An educational counseling center was set up at the district's youth welfare office in 1949 - initially with freelance staff. Today, 19 specialists and four team assistants work in the psychological counseling center at the main office in Ludwigsburg and in five other branch offices in the district. One of the many tasks of the psychological advice center is to provide advice on parental consensus for parents or legal guardians who often have ongoing, intense conflicts after a separation or divorce, which also have an impact on how they interact with their children. "This counseling represents a major challenge for the specialists - the counseling is significantly more complex than average parenting counseling," explained District Administrator Haas. Around 80 to 90 couples register for parenting consensus counseling each year, around half of which come via the Besigheim and Ludwigsburg family courts.
According to District Administrator Haas, this prompted those responsible at the psychological advice center to submit an application for the KVJS-funded project "Development and application of questionnaires for quality assurance of parental consensus advice at advice centers". The project ran from September 2016 to June 2019 and one of its aims was to provide recommendations for improving the advice services offered at advice centers and for working with cooperation partners. From the district, the Caritas counseling centers, the Child Protection Association and the Psychological Counseling Center were involved; in addition, five other counseling centers from Baden-Württemberg participated by implementing the developed questionnaires in practice and submitting them for evaluation in time for the deadline. More than 1,500 questionnaires were evaluated. The KVJS contributed 75,000 euros to the total project costs of 125,000 euros and the district 50,000 euros.
The main results include A good 50 percent of the consultations are rated as successful by parents and professionals. Training in family mediation is very helpful for professionals and leads to more successful counseling. On the parents' side, successful counseling is strongly influenced by their willingness to cooperate and clarify during the counseling sessions as well as the level of parental conflict. According to the parents, the children also benefit from the counseling. Children between the ages of five and nine are particularly in need of parental support and care to cope with the separation. For parents for whom joint counseling is not suitable, alternative services such as individual counseling, parent training groups or group services for the children remain.
