The article below is a great interview that can help any caring adult understand what these kids go through.

ALL legal, social work professionals and officers of the Court should be made to read, understand and live up to ithese principles. To not understand and apply this knowledge during family law litigation is child abuse. PERIOD.

The largest problem in Family Law is a lack of respect and an uncaring, dismissive and disrespectful attitude.

When children get a divorce - Belfast Telegraph

With divorce levels in Northern Ireland reaching epidemic proportions, what happens to children caught up in the heartbreak? A special conference being held today in Templepatrick discusses the impact on children and two key speakers - Pip Jaffa of the parents Advice Centre, and Dr Fionnuala Leddy, child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children - tell Judith Cole why this issue is so important

What does your work in trying to protect children from emotional and psychological harm involve?

As a child psychiatrist I work in a multi-disciplinary team delivering mental health services to children up to the age of 14. There are more separated parents now than ever. But, on the other hand, people are more willing to travel to see a child, whereas in the past geographical distances would have been a barrier. I take referrals from GPs, social services, health visitors and other fields of medicine like paediatrics, and the courts can ask for an assessment - for instance in clarifying why contact isn't happening or whether contact would be in the child's best interests. We're at the sharp end of emotional and behavioural problems that children present with.

What sort of problems?

Children can present with a lot of different emotional and behavioural difficulties. The effects of separation on children don't just occur at the time of separation - they can be long term. Our job is to try and prevent the worst effects on children. We see children at different stages: sometimes at the time of separation or, other times, long after the separation. A child's problems can be related to absence of contact or difficulty in securing contact between the child and non-residential parent. One of the great difficulties is that a child can feel guilty about wanting a relationship with the other parent.

How important is it for a child to have regular contact with the parent who has left?

Seeing the non-residential parent, who is usually the father, even once a week or fortnight is so much better than never. And it's not just the non-residential parent; it's their side of the family which can contribute so much to the child's life. Sometimes after separation the residential parent wants to be freed up from that side of the family, but the fact is that the child has roots in both families and they need to be respected - in the child's interests.

Even if the non-residential parent is abusive or violent?

There are some cases in which the non-residential parent has been abusive or violent. But even in these cases I think the children do need to know about their parentage, their biological background.

What difference can contact, however minimal, make to a child?

After divorce and separation children do less well in terms of mental health, emotional well-being and academic performance. We need to consider very carefully that this is related in large measure to the absence of the non-residential parent. Contact can reduce the effect of divorce. And it must be remembered that, while divorce happens at one point in time, absence of the parent goes on and on, every day.

So it can affect children throughout their lives?

There can certainly be long term effects. If self-esteem is affected and a child's mental well-being, these in themselves will impact on later life. Adults who have not had contact with their biological parents often describe a void in their lives. People have deep interest in their biological roots: even people who've been adopted by non-family members try, years later, to seek out their biological parents. It's about identity formation.

How can a child of a separated home be given the best possible chance in life?

We have to remember that there are a lot of people from divorced families who do perfectly well in life. We just need to look at how best to promote their well-being after separation. It is a significant event in a child's life, but if you can move on and allow the child to develop good relationships with both parents then they can learn how to manage conflict and they can benefit from having two loving families. Acknowledging the need for having both parents in their lives is a major step in the right direction towards promoting their well-being.

So the parent with whom the child lives bears a lot of responsibility.

The residential parent is in a very responsible position with respect to the child. They have an enormous amount of control and an opportunity to feed into the child's beliefs, attitudes and values. That's a heavy responsibility for a parent to bear, especially a single parent.
That links to the responsibility which step parents have. Some reconstituted families - separated parents who marry again - find it much easier than others to allow contact, to share the child and to allow the child to develop good relationships with the non-residential parents, while others feel threatened by those relationships.

And in cases in which the parent with custody feels threatened, what can happen?

In a lot of cases families do their best to ensure ongoing contact between children and the non-residential parent, but sometimes they find it difficult to see the benefits of contact for the child. But I think it is so important for the child to see the non-residential parent, even if the parent with whom they live is not keen on this happening. The custodial parent can view the other as breezing in and out of the child's life. They may feel that the child doesn't need a relationship with the other parent. Indeed, they themselves are glad to be out of the relationship and by extension they believe the child would be better out of it too.

The support of family and friends is vital, then.

Yes. When thinking about how to help children and parents after separation, family and friends are very important. It doesn't just come down to the legal system, social services and health services. Family and friends, through their support and having an enlightened attitude towards children's needs, can help the children avoid some of the difficulties that surround separation. Inevitably, separation is a very difficult task and almost always there is unhappiness and a struggle and lots of disagreement, and people need their friends and family to take their side and support them. Even if you support the person on your side, friends and family should keep it in mind that the child's relationship with the other parent needs to be preserved and promoted. It can be made difficult for the non-residential parent to have contact, but it is so important that contact is maintained - for the child's interests.

What can be done to encourage contact if a child feels threatened by the non-residential parent or if there is a history of abuse or violence?

I think that, unfortunately, children often imagine that a situation is worse than it really is, so by giving them information you can dispel frightening fantasies they might have. If you, as the residential parent and therefore probably the person with the closest relationship to the child, don't tell them what the problem with the non-residential parent was, the risk is that someone else will tell them in a much less perceptive manner and in a much less age-appropriate manner. Sometimes professional help is required to do this but very often families can help to support you as a parent when you're giving difficult information.

Children often have feelings about secrets and no-go areas of conversation. They often know by instinct that there is something that they're not being told. Parents tell me that, after they share a secret with their child, the child already had an idea of what it was, and the parent knew that the child suspected something. There is often a great sense of relief in sharing something difficult and it can then build the relationship rather than undermine it.

A parent can sometimes decide he or she no longer wishes to maintain contact with the child. Why does this happen and what effects can it have?

The non-residential parent can be quite rejecting of the children of the relationship and this is very difficult for the residential parent to bear because it is very hurtful to the child's self-esteem. There are so many reasons why rejection can happen. Sometimes, parents aren't aware of how significant they are to their children. Or, they may have other personal problems which have left them feeling unable to make a contribution to their children's lives.
We need to educate people about how important they are to their children, even after separation. Both parents remain important to the child, to their sense of themselves, their identity and self esteem.

Another reason for a parent deciding to stop seeing a child is that they feel that pursuing contact is going to be inordinately difficult. They believe that they're going to be prevented from having a relationship with their children and that the struggle required to maintain contact would just be too demanding and would make it impossible to carry on with other aspects of their lives.

From a professional point of view, what can be done to improve the system?

The child and adolescent mental health services are under-resourced. Most children from separated families don't reach these services - we only see a minority of cases.

I think there needs to be more mediation services and people need to have trained professionals available at the time of separation to ensure that plans are made for the children, in the children's interests.

I think it's also very important that legal professionals have the ethos of the importance of maintaining relationships between the children and both parents.