Join The SCFM Admin Leadership Tiger Team
Yes, we need your help!
We are a small and growing nonprofit with a noble history of service, well-positioned for an exciting future!!
All positions are currently volunteer-to-hire.
Investments and Investor Relations Director
- If you believe in yourself, you believe in our mission, and you have experience with nonprofit grants and funding, this opportunity is for you! We see every cent donated to support our work as an earnest investment in Peace;
- Grant getting;
- Investor relations ~ Understand the motivations of our Peace Partner Investors & ensure they feel connected to our successes, Involved, and rewarded;
- Investment Management: Keep us on track to meet objectives we have stated in grants.
Email Resume/CV to
Executive Assistant to the Executive/Mediation and Development Directors
- Learn valuable skills while managing nonprofit internal administrative and information systems;
- Internal communications ~ Help keep the team feeling heard, engaged, and motivated;
- Systems support ~ In-person & online events, social media, web systems.
Email Resume/CV to
How to join the scfm Exceptional Panel of Co-Mediators
Step 1: Understand Our Motivation
- There are 30,000 kids in the Los Angeles County Juvenile Justice System. The court system continues to grow. Mediation will be a necessary component of any serious effort to reduce the scale of this crisis.
- Keeping kids in safe homes and out of foster housing is very rewarding, and gives our lives a sense of purpose.
- We have the proven ability to help the most in-need young parents and at-risk kids, when others could not. When co-parents reach us, it means a judge, a social worker, and four attorneys could not help them agree. Nearly 90% of co-parents will successfully create a Parenting Plan Agreement through SCFM mediation.
- Unparalleled personal and professional growth instills confidence in any situation.
- We feel a sense of belonging, as members of an outstanding family-style team achieving excellence together.
- We value living lives of service and intention, and we desire to make the world a little bit better place.
- We believe:
- Conflict can be managed more successfully and less harmfully,
- Productive conflict engagement is a learnable skill set,
- People can change & heal, and
- Mediators are the medicine.
Step 2: Understand Our Commitment
- This is a minimum two year commitment.
- We require one day every week, for the first year. (Vacations, etc. are of course, no problem.)
- Most of our co-mediators serve families online (Zoom) exclusively. Some co-mediate from other states or even other countries. There are opportunities to mediate in person at the Edmund D. Edelman Children's Courthouse, in Monterey Park, CA.
- Our co-mediations can take all day, so while you're likely to finish mid-day, your schedule must be clear from 8:00AM to 4:00PM to mediate.
- We currently co-mediate dependency court cases Tuesdays thru Fridays (and ARC Mediations on Mondays).
- We ask for two years, and we hope you will find a lifetime of meaning and growth serving with our team.
> Currently, all SCFM mediation education is delivered online.
Advanced Family and Dependency Court Mediation (25 & 40)
- Approved by the Judicial Counsel of California (specific content is not necessarily endorsed).
- For those selected to join the SCFM team: An LAC Superior Court security clearance is required (no substitutes).
Dependency Co-Mediation Service, 2-Year Opportunity
Why you'll barely recognize your old self in less than two years -
Family and dependency court co-mediation is not for everyone. It takes knowledge, practice, skill development, patience, compassion, resilience, grit, and commitment.
Some of our mediators have stated that after completing our education program and investing two years co-mediating with our team, other conflicts seem relatively easy.
While dependency mediation is not for everyone, the good news is there are several ways to serve our families.
Who We Serve and How
Mediators Are The Good News!
Dependency Court, Our Families, Mediation
Dependency court - as one parent put it - is "where they take your kids away". In Los Angeles County, in addition to about 65 Family Law courts, there are about 35 "children's courts" (dependency courts). When things go very wrong for parents and children, a petition may be filed for the Court to take jurisdiction of the children.
Whenever children can safely be reunited with their parents, Family Reunification (FR) is the goal of the Court. FR may take up to two years and may include Parenting classes, Anger Management classes, counseling/therapy, and random & on-demand drug and alcohol testing. It's a hard road.
Co-parents share custodial rights and responsibilities for their children but do not live in the same place. Co-parents may exit the court system having regained legal and/or physical custody of their children. Sometimes, a parent may have day visits (no overnights) only, or even supervised visits with their children.
As co-parents exit the system, they are at "peak hate" and they need a visitation plan. We help co-parents agree to their own detailed, customized plan.
Mediated Co-Parenting Visitation Agreements typically including things like: Schedule days and times, visit supervisors, transportation, exchanges, vacations, travel, communications, a holiday schedule, and more.
Here's the Catch
Without SoCal Family Mediation, co-parents may exit the system with no chance to heal, no conversation about what coparenting is going to be like, and no plan for who's going to have what days of the week & holidays, how they will communicate, or even where the exchanges will take place. This drives coparents to frustration, anger, and escalating conflicts.
A Disaster Ready to Happen
The disaster is so many children returning to the system again and again. Every time these poor children's lives are turned upside down, they become more likely to drop out of school, become involved with drugs, and become introduced to the prison system.
Dependency Court Co-Mediators ARE the Cavalry
That's why our work is so important, because there's no one coming to save these young coparents and children if we fail to at least get them to create a written agreement. Having a plan is night and day from the chaos otherwise.
If we can help them understand conflict better, and that their fighting is not so different from what we all feel sometimes, maybe give them a few tools, we can save lives worth living.
And...
And...
For those times when the co-parenting conflict-relationship is transformed, and you hear: "I feel like I can finally breathe again", or "This has undone years of conflict", or "You are the angels who saved my son's life"...
It all comes together, and the co-mediators' lives are equally transformed. That's why.
