Parent coordinators (PC) assist parents in creating, implementing, and monitoring parenting plans. During the divorce process, parent coordinators may function as the leader of an interdisciplinary team assisting the family, and settle routine parenting disputes over matters such as scheduling, activities, transportation, child care, discipline, education, and health care. They generally cannot modify custody, allow relocation, or make any other major changes to court orders. Thus, depending on the needs of the family, parent coordinators may perform assessments, provide education, serve as case coordinator, assist with conflict management, and potentially make binding decisions or recommendations to the court.
Where there is domestic violence, however, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) Task Force on Parenting Coordination has determined that resorting to a parenting coordinator may be inappropriate and potentially harmful:
"The alternative dispute resolution process central to the parenting coordinator's role may be inappropriate and potentially exploited by perpetrators of domestic violence who have exhibited patterns of violence, threat, intimidation and coercive control over their co-parent. In those cases of domestic violence where one parent seeks to obtain and maintain power and control over the other, the role of the PC changes to an almost purely enforcement function. Here, the PC is likely to be dealing with a court order, the more detailed the better, rather than a mutually agreed upon parenting plan; the role is to ensure compliance with the details of the order and to test each request for variance from its terms with an eye to protecting the custodial parent's autonomy to make decisions based on the children's best interests and guarding against manipulation by the abusing parent. ADR techniques in such cases may have the effect of maintaining or increasing the imbalance of power and the victim's risk of harm. Accordingly, each jurisdiction should have in place a process to screen out and/or develop specialized PC protocols and procedures in this type of DV case. Likewise, PCs should routinely screen prospective cases for DV and decline to accept such cases if they do not have specialized expertise and procedures to effectively manage DV cases involving an imbalance of power, control and coercion."
