Georgia Chapter of Association of Family and Conciliation Courts
Inaugural Seminar & Chapter Meeting
Beyond Silos: Advanced Interdisciplinary Approaches for Families in Transition
Atlanta, Georgia, State Bar Headquarters
October 23, 2026 | 8:30 am – 4:30 pm
8:30 AM – 8:45 AM | Registration and Coffee
8:45 AM – 9:00 AM | Welcome and Introduction to AFCC
9:00 AM – 10:15 AM
SUBSTANCE MISUSE, PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING, AND DIAGNOSIS IN CHILD CUSTODY CASES: WHAT IS PREJUDICIAL AND WHAT IS PROBATIVE?
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt, MA, LPC
Howard Drutman, Ph.D.
In custody litigation, attorneys, GALs, Courts, and attorneys often lean heavily on drug and alcohol testing to assess parental fitness, yet results are frequently misunderstood or overvalued. A positive test result may not indicate unsafe parenting, and a negative one does not ensure recovery or stability. This discussion will debunk myths about addiction; explain what testing actually reveals – and what it doesn’t – and translate science into information that can be used in a courtroom setting. Attendees will learn when testing is helpful, or harmful, and how to draft child-centered parenting plans that reflect science, empathy, and the realities of recovery.
10:15 AM – 11:45 AM
ALIGNING PROFESSIONALS: THEORIES, VOICES, AND ROLES IN PARENT-CHILD CONTACT CASES
April Harris Britt, Ph.D.
Parent-child contact problems are hard enough without the professionals involved working from different playbooks. Attorneys, evaluators, GALs, Judges, and therapists each carry their own ethical duties, their own read on the theory behind the case, and their own sense of what the child needs. When the differing views don’t line up, the family ends up caught in the gaps. This session brings together the theoretical grounding for understanding PCCP with a practical guide for coordinating the professionals who respond to it. Presenters will cover the leading frameworks for understanding why a child resists or refuses contact with a parent, the importance of weighing the child’s voice appropriately in these cases, and a written guide for aligning legal and mental health professionals’ strategies so their differing roles and advocacy positions work together rather than at cross-purposes.
11:45 AM – 12:30 PM | Break, Lunch, AFCC Business Meeting
12:30 PM – 1:15 PM
AFCC PRACTICE GUIDELINES AND RESOURCES: WHAT’S AVAILABLE AND HOW TO USE THEM
Amy Holsten, Ph.D.
Daniel Bloom, JD
AFCC has spent decades developing practice guidelines covering nearly every corner of family law work, but many practitioners have never worked through them in any real depth or know how to put them to use day to day. This closing session for our inaugural Georgia AFCC conference offers a guided tour of four of the field’s core guideline sets: the Parenting Plan Evaluation Guidelines (what many still know as custody evaluation guidelines), the Parenting Coordination Guidelines, the Court-Involved Therapy Guidelines, and the Model Standards for Family and Divorce Mediation. The session will also introduce Family Court Review, AFCC’s peer-reviewed journal, as an ongoing resource for tracking the research, commentary, and emerging practice issues that inform and update these guidelines over time. Attendees will get a working sense of what each guideline covers, how they overlap and differ, and how to bring them — and the journal — into daily practice, whether that means structuring an evaluation, setting the terms of a parenting coordination engagement, defining the scope of court-involved therapy, or running a mediation that meets the field’s current standards.
1:15 PM – 2:45 PM
WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH ACTUALLY SAY ABOUT SHARED PARENTING? – A PANEL DISCUSSION
April Harris Britt, Ph.D. | Christy Bradshaw Schmidt, MA, LPC | Howard Drutman, Ph.D. | Amy Holsten, Ph.D.
Lawrence Jay Braunstein, JD | Dawn R. Smith, JD
People on both sides of the shared parenting debate often claim the research backs them up completely. It doesn’t. The studies differ in method, in who they sample, and even in how they define “shared care,” and that’s a big part of why the findings look inconsistent from one paper to the next. This panel discussion examines what the research actually shows, why it’s messier than the talking points suggest, and which factors — conflict level, co-parenting quality, child age, family violence — tend to matter more for outcomes than the percentage split itself.
2:45 PM – 3:00 PM | Break
3:00 PM – 4:15 PM
WHEN ABUSE ALLEGATIONS ARISE IN CUSTODY CASES
Lawrence Jay Braunstein, JD
Dawn R. Smith, JD
An allegation of child sexual abuse can upend a custody case overnight. The evaluation gets paused, a DFCS investigation begins, and suddenly the GAL, the attorneys, the parenting plan evaluator, and the judge are all navigating a situation none of them fully controls, each with a different role, different information, and different constraints on what they can do next. This session looks at how each of these players should handle an allegation as it moves through the system: what a GAL’s obligations are once an allegation is disclosed, how attorneys should advise and prepare their clients without overstepping, what a parenting plan evaluator can and can’t do while a DFCS investigation is pending, and what judges should be weighing when the case comes back before them. The goal is a shared, practical understanding of who does what, when, so the professionals aren’t working at odds with each other while the family is in crisis.
