Issue No. 37 - The impact of using the Family Law DOORS screening tool in family mediation in Québec
March 2025
Family mediation is a service designed to help parents resolve disputes and reach agreements following separation. Family mediators (FMs) play a key role in facilitating such agreements. In fact, nearly half of recently separated parents in Québec have used this service (Poitras et al., 2023). The vast majority of these parents faced temporary challenges, but some experienced more significant and persistent difficulties (e.g. mental health problems, parenting difficulties, adjustment difficulties in children), a number of which compromised individual safety, such as family violence (FV) and child abuse (Ferraro et al., 2024; Godbout et al., 2023; Perona et al., 2023; Raley & Sweeney, 2020). It was with these considerations in mind that the Family Law DOORS (Detection of Overall Risk Screen) tool (McIntosh & Ralfs, 2012) was developed and implemented in Australia, with the aim of carrying out universal and systematic screening within a large population that may present a diversity of risks of varying nature and severity, in a context of parental separation (Lee, Ralfs, Booth, & McIntosh, 2021).
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