Fear is the greatest emotion felt by clients engaged in family mediation processes. Pre-mediation meetings help clients ease some of these intense feelings.
A great family mediator seeks to create a safe, fair, confidential, balanced, and neutral environment. Family mediation is a voluntary process of self determination that tries to minimize harm. Pre-mediation meetings are a key step in reducing risks the family mediation process. The mediator’s role is to provide space for difficult conversations— so that they (and the clients) can move from reactive to reflective.
Our mediators follow some key guiding principles during private and confidential pre-mediation intake meetings. These pre-mediation meetings allow the mediator to learn what each party needs in order to design an effective mediation process.
All pre-mediation intake meetings are meant to provide enough information to answer the question: is the proposed dispute resolution process likely to be effective, fair and safe for both parties and their children?
At Riverdale Mediation, our mediators draw on recent research into the dynamics of power and control in intimate partner relationships and use screening tools that have been created and tested to help family law professionals better understand the relationship between the parties and how they, the professionals, can best help their clients.
