, saying it was broader than that. A couple months later, I realized that the best name would be New Ways for Families, since it focused so much on the children and both parents having an important role. Megan agreed, and New Ways for Families was established in 2009.

Trying it in Family Court

I then presented the idea to the San Diego Family Court supervising judge, the Honorable Lorna Alksne, who immediately said we should try this new approach. While the original plan was to have one judge try out the method in one courtroom, in May, 2009, she authorized all judicial officers in San Diego County to order this method. I had already trained about 25 experienced counselors who were on a panel (New Ways Counselors List) to implement this method. I had also given a 3-hour seminar to about 30 family law attorneys explaining the method.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to train the judges in this method and simply gave each one a copy of the Professional Guidebook. Right away, a couple judges ordered cases and the method began. One judge told the parties and attorneys at a hearing that she was seriously considering ordering New Ways at the next hearing and that the parties should discuss it with their attorneys. They did and they agreed to use it without any further court hearings.

The Video

In August, 2009, we made a 1-hour video of the method, with a recently retired court commissioner as the judge, the honorable Alan B. Clements. He had been named Family Law Judicial Officer of the year for the state of California in 2008. I started giving seminars on the method, using the video to help explain it. In September and October of 2009, I gave seminars on New Ways using the video in Victoria and Medicine Hat in Canada, and in Seattle, New Orleans (for the annual AFCC conference) and in Washington DC (for the Collaborative Professionals annual Forum).

At the same time, Megan Hunter and I were getting more and more requests for seminars on managing high conflict people in a wide variety of disputes for High Conflict Institute, the partnership we had formed in 2008 for giving seminars. Somehow, the seminars took over and I looked forward to hearing about all of the cases that were going to happen in San Diego.

The Present

But San Diego didn’t grow like I thought it would. By 2012, we have only had close to 30 cases. The informal feedback is very good, but we haven’t had the resources to study it in an organized fashion and most judges haven’t ordered a case. One judge ordered 5-6 cases and only one came back to court, which she considered highly successful. However, our judges have been distracted and on the defensive with serious cutbacks, furlough days and more procedures to follow since a recent re-vamping of family law in California to accommodate the demands of self-represented parties.

Despite this frustration, in 2010 a juvenile court system in Pine Bluff, Arkansas adapted New Ways for its parents and by 2011 approximately 100 parents had used the method with generally positive results. In 2011, a counseling agency in Salt Lake City, Utah was trained in using the method of family court case referrals. Then, two jurisdictions in Alberta, Canada, each received grants to try New Ways for the next three years: the YWCA of Calgary and the Medicine Hat Family Service. (See Michelle’s article in the January 2012 newsletter.) In December, I trained a group of therapists in London, Ontario, and there are more interested.

The Future

I am very encouraged that the method works and will really help children and families. However, I am learning that New Ways needs: 1) research results; 2) funding (so all families can participate with a full sliding fee scale), 3) a half-time to full-time Coordinator in each jurisdiction, 4) training for all professionals involved, including judges, and 5) wider promotion before it grows significantly in any one community. It is a counter-intuitive method that requires at least two days of hands-on training (see Paradigm Shift article in the January 2012 newsletter) and close coordination among professionals.

I have learned that it needs to be promoted more effectively as a fundamental conflict resolution skills method for high conflict parents who lack very basic relationship conflict skills. Unfortunately, most people currently think of New Ways as either a parenting class or “just counseling.” As explained in the Paradigm Shift article, this misses the essence of New Ways as a family systems method requiring reinforcement by all professionals involved, including requiring the use of the skills taught when each decision needs to be made and every time parents communicate about their children.

We are committed to the long term with this method. We know that personality-disordered parents and their co-parents (some high conflict and some not) need more structure and skills. We also know that they are increasing in society. New Ways is based on sound research in other areas of work with personality-disordered people and abusive parents. Therefore, while we await research results from the funded programs, our plan is to maintain the status quo in 2012, responding to requests for training but not actively promoting the method this year. In reality, it only takes 3 counselors and a signed Agreement to use New Ways, and the training in the method has been reported as helpful to dozens of professionals including those who are not involved in using these skills as part of a program.

We want to be as supportive as possible of our Network agencies and panels. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, ideas, or just need encouraging statements. This method is a mutual learning project and it can’t be done alone. In 3-5 years, the work everyone does now may really help bring a positive change to how families are handled when they get divorced. We believe that New Ways is the way of the future – with its skills focus and its family system focus – and that the current adversarial “splitting” approach of family court litigation will become a thing of the past.

Best wishes in 2012!

Bill Eddy and Michelle Jensen

New Ways for Families, a program of High Conflict Institute, was developed by Bill Eddy to manage high-conflict personalities in family court. It is designed to help families avoid getting stuck in a never-ending high-conflict battle that costs huge sums of money, involves multiple professionals, works against the child's best interests and impacts them in both their short-term and long-term well-being. Bill is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with twelve years' experience providing therapy to children and families. As an attorney, he is a Certified Family Law Specialist and the Senior Family Mediator with the National Conflict Resolution Center in San Diego. Bill presents the New Ways method to therapists, judges, and lawyers throughout the United States and Canada. For more information about the steps of method, current programs, or seminars and training, go to: www.NewWays4Families.com or call 619-221-9108.