Updated  6/25/10

AFCC - OFI Stan Cohen Award

Oregon Family Institute decided to collaborate with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) to administer an annual award bearing the name of our organization's founder, Stan Cohen.

AFCC is an international organization in which Stan had been active and influential, and which supports the work of courts in providing quality services to families in transition. For more information about AFCC, click here.

The award recognizes original, innovative work or research in the area of court-connected programs, services, or the families they serve. The recipient is chosen by AFCC based on their research and contribution to the development of programs and services for courts and the families they serve, and is presented by OFI at AFCC's annual conference, usually held in late May at various locations. A $400 cash award, and a  plaque is provided to the recipient. We believe that Stan would have been pleased to know that this research-oriented prize is carrying forward his interest and sense of importance of the role of research in building practices grounded in good scientific methods.

STAN COHEN DISTINGUISHED RESEARCH AWARD

2010 - Dr. Constance R. Ahron
Dr. Constance R. Ahrons, San Diego, CA, was awarded the Stanley Cohen Distinguished Research Award this year.   Dr. Ahrons is the author of We’re Still Family and The Good Divorce, and co-author of Divorced Families. Dr. Ahrons coined the term “binuclear family” and has pioneered the concept of a “good divorce.” She is Professor Emeritus from the Department of Sociology and former Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Doctoral Training Program at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. In 2000-2001 she was awarded a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard to pursue work on her longitudinal research on the effects of a parental divorce on grown children twenty years afterwards.


2009 -  Dr. Judith Wallerstein
We make this award in recognition of her outstanding life-long achievements as a researcher and writer on the impact of divorce on children and their parents. Dr Wallerstein has co-authored and pioneered (with Joan Kelly PhD) the first studies on children of divorce in the field. In the tradition of good exploratory work they researched a moderate sized sample in depth using the nuance and complexity of the clinical method. A best seller "Surviving the Breakup" was the first book to document the children's developmental risks and emotional suffering poignantly, along with their pain in response to changes in their families (e.g. mourning the loss of their fathers and emotional if not physical availability of their mothers to care for them). Subsequently Dr Wallerstein with other colleagues followed the original
sample over a period of twenty five years, producing the first longitudinal study of the impact of divorce into the adult years. In the process, she was the senior author of three other best-selling books, namely "Second Chances", (1989), "The Good Marriage" (1996); "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce"(2000), and "What About the Kids" ( 2003), along with scores of other professional papers.
      In sum, beginning in 1970's,for more than three decades, her name and statue of her work was highly influential, not only with judges, lawyers and mental health professionals but also to the public-at-large about half of whom have suffered the breakup of their marriage. It should be acknowledged that, like others in this emotionally charged arena of family social policy, her work has not gone unchallenged. In particular, she has been criticized for being unduly negative about the outcomes she has observed; she has also been caught in the crossfire of political debate between men's and women's advocates, and has often been claimed by the latter. Despite it all, Dr. Judy Wallerstein has continued to tell it like she sees it. Recognition by the Association of Family &Conciliation Courts of the pioneering achievements of this extraordinarily courageous and insightful woman and the historical significance of her research are long overdue. - Dr. Janet Johnston, Ph.D


2008 -  Dr. Nicholas Bala (the financial award was re-donated by the professor to AFCC)
Dr. Bala has been a Professor at the Faculty of Law, at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, since 1980, and was a Visiting Professor at McGill, Duke and the University of Calagary.  He teaches Family and Children's Law and has won teaching awards from both the Faculty of Law and the University at large in 1992, 1998 and 2006.  He is presently Associate Dean at the Faculty of Law.

 
Professor Bala's primary research interests are: child welfare law, child abuse and child witnesses in the criminal justice system; family violence; the best interests of children and parental rights and responsibilities after divorce, including child and spousal support obligations; the legal definition of the family; the Canadian Charter of Rights and the family; and, juvenile justice. He has published extensively on these topics, and his work is regularly cited by courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada.  He frequently presents at continuing education ^programs for judges, lawyers, doctors, police, psychologists and other professionals, as well as at academic and law reform conferences.  Professor Bala is a member of the National Judicial Institute Curriculum Planning Committee for Child Witnsses and High Conflict Parental Separations. 

     He has written or co-authored 12 books and over 90 articles and book chapters.  He recently published Youth Criminal Justice Law, and co-authored Testifying on Behalf of Children: A Handbook for Canadian Professionals, and Canadian Child Welfare.  Professor Bala has written or co-authored a number of reports for governments in Canada, including reports on: Ontario's Child Abuse Register (1988); the reform of Canada's  Divorce Act to deal more effectively with family violence (1998, for Status of Women Canada); allegations of sexual abuse when parents have separated (2201) for Justice Canada; the Yukon Family Violence Prevention Act (2002), ; and, for Ontario's Office of Child and Family Service Advocacy (2004).  He has also testified before numerous Parliamentary Committees.

