EAPAP Conference – London 2018

London Conference Bookings Now Open

This is promising to be a game changing conference with the interest of key legal people in the UK and contributions from around Europe.

We want to make this a powerful marker of change in the consciousness of everyone who works with children who resist or refuse a relationship with a once loved parent.

Our key message for the conference is that causing a child to use the infantile defence mechanism of psychological splitting, (also known as parental alienation) is a pernicious form of child abuse.

This conference will focus upon this reality and will shift the focus of this problem to right where it should be – child protection and mental health.   We will also focus upon the ‘legal and mental health interlock’ which is mandatory in resolving these difficult family cases.

On day one we will hear from leading legal people about how to manage such cases in court and will learn from experts in Croatia and Romania as well as the UK on best practice in legal management.  We will hear about ground breaking work being done in Croatia in interpretation of the wishes and feelings of the alienated child and about how cases are managed in Romania where parental alienation has been made illegal.  From the UK we will hear from expert legal practitioners on management of complex cases which feature false allegations and from Canada we will hear about legal precedents in successful legal cases.

On day two we have a powerful programme which is focused on mental health management of parental alienation.  We will hear from child protection expert Prof. Dr. Sc. Gordana Buljan Flander, Director of Child Protection Centre Zagreb and from Dr Amy Baker Ph.D who is the leading researcher in the world in the field of parental alienation. From the UK we will hear from Dr Hamish Cameron,  retired Consultant Child Psychiatrist who has been hugely significant in this area of work in the UK for many years.  Current work from Psychologist Darren Spooner and the Family Separation Clinic will also feature in day two.

Not only do we have a packed agenda for the two conference, on the evening of day one we will have a private showing of the film ‘Resilience’ which features ground breaking research on Adverse Childhood Experiences.  A panel of distinguished people in this field will discuss the link between the ACE study and the impact of parental alienation afterwards.

Much work has been done around the world on raising this issue to public consciousness and 2018 is the year that we begin to set a new agenda in this field.  The head of the worldwide Parental Alienation Study Group is Professor Emeritus William Bernet M.D. who is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is board certified in general psychiatry, child psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. As an expert in forensic psychiatry, Dr. Bernet has testified in 15 states. Amongst other publications, Dr. Bernet has authored or co-authored Children of divorce: A practical guide for parents, therapists, attorneys, and judges (Krieger, 2007), Parental alienation: The handbook for mental health and legal professionals (Charles C Thomas, 2013), Parental alienation, DSM-5, and ICD-11 (Charles C Thomas, 2010). He recently co-authored An objective measure of splitting in parental alienation: The parental acceptance–rejection questionnaire (Journal of Forensic Science, 2017) which found that severely alienated children engaged in a high level of splitting, by perceiving the preferred parent in extremely positive terms and the rejected parent in extremely negative terms, whereas splitting was not manifested by the children in other family groups.  Bill Bernet will set the scene for this new era of work in this field by introducing the conference to the significant scientific evidence which supports the need to intervene.

We want everyone who comes to this conference to learn as much as possible about parental alienation from the people who are at the forefront of research, education, intervention and information in this field.  We want people to leave with a deep knowledge of the problem and how it manifests in children and families as well as the best practice in working to assist recovery.

The conference is open to anyone who works with children and families affected by divorce and separation either inside or outside of the family court system in every country in Europe and beyond.

CPD has been applied for in both legal and mental health and more details will be posted as soon as this is confirmed.

We have an early bird offer of 10% off full ticket prices to launch the conference which runs to April 15 2018.

Tickets are limited each day and early purchase is therefore recommended.

If you have pre-registered for the conference you will receive your booking link immediately as your tickets are reserved.

To PURCHASE TWO DAY TICKETS CLICK BELOW

TO PURCHASE ONE DAY TICKETS PRESS BELOW

Tickets for Parents

Please note that this is predominantly a conference for professionals working with families.  We are aware however, that many parents will want to attend the conference and we will be making a limited number of tickets available for you to do so.

If you are a parent who would like to attend, please register your interest HERE

 

Please note that if you have previously registered your interest in our streaming events, you will also need to register your interest again by clicking the picture above.