Welcome to Divorce Coaches Academy. We're glad you found us. In this post, we thought we would give you a little background about the history of DCA and how we got to where we are. It's been a wild ride and we love it. We're not where we thought we would be, but just like building your practice, if you listen to your customers, you'll get where you need to go.
Beginnings
Divorce Coaches Academy was born in April 2021 out of a desire to provide purposeful, professional continuing education opportunities for certified divorce coaches and divorce professionals. We initially launched with a handful of live, one-hour classes with the intention of bringing in new industry experts each month to speak on topics of interest to the divorce coaching community.
BUT, there's that big but...we quickly learned that what most coaches were seeking was more in depth training on how to help their clients manage the conflict in divorce and co-parenting. While their initial certification provided them with foundational coaching skills, they lacked the theory and practical tools to help clients de-escalate, negotiate, and communicate in a way that led to conflict resolution.
So we did a quick pivot to meet the needs of our community and created a series of short specialty training intensives in Divorce Conflict Coaching, Pre-Mediation Divorce Coaching, and Conflicted Co-Parenting Divorce Coaching. Well, let's just say those courses have been incredibly popular and students have been telling us what a difference it's made in their practices.
Podcast
If you've met Tracy and Debra, you know they love to talk so adding a DCA podcast just made sense. In April 2022 we put our first episode out into to universe and we've continued to release a new conversation every Wednesday since.You're consistently showing up to listen and the show is growing every week.
Ours is not a highly produced or edited show. We literally turn on the microphones and chat about whatever's been coming up for us that week. We talk about building your practice, having more impact with clients, and advocating for the profession. We try our best to keep it clean and professional, but we are who we are and a word occasionally slips through the filter. Feel free to drop us a line anytime if there's a topic or a guest you think we should have on the show.
Certification
Feedback from the specialty trainings and noticing which podcast episodes were popular made us pause and go back to our roots. The ABA defines divorce coaching as a method of alternative dispute resolution. We are more closely related to the field of ADR than we are to coaching. If we are going to truly impact the experience of divorce for families and gain the professional credibility we deserve, we needed to fully step into the world of ADR.
So we made the decision to create our own ADR based divorce coach certification program and with the support of some heavy hitters like Susan Guthrie, we launched our first cohort in March 2023. We're now rolling out new cohorts about every 3 months, we've added specialized certifications program for Australia, New Zealand, the Arabian Gulf, Canada and we're collaborating with others around the world to deliver ADR based divorce coach training that's customized for them.
Community
We're all about community. Every week on the podcast we say that when one succeeds, we all succeed and we mean that with every fiber of our being. We believe in generosity of spirit and that means sharing our time, resources, and expertise with each other.
To foster connection, we publish rosters for each cohort so students can connect after class and we offer mentor groups as well as free networking events. This new website is part of our effort to set us for even more connection. The coach locator provides the ability for everyone to stay in touch and we've added a messaging feature so you can contact us easily. We will be exploring the idea of online community groups too if that's something our coaches would find value in.
Advocacy
We want a seat at the table. Period. We think professional divorce coaching is the key to changing the experience of divorce and co-parenting for families. But we've got some obstacles in our way.
First, there's no one set of standards and no single certifying body so other divorce professionals don't feel confident and don't know who to trust when it comes to divorce coaching. And second, there are a lot of folks out there using the title without the training.
We're making it a priority to hit the road (literally and figuratively) to speak with attorneys, mediators, judges, and others in the divorce professional community to help them understand both the role of a professional divorce coach and how to recognize one that's been properly trained and certified.
The Future
We exist solely to support coaches and the profession. We will continue to pivot, adapt, and introduce new trainings and offerings that meet the needs of our growing and changing community. And you can bet that we will continue use our voices in whatever capacity we can to keep raising awareness and raising the bar.
Thanks for being here.