   He has served on the Board of a number of community and children's organizations, and presently serves on the executive committee of the Canadian Research Institute for Law & the Family, at the University of Calgary, and is a volunteer at the Frontenac Youth Diversion project.  Professor Bala has a succinct and clear writing style which makes his many publications a pleasure to read.

2007 -  The Prevention Research Center at Arizona State University

These three outstanding psychologists are co-principal investigators of on-going research at the Prevention Center:

Drs. Sandler, Wolchik and Braver have spearheaded multiple cutting edge studies spanning decades that have significantly added to the knowledge base of  prevention science.  The Prevention Center has been awarded numerous NIMH grants in recognition of the excellence of their research and training opportunities for a new generation of researchers.   Collectively, these researchers have authored hundreds of scholarly articles, chapters, and numerous books and evidence-based intervention manuals dealing with stress, coping and effective preventive interventions for children and parents. 

Drs. Wolchik and Sandler have developed a preventive intervention with demonstrated effectiveness in reducing mental health problems and substance use in adolescents with divorced parents.  The results of their 6 year follow-up study were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2002.  

Dr Braver has developed a prevention program for divorced, nonresident fathers that focuses on enhancing the quality of post divorce parent-child and mother-father relationships.  

The work of this team has shaped the field of prevention science and has set a standard of excellence and evidence for prevention programs to assist children and parents dealing with stressful life transitions such as divorce.  Their enduring and effective efforts to carefully develop, evaluate and disseminate their evidence-based programs to benefit children and families are truly worthy of the Stanley Cohen Distinguished Research Award.     

 Contact information for the nominees:

Sanford Braver
Dept of Psychology
Arizona State University
P.O. Box 871104
Tempe, AZ  85287-1104
Sanford.braver@asu.edu
Ph: 480-965-5405
Fx:  480-965-5430

 

2006 -

J. Herbie DiFonzo, J.D., Ph.D., Hempstead, New York

Mary E. O’Connell, J.D., Boston, Massachusetts

Professors J. Herbie DiFonzo of Hofstra University School of Law and Mary E. O’Connell of Northeastern University School of Law were awarded the Stanley Cohen Distinguished Research Award for their work as Reporters for the Family Law Education Reform (FLER) Project.  The result of their effort was a groundbreaking report emphasizing that the current family law curriculum does not match the needs of practice and clients.  The FLER Report has been endorsed by many individuals and organization including the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution, Association for Conflict Resolution, International Academy of Collaborative Professionals, National Association of Counsel for Children and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. 

2005 - Dr. Janet Walker, Ph.D.:  Board President William Howe presented the award at Seattle AFCC.
Dr. Walker has numerous articles and books, and maintains a staff of dedicated researchers who are helping us know what we really know.  She functions from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. 

2004 -  Dr. Marsha Kline Pruett: Board President William Howe presented the award at San Antonio.
Dr. Pruett is on the faculty and is a research scientist at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT. She has conducted extensive studies on young children and divorce, co-edited a special issue of the Family Court Review, on Fatherhood, and was instrumentalin developing the track of research workshops for AFCC's 41st Annual Conference in San Antonio.

2003 -  Dr. Paul Amato, Ph.D. Presented at AFCC, Toronto, Canada
Dr. Amato has made important contributions to our understanding of children's adjustment to their parents' divorce. His initial meta-analysis of 92 studies reported from 1950-80 compared children of divorced parents with children whose parents had not been divorced. This gave practitioners and researchers a sense of children's well-being after divorce in many important spheres of behavior.
More recently, Dr. Amato has updated this research by doing an meta-analysis of 67 studies done in the 1990's. His findings indicate that although there remains a gap between children of divorce and children who remain with their intact family, the size of that gap has decreased. He hypothesizes that some of the decreases in measurable effects on children may result from attitudinal changes, more sophisticated research methodology, increased availability of therapeutic interventions and school-based programs. Changes within the legal system, such as mandatory mediation and parent education programs, and other out-of-courtroom interventions, may also be contributing factors.
    Dr. Amato has also documented the salient effect of non-residential father involvement with children after divorce. Dr. Amato's research and hypothesis provide evidence that AFCC's (and OFI's) approach to helping promote the adjustment of children after divorce is well grounded.
Peter Salem, Executive Director, AFCC, May 9

2002 - Robert Emery

2001 - JoAnne Pedro-Carroll

2000 - Janet Johnston

1999 - Charlene Depner

1998 - Jessica Pearson and Nancy Thoennes

1997 - Joan B. Kelly