16 JUVENILE COURT JUDGES JOURNAL

COMMUNITY RESOURCES

FAMILY COUNSELLING

bY RALPH ARMSTRONG

Judge, Superior Court, Kelso, Washington

The rising tide of delinquency and crime chal- lenge our Juvenile Courts to take a more active role in the prevention of delinquency. It is recog- nized by many judges that we can best accomplish that objective by providing marriage counselling services through an effective Family Court pro- gram. The biggest factor which keeps most judges from initiating such a program is insufficient money to hire a full time marriage counselling staff.

Actually, there is an untapped reservoir of talent in marriage counselling in almost every county in our nation. This is the story of how that talent was utilized in Cowlitz County, Washington, with a population of approximately sitxy-eight thousand people and a divorce rate of approximately five hundred cases a year. Although we have a prosper- ous economy, we could not afford the expenditures required by setting up a Family Court with full time counsellors, in the method which has proved effective in several parts of our nation.

Our Family Court law was created in 1949, but few counties were utilizing it with any degree of success. Our county averaged four to six Family Court cases a year and this was somewhat typical of the situation in comparable counties throughout the state. The judges usually conducted the Fami- ly Court, and it was always a problem to fit it into a busy superior court schedule.

After years of frustration in endeavoring to determine contested custody cases by a parade of witnesses testifying to the derelictions of the other side of the case, and presiding over Juvenile Court cases which came to the attention of the court too late, it became painfully apparent that there had to be a better way to assist battling parents reach an understanding which would help them resolve their differences and instill responsibility in their children.

For several years, we experimented with mar- riage counselling by utilizing the services of our former Chief Juvenile Probation Officer, James B. Reid. The cases were usually acquired through problems presented in Juvenile Court, and the results were quite successful. Most of them were not filed in the Family Court. The objections to this program were two-fold: We could not afford to use the juvenile probation officer’s time on mar- riage counselling, and the general public did not know of the service and thereby have access to help when they needed it. At this time we also experimented with private fee counselling. As a result of this pilot program, we became convinced that a marriage counselling program administered by the Family Court was necessary.

In the fall of 1966, we conducted a one-day seminar in marriage counselling. From time to time since then, our marriage counsellors have met to discuss their mutual problems.

SPRING, 1968-XIX NO. 1 17

In January 1967, we set up a Family Court program on a shoestring appropriation totalling $2,100.00. Before the year was completed, this was increased to approximately $5,000.00. We utilized the services of our chief probation officer as Family Court Commissioner and selected fourteen family counsellors from among our school counsellors and psychologists, social workers from welfare and the mental health clinic, and ministers with academic training and experience in family counselling. We pay them an honorarium of $6.00 per session. The amount is obviously too low but all of them have cheerfully and ably fulfilled their functions at this figure-even our psychiatrist! Most of our counsel- lors have a master’s degree and all have advanced training in counselling or some other form of social science.

In the past year, we have had one hundred and thirty official czses filed in the Family Court and a substantial majority of them have resulted in reconciliations and improved home conditions for parents and children. We have also handled a

number of “unofficial” cases whose community standing was such that they were reluctant to file in even our confidential Family Court. Only one case from our Family Court has resulted in a contested divorce action. We should not count as losses even those cases in which the counsellor felt that a divorce was the proper solution, and in which the counsellor was able to prepare the parents for the difficult problem of rearing children in a broken home.

We prefer to have a case filed in Family Court before the institution of divorce proceedings, and most of our lawyers recommend this procedure before they file the divorce. After the publicity of the institution of the divorce case and the “fight- ing words” of the complaint have left their impact, there is less chance of a reconciliation. An encour- aging result was the substantial number of people who sought the help of the Family Court who had no plans for divorce. This demonstrated what all juvenile court judges know-there are many un- happily married people whose children become

.- -Seattle Times s:off photo by Ron DiRoro

Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge Ralph Armstrong, right, met with part of the staff of the county’s Family Court, which has attracted attention for reconciling faltering marriages. From left, the Rev. Lee Andrews, the Rev. William Paris, the Rev. William Shilley, Paul Yeend, Dean Gregorious, Tom Gennette, Jack Thompson and Don Tegarden, commissioner of the court.

18 JUVENILE COURT JUDGES JOURNAL

emotionally disturbed, if not delinquent, who are prepared to “tough it out” rather than obtain a divorce, We must help them if we are to provide a deterent to juvenile delinquency.

Our Family Court Commissioner, Don Tegar- den, holds court a day and a half each week. It is essential that the commissioner have time to estab- lish rapport with the couples and convince both of them that counselling would be helpful. As judges are well aware, one of them usually has no desire for counselling.

“I always interview the couples together. Each party is given the opportunity to tell me what the problem is and then to have an exchange between them,” Tegarden said. “Sometimes it gets pretty warm, but that’s when they get honest.”

The Family Court Commissioner should have experience and training in family counselling. Our commissioner prepares a summary of the problems as he sees them for the counsellor he deems best qualified to handle the particular case. The parties fill out a confidential questionnaire, which gives the counsellor further insight into the problems as seen by the husband and wife.

