Peace is the foundation for all philanthropy. It is time to support peace.
2021
January 2021, Phase III
By now, our Lessons Learned are extensive. Our distance mediation process is showing signs of maturity. We are not liking having to take time away from the families for fundraising, but our expenses are up.
2020
When they needed us most, SCFM was the only court-connected mediation program providing distance mediation services for families.
2019
First-Ever: L.A. County Children's Courts All Hands Mediation Training
January 11, at California State University Los Angeles - Mediation leadership, accompanied by Ken Cloke address all 450 dependency attorneys and judicial officers.
Ken Cloke: “This is one of the premier mediation programs in the world. And nothing less than the lives of children are at stake.”
First-Ever: L.A. County Children's Court 'Settlement Day'
Mediators staff all of the courtrooms at the Edelman Children's Courthouse.
USC Students Return
January through April - Our partnership with USC Law School, educating the next generation of great peacemakers continues. Students are trained to co-mediate with volunteer mediators.
Agreement with the Court
Our new agreement with the Court formalizes our relationship, and offers additional support and guidance.
2018
- SoCal’s elite team has grown to 30 Volunteer Mediators.
- January / April – The USC partnership is going strong.
- Four Mediators from our inaugural class were promoted to Supervising Mediators. Congratulations and Thank You to Supervising Mediators: Marvin Whistler, Alik Segal, Leyla Balakhane, and Maria Brinson-Sampson.
- Victoria Gray has joined Ken Cloke, Lisa Klerman, and Jack Goetz on our esteemed Advisory Board.
- We are now serving all 25 Los Angeles County Dependency courtrooms, at both the Edmund D. Edelman Children's Courthouse in Monterey Park, and the Alfred J. McCourtney Juvenile Justice Center in the Antelope Valley.
- Our federal nonprofit application was filed and we are waiting.
- This was our first year to receive grants and donations.
2017
- In 2017, SoCal’s elite team of seven mediators served 342 coparents & guardians, and helped 326 of them create agreements (95.3%).
- January / April - Our second year partnering with USC, where students co-mediate with volunteer mediators.
- We began mediating ‘Open Cases’ for when coparents are not yet exiting the dependency system but need help creating a temporary parenting plan.
- We also added Contested Adoptions to our service offerings. Contested Adoption mediations are both technically and emotionally challenging, sometimes taking two or more days to resolve. We mediated 12 contested adoptions, and achieved 12 agreements.
- October / December - 11 new Volunteer Mediators, Lynette Kim, Aaron Larks Stanford, Candace Jones, Essie Martinkovsky, Jean Kling, Leslie Kushner, Milan Slama, Nellie Tillman, Pam Perry, Sarah English, and Ted Andrews completed the 2nd annual Child Dependency Mediation Training, 72 hours. Congratulations and welcome!
- November - We began conducting ‘front end’ mediations, and the “Mediated Settlement Conference” was born. These are mediations, between co-parents, or between parents and L. A. County & social workers. For the first time, conflict specialists have opportunities to mediate a parent’s journey through the juvenile justice system from beginning to end.
2016
- We mediated for 238 coparents & guardians, and helped 228 of them create agreements (95.8%).
- January - Commissioner Mordetzky and Lisa Klerman established our USC partnership, whereby qualifying law school students studying with Professor Mordetzky co-mediate with Senior Volunteer Mediators.
- March - We became ‘Southern California Family Mediation’, a California corporation.
- Midyear - We established SCFM’s online presence, and launched our self-service, online appointment-booking system for the courtrooms and attorneys.
- October - We opened up the program to additional volunteer mediators. Our inaugural class of Mediators, Marvin Whistler, Victoria Gray, Maria Brinson-Sampson, Alik Segal, and Leyla Balakhane, completed 55 hours of combined classroom and practical training.
- November - Foster Care Counts became our pro-bono fiscal sponsor.
2015
Our first full year; and the three of us mediated about 100 cases, before Commissioner Mordetzky returned to the bench full-time.
As the first transformation-based, court-connected mediation program created by mediators, every system was innovated to maximize benefits and results. It became clear that every child and every co-parent could benefit from the creation of their own detailed, self-designed parenting plan.
Our close relationship with the courts allowed us to create a the stipulated co-parenting plan model, which avoided the need for parents to miss additional days of work, and the kids additional school days in order to properly close their cases.
A Supervising Attorney for the Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers remarked, “In all my years as a dependency lawyer, I have never seen that before."
2014
August - Following devastating budget cuts, which forced the closure of 48 courthouses and eliminated the California Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Children's Court’s Mediation program, and faced with devastating recidivism, Commissioner (then, Referee) Mordetzky took it upon herself to establish a new dependency mediation program.
In October of 2014, Mediators Randy Drew and Stacey Lisk were recruited by Commissioner Mordetzky. More detailed and lasting Exit Orders are important, because they help reduce conflict between co-parents, and better agreements keep parents & children from returning to the court system.