Analysis of Selected Recommendations of Parents for Improvement of Shared Care and Joint Custody After Parents/Partners´ Divorce/Separation

Abstract

Abstract The content of this scientific study is based on the qualitative analysis of selected answers of parents, in the framework of semi-structured interview. The qualitative research is apart of bigger research work P-155/A, dealing with mental health of children in family and school settings. The main goal is to learn and analyse the empirical experience and views of participants, related to joint custody and shared care. The research sample consisted of randomly selected 9 participants who visited Výskumný ústav detskej psychológie apatopsychológie on behalf of some problems regarding custody after divorce/separation. In this contribution the parents´ attitudes towards mutual communication of former partners/parents, functioning of joint custody and shared care and some views related to some limits in this form of shared parenting have been analysed. Some valuable remarks with regard to the need of multi-professional team work, addressed to parents within the process of their divorce/separation proved to be very useful. Parents proposed they would extremely welcome some more help from mental health professionals and their crises intervention actions. On behalf of discussion we notice that the juridical institute of joint custody and shared care is a very important tool, however, some legislative changes of this law should be still done. Concluding the study, we state that in spite of some methodological problems – like a limited number of research participants, we believe that the results can serve as a basis for the next deeper research, bringing more proposals for improvement in this field.