If the parties are determined to proceed with the divorce after the hearing, they may do so. A Family Court Commissioner should, however, en- courage counselling even though a divorce appears inevitable. The counsellor can help avoid a great deal of the bitterness which follows a divorce by helping the parties with intelligent planning for the custody and support of the children. These cases are then usually handled as default divorces with well defined stipulation agreements between the parties. We find few custody problems with di- vorced couples who have had counselling.

Our program is too new to obtain meaningful statistics. It is questionable whether one should risk the invasion of privacy required by an inquiry years later to determine how successful the recon- ciliation has been. Since most of the reconciled couples continue their contacts with the counsel- lors, probably the best indication of the success of a program would be the opinions of reliable coun- sellors.

Among our most successful counsellors is Rev- erend William Shilley, pastor of St. Mary’s Catho- lic Church, who considers his marriage counselling “about the best thing I do as a priest.” Few of the couples referred to Father Shilley have a Catholic background.

“The program is out of this world,” he said. “I think it’s one of the greatest answers to juvenile delinquency and to keeping people off welfare, to

say nothing about the agony of separation and sometimes the loss of children that divorce in- volves.”

Of the ten cases Father Shilley has handled for our Family Court, only one has resulted in a break- up. As is the case with our other most successful counsellors, the secret of his success seems to be a strong and likeable personality, deep involvement and concern with the troubled couple, and sub- stantial background in training for his work. Father Shilley states: “Not every priest is quali- fied to be a marriage counsellor”-and the same thing applies to ministers, school counsellors, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists.

Some judges question the use of ministers as Family Court marriage counsellors, but here we find some of the most knowledgeable and experi- enced men in our communities. We have some exceptional counsellors chosen from that field. It is strongly recommended that you never send a couple to their own minister. They find it easier to discuss their problems with a minister from an- other church. Although they usually maintain con- tact with their counsellors, we have had no in- stance in which a couple has changed church affiliation because of the counselling experience. We have had instances in which they have ac- quired church affiliation because of the respect they have developed in a minister counsellor.

In the south end of our county at Woodland, Reverend Lee Andrews, a Presbyterian minister, has long been the “community counsellor’’ for all manner of problems. He has a bachelor’s degree in counselling, thirty credit hours in clinical psychol- ogy and a master’s degree in education. His expe- rience in marriage counselling of people of all denominations, and none, was one of the reasons which led me, years ago, to realize that a private fee counselling program could be developed with the resources we had at hand. As a result of our Family Court services, his work has lessened rather than increased for now he is counselling only in his own more isolated community. Prior to that, he was getting couples from the more popu- lated Longview-Kelso area. Now we pay him a nominal amount for work he previously performed without charge.

The schools also provide a valuable resource in marriage counselling. They have long recognized that pre-delinquent children could be spotted in the early grades. There was no way they could enter the home, however, in a marriage and family counselling capacity.

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Longview Schools psychologist, Jack H. Thomp- son, who has a four out of five reconciliation experience, considers the Family Court, “useful in terms of relationship to the children involved.”

“In the schools we see the result of broken and unstable homes-children with learning problems, children who are disturbed, who do not understand limits, and who suffer from under-achievement. With the professional help made available through Family Court to help alleviate the underlying problems, the community is emotionally and eco- nomically ahead.”

Psychologist Thompson added, “As a direct result of my Family Court counselling three chil- dren and a mother are now off welfare after one month. Three children and three mothers are not going to be on welfare. This seems to be a real economic and social gain for the community.” It is obvious that his work alone has saved more in ADC funds last year than the total cost of last year’s program-$5,000,000.

Each state faces the recurring problem of second and third generation welfare families. An effective Family Court counselling prognam will go a long way toward breaking this chain reaction and pre- venting other families from entering into it. The work of one of our fourteen counsellors with such families can far exceed our current appropriation of $10,000.00.

Kelso School Counsellor Tom Gennette stated, “In the cases in which I have participated, I have noted that the couples were very interested in placing their problems before a third ‘disinter- ested‘ person even though there was little possibil- ity of reconciliation. The necessity of discussion is obvious to even the most unhappy. It is also worthy of note that very often, the consequences of divorce are entirely misunderstood and the Family Court counsellor can undoubtedly be of great value in helping to clarify some of these misconceptions.

“I am very happy to be participating in this program and feel that its value cannot be under- estimated. Even in our so-called ‘failures’, I cannot help but believe that the educative process of our clients will have greatly assisted in their relation- ships with other people, and in helping them make the adjustment in society as useful citizens, not embittered by the divorce process.”

My prior experience has been limited to retain- ing professional counsellors in our Juvenile Court on a full time basis. The boad range of talents and the dedication of our part-time marriage counsel- lors have convinced me that for Family Court marriage counselling, we can achieve better results more economically with part-time counsellors re- tained on a fee basis. a:

CHILD VICTIMS OF INCEST The American Humane Association, dedicated to the promoting of more and better Child Protective Services, has published a new pamphlet entitled, “Child Victims of Incest.” This exploratory study of the most commonly reported type of incest: father-daughter incest, leans heavily toward a study of the usual context in which the behavior occurs.