It's Not You, It's Me-diation: the Dim View from Across the Pond
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Thanks to Diane Levin of The Mediation Channel for passing along Six things I'd Change about Mediation from the U.K.'s Mediator Magazine.
At present, if the total number of civil mediations were shared out evenly among accredited mediators, on average, mediators would manage fewer than one mediation a year.
Astonishingly, there are now half as many mediators as there are independent barristers in the UK. Even so, training organisations proliferate - and are encouraged to do so - and more mediators are accredited each week.Let's be clear: this is a scandal.
If 3% of trained and accredited mediators get any work as a mediator, I'd be surprised. The excuse that training mediators is a good way to spread the word about mediation, to my mind, stinks. Ripping off everyone who shows an interest in mediation - it hardly needs saying - is no way to grow the market. This brings me to the third thing I'd change: we must accept that there is no connection between training mediators in greater numbers and the throughput of cases in greater numbers.
As a post-script to that point, I should add that some organisations have already changed tack. Faced with the moral dilemma of taking money and delivering absolutely nothing, or ceasing to train until demand has risen to merit it, some organisations have a new wheeze. This is mediation as - and I quote - "a life skill." Life skills, in my view, belong to the fashionable genre of self-help and bring mediation into the orbit of New Age spirituality, bioelectric shields, energy cocoons and magic crystals. I find the life skill argument disingenuous and mildly embarrassing. This is a direction from which mediation should turn sharply away.Read entire article. Rinse. Repeat. Comment here.
Comments (1)
Read through and enter the discussion by using the form at the endDiane Levin - November 4, 2009 12:24 PM
Vickie, thanks kindly for the link to my blog - I'm glad you found this article as interesting as I did. This was exactly the point in the article that I found most provocative and that rang with the greatest truth - fully audible even across the mighty Atlantic.
The other dirty little secret of mediation training (and I say this as a mediation trainer myself) is that the 20 or 30 or 40 hours that make up most basic mediation trainings are grossly inadequate to prepare anyone to mediate competently. In what other profession are 40 hours of training deemed sufficient for producing qualified service providers - professionals who are supposed to be helping others with vexingly complex interpersonal problems and sensitive issues? Go ahead, name one.
Add to that the problem that mediation training programs, like mediators themselves, are virtually unregulated. Some are terrific; others are crap. Yet these programs continue to churn out mediators like so much sausage (and a closer inspection may cost you your appetite - although it's certainly increased mine for public regulation of the private practice of mediation).
This article from Britain states the problem baldly, but there's just no sugarcoating it. Houston - and Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and everywhere else in the U.S. - we've got a problem.
Vickie, thanks again. Another great post, as always.