Our professional team has over 40 years’ experience working with the court system providing family care coordination, evaluations and assessments in order to stabilize families. We make this skill set available by court order to effectively and efficiently provide services and when appropriate make recommendations to the court.  We are experienced in assessing and evaluating family complex needs using formal and informal assessments that allow to identify needed services. Our goal is to improve the family’s well-being, safety and permanency.

ASSESSMENTS AND EVALUATIONS PROVIDED BY COURT ORDER:

       Child Custody Evaluations

       Alcohol and Drug Screening

      Parenting Assessments

       Behavioral Health Assessments

SERVICES PROVIDED BY COURT ORDER:

        Supervised Visitation and Therapeutic Supervised Visitation

        Alcohol and Drug Psychoeducation     

        Parenting Education and Co-parenting Education

        Education regarding domestic violence and anger management

Independent Child Custody Evaluations: Independent child custody evaluations assist the judge in making a final custody determination in a divorce, annulment, action for separate maintenance, or custody case involving unmarried parents. The primary consideration is to assess the individual and family factors that affect the best psychological interests of the child.  The evaluator prepares a written report for the court, the parents, and the parents’ attorneys. The judge could order a child custody evaluation to assess whether there has been psychological harm to the child (for example, because of a parent’s abandonment, domestic violence, physical or emotional impairment, drug or alcohol abuse, or interference with the other spouse’s parenting time). The custody evaluation includes an assessment of the adults' capacities for parenting, including whatever knowledge, attributes, skills, and abilities, or lack there of, are present; (b) an assessment of the psychological functioning and developmental needs of each child and of the wishes of each child where appropriate; and (c) an assessment of the functional ability of each parent to meet these needs, including an evaluation of the interaction between each adult and child. The values of the parents relevant to parenting, ability to plan for the child's future needs, capacity to provide a stable and loving home, and any potential for inappropriate behavior or misconduct that might negatively influence the child also are considered. As independent child custody evaluator, the mental health professional is an advisor to the court, not a final decision-maker.

Supervised Visitation: Insightful Pediatric and Family Therapy provides supervised visitation at the Sparta location. These visits allow parents in high conflict or high-risk situations access to their children in a safe and supervised environment. The visiting parent has access to the child only when supervised by staff or contracted personnel. Supervised visitation is used to protect children from potentially dangerous situations while allowing parental access and providing support for the parent child relationship. The supervisor of the visit is there to redirect any activity
and/or conversation deemed inappropriate. The supervisor is also observing for age appropriate interactions and keeping safety of the children first priority.
Therapeutic Supervised Visitation: This type of supervised visitation employs therapeutic and educational interventions to support the development of healthier parent-child relationships.  Therapeutic supervised visitation is primarily used to allow space for the child and parent to have difficult conversations while employing healthy communication skills and executing boundaries. Therapeutic visitations are for older children that are able to have deeper conversations regarding emotions and feelings about the parent child relationship. Therapeutic supervised visitations are only provided by master’s level mental health professional.

Both therapeutic and typical supervised visitation are not able to be billed to insurance plans.