According to the Ministry of the Interior, R.O.C., approximately 50,000 couples have divorced in Taiwan in the past decade. This phenomenon indicates how common divorce is in modern society. In the divorce process, parents usually focus on the unpleasantness, anger, and even resentfulness toward the end of their marriage. Unfortunately, these intensive fights leave life-long pains in children's memories. Thus, it is crucial to ensure children's voices are heard and their needs are valued. Even when parents make the decision to divorce, children can still receive all the love and care from them. These are the goals CWLF is heading toward. In this regard, this October we invited experts and practitioners to discuss two key issues: one is how to initiate children's rights to express and speak in divorced and separated families, the other is co-parenting education in divorced and separated families.

Taking the experience from our visits to several Australian organizations and governmental agencies in 2023, we saw how considerate these organizations are in providing an environment informed by children-centered design. To ensure children's voices and expectations are respected throughout their parents' divorce process, we invited Ms. Clare Swetenham, who is the Director of Court Children's Service (CCS) from the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, to share with us how the court of Australia attends to the voices of children and brings their voices to the court. Apart from the role that CCS plays in the court, their missions and principles behind their work, the speaker also shared a case study with the audience to provide us with a more comprehensive understanding of their services.

As we learned that the Australian government set up a number of Family Relationship Centers within their communities, we invited three speakers from Relationships Australia Victoria and Melbourne Family Relationship Centre to share their professional experience with us. The center not only provides family mediation and various services on family dispute resolutions, but it also includes services such as Child-Inclusive Practices and Child-Focused Practices. In the former service, the practitioner will speak with the children first, and in the latter service, the practitioner, who will not come into contact with the children, will discuss with child experts and parents to form a consensus for the best interests of the children.

The first forum in the afternoon focused on high-conflict families that are facing difficulties in family visitation. Dr. Leslie Drozd, who is one of the board members from Overcoming Barriers, introduced her organization and provided references that analyze these types of families and demonstrated how to resolve such difficulties, including how to understand child resistance and how to respond aptly. Our Social Work Supervisor, Ms. Wen-Xiu Lin, shared insights into the perspective of the master's dissertation she conducted and her work experience at CWLF. The aim is to help our audience have a more in-depth understanding of high-conflict families that have difficulties in family visits.

At the final forum, we revisited the topic of co-parenting education, with a focus on grandparents in Chinese communities. In both Hong Kong and Taiwan, grandparents are an important source of support for divorced parents. Sometimes, they are even the main caretakers of children from divorced families. The pressure they face could affect the quality of taking care of these children. Therefore, the Hong Kong Family Welfare Society introduced many services they designed for grandparents. Our Senior Associate Director Ling-Ya Huang shared the service of co-parenting education groups organized by the Taiwan Changhua District Court. From these examples, we can understand how systematic and comprehensive social work professionals' work on divorced families is.

Through the conference, we hope to emphasize the importance of listening to and valuing children's voices, while helping divorced parents find healthier ways to navigate this difficult transition. We will continue to advocate for legislative changes, provide relevant courses, conduct research, hold press conferences, and respond to relevant updates, etc. Our vision is to raise awareness about the best interests of the child, emphasizing that together we can safeguard and support children's rights.