We had a great year at Riverdale, and are looking forward to the next.
We were joined by our amazing resource/admin person, Heather Glen, who quickly became an indispensable member of the team.
And we undertook to implement and manage the new court connected family mediation program at Toronto’s Superior Court of Justice, mediate393..
This project has been a resounding success in its first few months of operation. We are providing free (yes, free) mediation on-site in the Family Law Information Centre on the 9th floor. The mediators– all accredited and experienced, some lawyers and others mental health professionals– meet with clients who are in court that day for two hours to try to help them resolve urgent or limited matters. We have found that this service is a great assistance to the parties and to the court.
For those cases that need more than two hours, or are too complex to begin on-site, there is off-site mediation. This remarkable service is available to anyone in the GTA and gives them free intake meetings and then up to six hours of mediation at subsidized rates but accredited mediators.
Although the mediate393 project has kept us busy, we have also had a full teaching year, training over a hundred students of mediation, family law, screening for power imbalances and family arbitration. Our training has taken us to places as far as away as Nunavut!
We have received much positive feedback from our clients and our students. And we have learned much too; from our teaching colleagues but also from our clients.
And so we hope to keep learning in the new year, and thank all our clients for their support.
