 |
|
MEDIATION APPROACH
Mediation and Baltimore Mediation’s Transformative
Approach
WHAT IS MEDIATION?
Mediation is a voluntary and confidential process that uses an impartial
third person, the mediator, to facilitate meaningful conversation between
two or more people about difficult issues. The goal is to help people
constructively engage in conflict and make informed and thoughtful decisions.
The mediator does not offer legal, financial or psychological advice,
nor does a mediator tell parties what to do. Instead, the mediator invites
the parties to speak about their concerns, helps them to hear information
and each other in new ways, provides legal, financial, and other general
information when requested to be considered and checked out as the parties
see fit, and drafts written summaries or agreements as made.
For couples, mediation can be used to sort out the details and make decisions
about legal, financial, and emotional issues surrounding a separation
or a divorce. Couples and families struggling through difficult times
also use this type of mediation to stay together, as do families facing
complex issues who need a third party neutral to facilitate quality interaction
and decision making. Mediation often saves parties both time and money
and, most importantly, it allows parties themselves to retain control
over the process as well as the outcomes, including terms of agreement.
This is a transformative approach to
mediation which Baltimore Mediation mediators practice and have helped
to develop nationwide.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF FAMILY MEDIATION FROM THIS APPROACH?
- Fosters a higher quality of interaction and experience with the other
person
- Allows more meaningful possibilities and requests to be made because
of the benefit of a third party neutral facilitator
- Promotes thorough and informed decision making
- Restores personal integrity
- Promotes communication and clarity
- Benefits children and others by reducing conflict
- Promotes cooperation or respected boundaries for parents
- Allows people to control the decisions that affect their lives
- Is less costly than litigation
- Is more satisfying than litigation or avoidance
- Is private and confidential, avoiding public disclosure of personal
matters*
- Can often be completed in less time than litigation, so parties can
move ahead with their lives
*There are limits to confidentiality in situations with abuse or violence.
HOW DOES FAMILY MEDIATION WORK?
Mediators of Louise Phipps Senft & Associates/Baltimore Mediation
help people identify the issues they want to discuss from the past, present
and future and, where necessary, to gather relevant information for quality
financial and property decision making such as budgets, business records,
tax returns, property valuations, prices and costs of alternate places
to live or work, mental health information and financial, legal or other
guidance from any outside sources chosen. If the participants wish to
have their decisions or agreements summarized in written form, the mediator
will draft this. In the event of a decision to separate or divorce, the
mediator will also prepare a Voluntary Separation and Property Settlement
Agreement, if so chosen.
ARE THERE DIFFERENT MEDIATION STYLES AND APPROACHES?
Yes, there are a variety of mediation styles and approaches. Some mediators
are more oriented toward helping parties to communicate and clarify their
issues and priorities. Others are more oriented toward helping parties
reach agreements. Assuming the latter approach includes helping parties
reach informed and workable agreements that may be unique for each family,
the Mediators of Louise Phipps Senft & Associates/Baltimore Mediation
are interested in both. This is what is called a "Transformative
Approach." Our Mediators believe in promoting quality interaction
which will bring about fair, responsive and satisfying decisions and agreements.
Louise Phipps Senft is nationally known as a pioneer of the transformative
approach to mediation and has helped bring the approach to families, courts
and the practice of law. Baltimore Mediation mediators believe in and
offer a Better Process…Better Outcome.
ARE LPS MEDIATORS CERTIFIED OR QUALIFIED FAMILY MEDIATORS?
Yes. Louise Phipps Senft and Baltimore Mediation are elected members of
the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation (ISCT), and Louise
Phipps Senft is also certified as a Transformative Mediator™ and
as a Transformative Mediation Trainer by the Institute for the Study of
Conflict Transformation (www.transformativemediation.org).
Mediators of Louise Phipps Senft & Associates/Baltimore Mediation
are also certified by the Maryland Council on Dispute Resolution (MCDR),
a Maryland state practitioner organization, and one of the first to develop
and implement a performance-based measure of competence (www.mcdr.org).
Louise Phipps Senft is also one of a few hundred Advanced Practitioner
(AP) members of the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR), Family
Section, which is a nonprofit professional association with more than
6000 members in the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, Australia
and Africa. ACR provides support, training and guidance for practicing
mediators and information about mediation for the public. The ACR Family
Section has established training and ethical standards for professional
mediation practice of which Louise Phipps Senft has played an integral
role over the years, and ACR also provides a referral service for Advanced
Practitioner (AP) family mediators (www.mediate.com/acrfamily).
|
