Mediation - Guiding You Through
At Consilia Mediation we can help you and your former partner make arrangements for your children. We also assist with issues as may arise with wider family members including grandparents.
The law relating to where children should live (formerly known as residence or custody) and how often children should see the other parent (formerly known as contact or access) changed in April 2014. Private children matters are now dealt with under the Child Arrangements Programme. A fundamental part of the programme is to explore whether mediation can assist you to make the important decisions in relation to you children whilst allowing you to retain control of those issues rather than handing them over to a Court.
The law states (under the Family Procedure Rules) that you MUST attend a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting (“MIAM”) before any Court proceedings can be issued in relation to arrangements for children, save in exceptional circumstances.
Through the process of family mediation, we can help you to discuss the issues in order to form the basis of a parenting plan for your children and we can help you to improve/maintain a dialogue as parents so that you can parent together into the future.
One of the huge benefits of the mediation process is that we recognise that as parents you are best placed to make decisions regarding your child/children’s care. Our role is to help you to make decisions for the benefit of your family going forward.
The process of family mediation can also involve a child’s voice being heard and in appropriate cases a qualified child consultant can speak to your child and ascertain their wishes and feelings on the important matters which you are discussing. This is known as Child Inclusive Mediation and can only be undertaken by specially trained and accredited family mediators. Head of our mediation team, Laura Clapton is a qualified and experienced child inclusive mediator.
