DU is now seeing a total of five families at the Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families (RCSDF), the first center of its kind in the U.S. The center opened on Sept. 3 and provides interdisciplinary services to families going through a separation or divorce, including legal, counseling and financial services.
The staff includes 13 graduate students in social work, psychology and law, as well as three professional advisors, including a social worker, a psychologist and an attorney. According to Executive Director Melinda Taylor, the students started seeing their first families two or three weeks ago.
“We want to start small because with those five families we’ve already had to tweak our policies and procedures,” said Taylor. “We want to ensure students have an opportunity to work with families, but not be inundated with too many families.”
Each family is paired with one mental health student and one legal student. According to Taylor, mental health professionals and attorneys who work in family law often have a difficult time understanding each other’s language. The center allows these students to work together and “learn each other’s language” early on.
The fee for services at the center is on a sliding scale based on a family’s income, ranging from $15 to $50 per hour.
“We’re open to anyone as long as the parents are willing to work together,” said Taylor. “We thought we would get a lower income demographic, but when we opened our doors the families that came in were very much middle-income families. They just want an opportunity to work together. They don’t want to go through the adversarial process.”
The idea for the center came from former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Love Kourlis. According to Taylor, Kourlis decided she wanted to advocate for change in the legal system in a way she could not do in court.
In January 2006, Kourlis resigned from the Colorado Supreme Court and came to DU to establish the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS), a research think-tank dedicated solely to making reform in the legal system, where she now serves as executive director.
Kourlis hired Taylor in June 2012 to work with a team at IAALS to “think outside the box” in terms of family law. The team came up with a model and business plan for the resource center.
“Our concept is that courts exist for two main purposes in the area of family law: enforcement and protection,” said Taylor. “There are a significant number of families that have relationship issues, not necessarily legal issues, and want to separate. But the only venue available to them is the court system. We free up the court to handle more egregious cases.”
RCSDF received over $1 million from the Gates Frontiers Fund for a three-year pilot project. During that time, IAALS will be conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the center.
“My goal is for the center to become a permanent fixture at DU,” said Taylor. “We want to demonstrate positive outcomes and replicate this model at universities across the country, as well as develop models for smaller communities.”
Taylor and Kourlis have started to reach out to courts and legal systems in the community to promote the center.
“Families are busy and it’s expensive to go see a therapist and then go see an attorney,” said Taylor. “The unique feature here is that for the first time ever the services are coordinated in one location.”
