UK College of Mediators changes name

The UK College of Family Mediators is now the College of Mediators

Tel: 0117 9047223

Web: www.collegeofmediators.com

Email: mailto:admin@collegeofmediators.com

UK College of Family Mediators changes its name

Following on from my last post on mediation, the UK College of Family Mediators has changed its name to the College of Mediators. The College plans to widen its membership to include mediators from other fields and aims to build on its experience of the last ten years in family mediation to support good practice and to promote the mediation arena generally. For more information see: www.ukcfm.co.uk

What should you look out for in a family mediator?

Picking up on other posts about the need to check out expert qualifications Are the Experts Expert?) (and see Chris Mc Watter’s article on Using the Web to Find an Expert), I also agree with the post on mediation on Divorce Solicitor’s blog that it can be difficult to know what to look for in this fairly unregulated area. I also wonder if one of the problems with in-court conciliation (see earlier post) is that those doing mediation work are not mediation trained. There are, however, things to look out for in evaluating the expertise of a mediator.

Anyone can practice as a private family law mediator and can have gone on any course by any provider (or indeed none at all). Mediators may also be qualified as lawyers, social workers or counsellors but this is not compulsory. The lack of regulation of mediators is not satisfactory as the quality of mediators in the private field varies from excellent to poor and is not regulated by a core professional body. However, in order to take on public funded cases they have to be approved to the LSC standard which is usually done by the following route. Mediators undertake a foundation mediation course by a provider accredited by the UK College of Family Mediators. There are five providers who run family mediation courses to the standards of the UK College of Family Mediators. These are National Family Mediation (NFM), Resolution, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), Hertfordshire Family Mediation and Key Mediation.

The foundation course usually contains five modules taken over the course of a year. The trainee must then complete a period of supervision taking cases from induction through to agreement and writing a portfolio relating core criteria to evidence from cases. On satisfactory completion of a portfolio it will be signed off by the supervisor and sent to the UK College of Family Mediators to be assessed. If passed, the mediator is deemed suitably qualified to undertake public funded mediations by the LSC. College membership, assessment and continuing professional development is specified as a requirement (except for members of the equivalent Law Society family mediation group) by the Legal Services Commission for family mediators who wish to work with publicly funded clients in England and Wales.

Therefore mediators accredited by the UK College of Family Mediators or who have completed a mediation course with one of the UK College’s approved providers and/or those who take on LSC mediations have been trained well. This does not mean that they are all excellent mediators nor that mediators without college approval do not do a good job but it is at least an assurance of a standard of basic and ongoing training and accreditation.

In-court conciliation: not quite a roaring success?

New research by Liz Trinder & Joanne Kellett from UEA shows that 40% of agreements reached at court through Cafcass & similar intervention needed further litigation. For further comment see this piece on Community Care . Conciliation does seem at least to ensure that contact happens but this report suggests there is still a long way to go. I trust the researchers will now do some work in which they identify the reasons for their conclusions. It clearly could not possibly imply any superiority in court based contact resolution, could it?