mediation update

[Zoe Girl]

So I did my first co-mediation last night, it was okay. I see so many opportunities to learn here. This one was a family issue between siblings and although we got to some working agreement family stuff is never quite that simple. One thing is that the other mediator started it off and I feel there was a different way to do that. There is an agreement we sign that says the content of the mediation is confidential and some other important things. She had the parties read it, that was fine. But I think I would rather have talked them through it more casually and set the tone for the mediation since it was not a legal issue. In my training we had to do an opening statement, not sure if the different type of mediation was the reason she didn't. I realized at the end it would be easy for the siblings to continue the talking about the issue to others which would affect the agreement, and so I did say that what was shared was confidential unless they both agreed they could talk about parts of it. Obviously the agreement we wrote is open to whoever needs to know.

I am on another case coming up in the educational system. I am pretty excited because the volunteer mediation service I work with wants to expand into that area, and I have the strengths there. I can't talk about cases but I can talk about the mediation process. I think I can bring in my expertise, however I did have expertise in the sibling case that ended up not being part of the conversation at all.