Armed with coloured paper, crayons and scissors, myself and nine other mediators spent a good portion of last Friday designing our “ideal” family conflict resolution service. While the background to this was, in part, recent and pending legislative change in the UK, some of which looks likely to impact negatively on families in conflict, these particular family mediators are not easily deterred, and our creativity was in full flow. For my part, I thought about the families I work with – all going through the process of separation, divorce or similar changes, but all different. I thought about the teenage son who, unable to cope with what was happening, dropped out of school and turned to drugs. To the husband whose decision-making was overshadowed by the fear he would not survive the cancer for which he was being treated. To the parents struggling to agree a parenting plan while fearing the implications of one parent’s on-going battle with depression. And, of course, to those many couples who are tied together, despite their efforts, by negative equity and inflexible mortgage companies.

You see where I’m going with this, of course. To effectively manage such situations we need more than just lawyers, or mediators, or therapists. Most professionals working with families, and even to a certain extent policy makers, would agree that there is no one suitable solution to, or intervention in family conflict that can be offered or made, nor can one profession meet all the needs of such families.

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Tags: family conflict, family conflict resolution service, family mediators, Managing Family Conflict