Retaining our place at the "mediation table"
A recent article in ACResolution Magazine titled "Ensuring a Place at the Table" mentions CMCs are at risk of losing their place at the mediation table because of their overall lack of continuous improvement. The article goes on to mention that CMCs are the most accurate representation of the mediation profession -- most of the remaining practitioners that offer mediation offer settlement conferences instead of true mediation. The article concludes that this leaves CMCs as the trendsetters and primary indicators of the current health and future sustainability of the mediation field. As a CMC, we have to strive to set the bar of mediation practitioners hign and embrace our trendsetting role by continuing to improve our methods, practices, and standards of mediation. If we can continue to do this successfully, we an be sure that in ten years, we will still have an important place at the mediation table.
Kim Hopwood
Training Director
1 comment:
Kim, and other readers,
Up here in Ontario, Canada, we have been worried for some time about keeping, or even getting our places at the tables.
Recently we have set up a coalition of community mediation services across the province to set standards for ourselves for the training of mediation volunteers, and we have agreed to a common definition of community mediation.
We hope these represent steps toward continuous improvement, and give us some things to bring to the tables, if the field finally takes that step into certification or licensing that everyone seems to think is inevitable.
We had a scare last fall, when the government regulated paralegals (and ruined them, some say), and in the legislative language of doing so, put mediators under some obligation to the Law Society of Ontario. We're not happy with that.
We do need to watch closely, that community mediation volunteers and the "ordinary" folks they are don't get excluded from the field by these sorts of "improvements".
Peter Bruer, Manager
Conflict Resolution Service
St. Stephen's Community House
Toronto, Ontario
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