The Successful Co-Parenting After Divorce Initiative, created by the Institute of Family Violence Studies (IFVS), housed at the FSU College of Social Work, was recognized as one of Florida TaxWatch’s 2020 Productivity Award recipients.

Florida TaxWatch is a research and government watchdog organization seeking to improve the Florida government’s productivity and accountability. For more than thirty years, TaxWatch Productivity Awards publicly recognizes and rewards state workers and organizations whose work significantly and measurability demonstrates productivity and innovations to improve the delivery of state services and save Florida taxpayers and businesses money.

This year the Co-Parenting Initiative was recognized for its work on trauma and resilience. For several years, the Co-Parenting Initiative has offered free digital co-parenting training in English and Spanish. The initiative teaches families and professionals about the effects of divorce and helps them build and support healthy co-parenting relationships to benefit the children involved.

Through continued research on the initiative, IFVS realized that the parents using the first three modules had also experienced high levels of childhood trauma and resilience. In a scholarly article published in the Hawaiian Law Review in 2016, FSU researchers pointed out this gap in co-parenting education. The research pointed to the need for co-parenting courses to be trauma-informed for the training to be successful. The institute secured funding to develop the trauma and resilience module in 2018 and went live with the module in 2019.

The TaxWatch Productivity Award recognizes the importance of this free co-parenting training to the parents in Florida, which has helped lower instances of conflict in families and has increased cooperation for families in transition.

“We are thrilled with the recognition of TaxWatch for our trauma and resilience work, said Karen Oehme, director of the Institute for Family Violence Studies, “But most importantly, we are helping Florida families. The course has served thousands of parents over the years, but our numbers really spiked when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The online parenting course became a lifeline. In 2020, we served nearly 3,000 parents going through a divorce.”

Learn more about the projects and initiatives at the Institute for Family Violence Studies at https://familyvio.csw.fsu.edu.

Florida State University received more 2020 Florida TaxWatch awards than any other Florida university! Read about all of the 2020 Florida TaxWatch award winners at https://news.fsu.edu/news/2020/12/14/florida-state-university-receives-most-2020-florida-taxwatch-awards-of-any-state-university/.