WHAT MAKES MEDIATION SO SPECIAL
First: If the People don't decide, it's not mediation.
- Mediation is the only form of Assisted Dispute Engagement (ADE) (mediation, litigation, arbitration) for which volition is a defining virtue.
- Interpersonal skills gained from a voluntary process cannot be learned elsewise.
WHAT MAKES THIS PARTICULAR MEDIATION PROGRAM SO SPECIAL
Highest Family Success (by Agreement) Rates
Year Families Served Family Success
2014 (no data) (no data)
2015 168 79%
2016 238 96%
2017 342 95%
2018 474 97%
2019 632 92%
2020 314 96%
2021 604 88%
2022 492 88%
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 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 Advanced Family and Dependency Court Mediation training. Our training is taught by members of our past & present leadership and experts such as Family Law Court Commissioner Marilyn Mordetzky and mediation gurus Ken Cloke & Lee Jay Berman.
We provide Mediator Continuing Education (MCE) for our team members.
We provide conflict engagement education opportunities for communities, mediators, mediation organizations, attorneys, and professional organizations.
Pan-Advocacy
Multipartiality AKA omnipartiality is a very special kind of neutrality, where mediators actively assist the parties in negotiating their best agreement.
In post-modern mediation, the concept of the "unbiased neutral" gives way to multipartial bias management. We consider our own bias recognition & management to be a measure of our professionalism.
Goal Clarity
In post-modern mediation, we provide clarity that while mediation is often therapeutic, mediation is not therapy. "Moving the ball down the field" or "having a productive conversation, are good, but they are not enough.
Our families (the families we serve) are going to need a written, detailed agreement to function as a roadmap after they have left mediation and the courts.
Therefore, our Definition of Success is: Parties have created their own written agreement detailing issues that would otherwise be most likely to cause them confusion, frustration, and conflict in the future.
USC Partnership
2023 is our 8th 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.
We 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 and conduct Lessons Learned debriefings.
Mediation happens for families, not to families.
Every conflict can be thought of as a self-contained workshop, because it includes 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 realize it, parents have created their own agreements and become the heroes of their own stories for themselves & their children.
A lot of little agreements add up to one big agreement. 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. Mediators are the good news!