15 2013 | VOLUME 58| N O 1 JOURNAL Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies By Rachel Birnbaum, Michael Saini, Lynn McCleary and Howard Hurwitz A COMMUNITY -BASED RESPONSE TO ADDRESS THE NEEDS OF HIGH-CONFLICT SEPARATED FAMILIES Key words: separation and divorce, community collaboration, children and families INTRODUCTION The relationship between conﬂict, domestic violence and negative post separation adjustment for children and families has been well documented within the social science and legal literature. Despite the substantial body of evidence of the negative emotional impact of high levels of parental conﬂict on children post separation families (Amato & Keith, 1991; Hetherington & Kelly, 2002), there remains no clear or workable deﬁnition of “high-conﬂict” to guide professionals when working with these families after separation and divorce (Birnbaum & Bala, 2010; Birnbaum & Saini, 2007; Saini & Birnbaum, 2007). High-conﬂict families have been characterized as litigious, exhibiting poor problem-solving skills, and often experience diiculties in reaching parenting arrangements for their children and in some cases by family violence (Johnston, 1994; Kelly, 2003). High-conﬂict families use a disproportionate amount of private and public resources compared to low-conﬂict families, due to their higher rates of litigation and use of multiple services, including child protection services (Birnbaum & Bala, 2010; Birnbaum & Saini, 2007; Saini & Birnbaum, 2007, 2009). High-conﬂict families are particularly challenging to child protection services, as workers are called to investigate repeated allegations of family violence, child maltreatment, poor parenting and children’s exposure to the conﬂict (Brown, Frederico, Hewitt, & Sheehan, 2001; Jaﬀe, Johnston, Crooks, & Bala, 2008; Johnston, Lee, Olesen, & Waters, 2005), especially when parents vigorously deﬂect blame to the other parent (Jaﬀe, et al., 2008; Johnston, Lee, Olesen, & Walters, 2005). At present there is little guidance for professionals working with these families. Given that multiple service providers are involved with these families; community- based approaches can enhance the capacity to collectively ﬁnd ways to address the unique needs of these families. Community-based collaboration provides professionals from across disciplines to share resources and develop integrated responses to help children and families in high-conﬂict situations. This shift in addressing high-conﬂict at the community level ﬁts with the recent emphasis on developing integrated collaborative teams to work together for the common goal of ﬁnding the most eﬀective and eicient strategies to intervene early and respond proactively while using the best available evidence for service delivery (Saini & Birnbaum, 2007, 2009). The purpose of this article is to explore the successes and challenges of a community based initiative that brought service providers together from various sectors (e.g., child protection services, police, not-for-proﬁt mental health services, the courts, education, private practitioners, and academics). The goals of the initiative were to promote interdisciplinary collaboration amongst and between professionals, promote better and more eﬀective coordination of services, and increase the knowledge base and skills for professionals working with high-conﬂict families. Exemplars will be used to highlight some of the challenges and successes (the exemplars are based on a qualitative online survey of the Forum participants. The authors are grateful for their time and thoughtful comments about this unique community initiative). Reﬂecting on the past ten years of the initiative provides for important lessons on how service-learning and capacity building can enhance community engagement and strengthen partnerships for responding to the needs of children and families in communities (Frazier, Abdul-Adil, Atkins, Gathright, & Jackson, 2007; Walter, 1997). In the past 20 years, there has been an emerging literature devoted to community partnerships, but very few examples within child protection services (Saini, & Léveillé, 2011) and no known study to consider the challenges and pitfalls of working with high-conﬂict families after separation and divorce. Collaborative eﬀorts to better respond to these families are especially important to engage with stakeholders and to ﬁnd creative and meaningful strategies to respond to the complex and multi-dimensional needs of high risk children and families (Nadel, Majewski, & Sullivan- Cosetti, 2007). THE FORUM In 2004, a multi-service and community-based organization initiated the creation of the High-Conﬂict Forum (HCF) to respond to the gaps in service in working with high-conﬂict separated families in a large