Why Do CAFCASS Officers Struggle to Recognise Parental Alienation?

I have written a much longer blog on this (which you can read at here) but I wanted to share my conclusion with you because it I am interested in getting your opinions and if there is anything you would add.

In my experience some of the biggest mistakes Cafcass Officers make are as follows:

• Not checking the “evidence” provided by one parent - reports can become echo chambers and a statement taken as being fact, made by an alienating parent to one professional, can then simply be copied and pasted throughout further reports without anyone actually going back to “groundzero” and doing a fact check.  So many cases I work on involve a lot of unpicking of the evidence from the very first hearing, which has laid the false foundations for the whole case.
• Professionals having poor self awareness and not understanding their own role in the drama triangle - I have seen so many professionals being “lovebomed” by the alienating parent and in my opinion (personal exploration) this is because most professionals involved in Family Court are rescuers by nature (want to fix people and situations) and so are very susceptible to the emotionally seductive manipulation tactics of the alienating parent.  They are actually very similar to the victim in that they get “taken in” by the victim narrative of the abuser, wanting to rescue them from you (to fulfil their own unmet need of being wanted and needed) and ignoring all evidence to the contrary about this person they have made their personal mission.  
• Failure to recognise emotional manipulation - whilst I totally understand the desire by court’s to prioritise (or at least take into account) the wishes and feelings of the child, they should be open to the possibility that the child’s voice has been hijacked.  In my opinion the training Cafcass workers undertake on alienation is insufficient and does not cover the complex psychology of the alienating parent so relevant behaviour is overlooked and often dismissed.
• Singular focus - too many cases follow only one line of investigation and in alienation cases, this is usually the abusive parents narrative.  This means that valuable time is wasted only looking at that version of events, when another version (the other parent’s) should be run parallel.  I always ask myself in my own case work, what would this situation look like and how would the evidence fit in if the opposite was true?  This type of reflective practice is essential in complex cases such as this.
• Holding alienated parents to a different standard - little to no understanding is given to parents who are in one of the most painful situations of their lives and yet expected to behave impeccably all the time.  Whilst I am not condoning aggressive or bullying behaviour, if professionals used more empathy in their dealings with parents in these situations, hostility could be reduced. 
• Ignoring valuable evidence - alienating behaviours are often subtle and insidious, they lack the dramatic flare of claims of domestic abuse and so those seemingly small, innocuous behaviours of either the child or alienating parent, are dismissed as being irrelevant, when in fact they are important details which show the pattern of alienating behaviours.
• Being afraid of the consequences of recognising alienation - alienating parents (male and female) are intimidating.  It is usually covert (although I have known many an abusive parent make threats to professionals) but if you are emotionally sensitive, you can feel it.  I believe a lot of FCA’s are empaths but (just like alienating children) they misattribute their feelings around the alienating parent (fear, anxiety) and attribute them to the alienated parent.  Even if they DO recognise the feelings are coming from  the alienating parent, they don’t consider how this might feel for the child and instead choose to protect themselves by “playing it safe” with recommendations.  
• Failure to apply assessment tools - whilst the CIAF is a a useful took,, it doesn’t help identify some more basic behaviours and day to day parenting issues which can help to reveal the true parent-child dynamics.  I am repeatedly disappointed at hearing FCA’s who have recognised a parent's inability to meet their child’s emotional needs (through enmeshment and/or lack of empathy) but failed to join the dots and see how harmful that is.  Social workers know emotional warmth and boundaries are important for children to develop healthy relationships both with themselves and others, and yet fail to draw out or undertake further assessments of the impact of this behaviour.  It is almost a throwaway which in my opinion is unforgivable.
• Unchallenged bias - we all have bias’ because we all have lived a life full of experiences, some good and some not so good.  The problem with alienation cases is that those biases impair our judgement because they challenge our most basic views of parenting and the stereotypes we have been conditioned to believe.  I have written more about this in How Bias Is Impacting Your Case so I recommend having a read of that to understand this more.  
• Societal influence is crippling - there is a “hate campaign” currently against the term parental alienation which has a lot of sway, especially within the Ministry of Justice.  This is evidenced by their recent briefing on how to handle alienating behaviours which essentially said “they are rare (usually allegations of alienation are made by father’s using DARVO), and if they are signs of alienating behaviours, they are probably justified by the mother, and if, in the rarest of rare cases, there is significant evidence of psychological manipulation and harm, it is probably more risky to do anything about it and the child should just stay where they are”.  This guidance, if allowed to go through, will take all power away from judges and FCA’s to deal with alienation as emotional abuse and hand all the power to alienators, emboldening them to continue to abuse the children and causing long term and significant mental health problems for the child.

My final word on this is that alienation is real and can be deployed by both mothers and father’s. It is a common factor in a large number of private law Family Court proceedings.  It is highly abusive, effectively stripping the child of a healthy attachment, erasing their independence and depriving them of any autonomy to feel their own emotions.  With the right tools, training and approach it can be diagnosed and powerful interventions utilised to protect the child.  We all need to accept that some parents have their own mental health problems which prevent them from being able to separate their needs from their child’s and instead seek to reenact their own trauma narrative in the current situation.  We have to stop buying into the false narrative that these behaviours are only evident in men and father’s.  Alienation is not a gender issue.  Abuse is not a gender issue.  Let’s do better.