Welcome to another Monday morning, the grey pin-striped don of the days of the week, and to try to shake off those charcoal blues, we’ve got a question for you that also includes a poll. Not poll tax, or pole dancing, or even the North Pole (way more fun, but a little chilly), but a survey kind of poll, for your Monday morning musing.
This week’s question focuses on the government’s relentless quest to initiate compulsory mediation at best and at worst, to encourage parents to use mediation processes, but it’s all gone rather pear-shaped, as figures show that mediation isn’t being taken up by parents suffering with marital breakdown and separation. Solicitors and judges are being blamed for the lack of up take and some data suggests that where mediation does take place, parents settle out of court and the number of applications to court drops. But what do you think?
So our question to you this week, is just this: Do you think mediation can ever work as between couples in conflict?
Researching Reform 
All, Mediation will only work when the law provides an ‘level playing field’ for both parties. Yon cannot mediate against a background in which the Chairman of the Justice Committee makes a comment on Woman’s Hour, ‘You do no good if you put, for example, a woman in prison for persistent failure to obey court orders’ (24 January 2013). In Australia mediation is working because both parties know that the courts do not favour one side or the other because they have Shared Parenting legislation. As a result litigation is decreasing. kip
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Mediation is literally new. It will definately have a bad time of it because Mediation between social workers and FAMILIES = No court = No lawyers.
Please note the deliberate lower case. ,
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Mediation is unlikely to work to optimal effect in the absence of an understanding either of what sort of settlement is reasonable or of what sort of settlement the Courts are liable to impose.
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No one, it would seem, can fault the principle of mediation. But does it actually work in practice?
Last year, Professor Janet Walker, of the Newcastle Centre for Family Studies, announced the findings of a research study following up on couples who had participated in pilot mediation schemes in 1996. These amount to a cautionary tale for the government. Nineteen per cent of the people who had attended mediation were dissatisfied with the process and a further 19 per cent “very dissatisfied”. Most participants in the pilots, the report concluded: “…did not feel that attending mediation had helped to make a divorce less stressful, or that it had helped them to improve communication, share decision-making about parenting, reduce conflict, or avoid going to court. Even those who did reach agreements were not all convinced that they had benefited in other ways from going to mediation.”
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Hi David, thank you for your posts. I think the central problem with mediation as it’s being touted by government today is that it does not take into account the fact that separating couples cannot be treated like business partners. The communication is far more complex and mediation in its current form just can’t come through in its current model.
To my mind, mediation sessions are really futile, unless the mediators are trained to deal with people experiencing family breakdown. In reality, that may mean that mediators really need to be counsellors, too.
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Lord Irvine said in December 2000 that Mediation does not work
This was the conclusion of the three year research report set up by the Lord Chancellor’s Department to study the Legal Services Commission’s family mediation pilot completed in December 2000 – Yet one of the main recommendations of the report on ‘Making Contact Work’ to the Lord Chancellor in February 2002 is the use of mediation.
It goes on to say “Mediation may prove to be a cost-effective option in resolving some disputes, at a particular point. It can only achieve this where both parties commit themselves to the process. In other circumstances mediation is likely to prove an additional cost”.
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Timpson was asked during the second reading of the Children and Families Bill today who is going to mediate & what qualification would they be expected to have but he didn’t answer the question. I think’ mediation will only ever work, if the resident parent’ is willing to agree.
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