WHAT MAKES THIS PARTICULAR MEDIATION PROGRAM SO SPECIAL
Break the cycle of intergenerational recidivism for Families and kids in the LA juvenile courts
Of all the organizations designed to help families through the Los Angeles juvenile court process, we are have the unique mission of keeping families from returning.
Provide Our Own Training
Because no other court-connected program meets our standards of success, we must design and teach our own Child Dependency Mediation training. Our training is taught by our Leadership Team, and experts such as Superior Court Commissioner Marilyn Mordetzky and mediation gurus Ken Cloke & Lee Jay Berman.
USC Partnership
2022 is our 7th year in partnership with the USC Gould School of Law. In the Spring, second and third year law school students, who have completed the prerequisites may co-mediate with our team of expert volunteer mediators.
Provide a Teaching and Learning Environment
We co-mediate, meaning there are two or more mediators leading each mediation. We meet at 7:45am for pre-mediation micro-trainings where we pre-brief the day's mediations. We actively seek constructive feedback from each other, parents, attorneys, judges, and other mediation professionals. We also conduct Lessons Learned debriefings.
Provide Hope & Actionable Solutions
Every conflict can be thought of as a self-contained workshop, because there are the "conflict partners", the presenting issues, the underlying issues, and the solution, which the conflict has wrapped itself around.
This workshop mentality empowers co-parents as they come together to learn about their conflict and learn to how negotiate more successfully & less harmfully. Before they even realize it, parents have created their own agreements.
A lot of little agreements add up to one big agreement!! Maybe even more importantly, parents come away with new perspectives, tools and techniques for dealing with their co-parenting challenges, and they may have agreed for the first time... ever... on anything.
It is commonplace for coparents who have not spoken in months or even years to be seen having lunch together, while attorneys stand mouths agape. This is the reality. We are the good news!