Sarah Mathews is the deputy Friend of the Court for Cass County. 

Each year, Parenting Awareness Month is celebrated in March to emphasize the importance of effective parenting in nurturing children to become healthy, caring, and contributing citizens. The celebration of Parenting Awareness Month is part of the larger year-round statewide campaign, “Parenting Awareness Michigan.” Some of the goals of the Parenting Awareness Michigan Campaign is to draw attention to the importance of effective parenting on children’s development and to raise awareness that everyone benefits from parent education and support.

When parents are trying to work together to raise a child in two separate households, it can be difficult to figure out the right parenting time schedule so that a child can benefit from effective parenting by both parents. It can be equally difficult to figure out where to turn to for education on how to handle the unique issues that arise when a child is raised by parents in two separate homes.

The Cass County Friend of the Court provides several services to assist parents in establishing a parenting time schedule that is in the best interest of the child(ren) when parents are unable to agree on a parenting time schedule. These services include: (1) establishing parenting time orders at the start of a domestic relations case; (2) modifying existing parenting time orders through a referee hearing; (3) enforcing parenting time orders by staff informally facilitating resolutions; (4) enforcing parenting time orders through a formal referee hearing; (5) facilitating resolution of parenting time problems through the use of resolution conferences; and (6) referring parties to mediation.  While FOC staff cannot provide legal advice to parents regarding these services, staff can answer questions regarding the process for each service, and parents can obtain the necessary paperwork to request any of these services from the FOC office.

Besides providing services to assist parents in establishing a parenting time schedule, the Friend of the Court also provides two educational opportunities to assist parents in gaining skills to parent effectively: (1) the FOC Parenting Academy, and (2) the FOC Orientation/SMILE Program. The FOC Parenting Academy is a free, five-module program offered to parents on the second Tuesday of every month from 6 to 7:30 pm. at the Cass District Library in Cassopolis. The five-modules are taught by Dr. Rebecca Katovsich and Dr. Michael Jenuwine and cover topics to help parents gain skills to co-parent together when raising a child together in two separate homes.  These topics include:

• Module #1:  Introduction to the Friend of the Court and looking at parental separation from the child’s perspective

• Module #2:  Conflict resolution

• Module #3:  Communication

• Module #4:  Joint decision making

• Module #5:  Child safety

Each session of the Parenting Academy is tailored to the audience in attendance so that those participating can ask questions and get the most out of each session.  Parents who attend a module of the Parenting Academy receive a Certificate of Completion for that module. Parents attending all five sessions receive a diploma for graduating the Parenting Academy. 

The FOC Orientation/SMILE Program was just introduced by the Cass County FOC in the fall of 2019.  In this program, parents who are parties to a newly filed domestic relations case that involves custody and parenting time attend an orientation to learn about the Friend of the Court and watch the video SMILE (Start Making It Livable for Everyone) at the Cass County Law and Courts Building. Parents are provided with the SMILE Handbook as well as some helpful information regarding the Friend of the Court. The SMILE video was produced by the Oakland County Friend of the Court and was designed to assist parents to better understand how conflict existing between parents affects their children, how to communicate on a positive level, and how to be flexible and compromise as co-parents in making decisions about their children.

If you would like more information about any of the parenting time services or parent education services offered by the FOC, please contact the FOC at foc@cassco.org.

If you have questions about the FOC that you think would be helpful to address in future columns, please send them to the FOC email address:  foc@cassco.org.