Category Archives: Mediation and Negotiation

In late September, the Family Mediators’ Association of the Cape (FAMAC) hosted its third bi-annual conference and I was honoured to be a returning international guest speaker. This year I spoke on “Empowering Parents Through Interest-Based Mediation and Facilitative Parenting Coordination”.   (Note: all the conference presentations are available on the FAMAC website) The Conference was opened by my wonderful …
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When is family mediation appropriate? Mediation is probably appropriate when all/most of the following conditions exist: The parties appear to both be willing to try mediation in order to find an acceptable settlement. Each party is able to articulate to the mediator his or her own positions and the reasons behind those positions. Both advise that they feel they will be …
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If there are three qualities that distinguish a good mediator from a great one, they are: Dangerous curiosity: great mediators are not afraid to follow their curiosity. This takes high level questioning skills to do effectively. In particular it requires gentle, non- judgmental, open-ended questions. Genuine curiosity is easy but it requires the mediator to completely set aside any preconceived …
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GUEST POST By Helen Lightstone and Regina Thompson Our team of elite trainers from Riverdale headed for Belize before the break of dawn on Sunday, July 15, 2018. The Belize Team consisting of Hilary Linton, Lead Trainer, Helen Lightstone and Regina Thompson checked in at Pearson International with a heavy load of training materials. We were soon off to Miami …
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On July 15th, the Riverdale Impact Justice Barbados team touched down in beautiful Bridgetown to commence a full week of training for faculty and staff of the University of the West Indies (UWI), and its numerous Open Campuses across the Caribbean.  Despite an initial set-back involving one of our teaching team’s inbound flight to Bridgetown, our team consisting of Daniella …
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Family arbitration is a very different process from mediation, and yet they are often confused. Arbitration is a process whereby the parties present their version of the story before a privately-retained arbitrator, often a senior family lawyer, who hears the evidence, applies the law and makes a binding decision. Family arbitration is therefore, more like court than it is like …
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Best practices for screening family mediation and arbitration cases for power imbalances and domestic violence. MORE

As mental health and family law professionals we know that every family we work with is unique. We also know that families are incredibly complex and dynamic systems… How we understand and respond to a family’s uniqueness informs our mediations and other ADR processes at every stage – from intake to completion. Developing and expanding on our skills of analysis …
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