Family Mediation

• "My children just don’t understand"
• "My brother refuses to take any responsibility for mom"
• "Why should I be the one to handle all the family affairs"
• "I have no one to talk to"

From resolving sibling disputes to eldercare issues, Family Mediation is an extremely useful model.

The professionals at Mediation and Collaborative Action Group draws on its wide range of experience to assist you in managing complex personal issues. We involve all parties in collaborative-building strategies at the beginning of the process. We feel that the involvement of all parties allows us to define the range of concerns to be addressed. Working together assures that everyone understands one another’s needs and dreams which precipitates future family unity.

Family mediation is not family therapy. It is a short-term process designed to identify concerns and needs in order to reach agreements that address the problem at hand. It is a problem solving process and we can assist all members of a family to sort out existing problems and get to the source of what may be getting in the way.

Our family co-mediation process helps couples achieve a successful divorce as well as, co-parenting, parenting plans, conflict resolutions, divorce mediation, collaborative divorce coaching, transitional issues, blended families, intergenerational misunderstandings. It is important the post-divorce relationship establish a pattern of respectful communication.

• Parenting Planning: However difficult it may be to work on a parenting plan, there is one undeniable truth: you the parents are the only people who know your children, their needs, and the ability of each parent to meet those needs. By working together to make a plan that fits both your lives, you avoid the court’s cookie-cutter solutions. Statistics show that parents who prepare a plan jointly are more likely to comply with it than id a plan is imposed upon them by a judge who doesn’t know anything about the family.
• Family Planning: The family works with a trained specialist to determine what services will be helpful to both the parent and the children. Often at different points in coping with loss and change, different kinds of counseling is necessary. Family counseling is suggested which gives everyone in the family support they need to cope on the present and work towards the future.
• Couple Counseling, Custody, Divorce, Co-Parenting, Step-parenting, Parenting Coordination: Children may develop behavioral difficulties during the divorce process that were not present prior to the divorce (social withdrawal, oppositional behavior, decreased school performance, bullying). We are trained to help identify and provide strategies to parents to help mediate these situations.
• Elder Mediation: If family members are unable or unwilling to sit down together to discuss an aging parent but feel that decisions need to be made, then mediation can help facilitate these critical decisions ensuring they are not made by the courts but by the parties who know the elderly family members best.
• Marital Mediation: Marital Mediation is a growing area of mediation designed to help couples stay married or if they are not married to stay living together. Marital Mediation is a series of guided negotiations in which couples are guided to craft concrete, practical solutions to issues troubling their relationship. Couples create explicit guidelines of which they both agree to resolve areas of conflict and are taught communication skills – improving their ability to negotiate constructively in the future. Underlying issues are identified, interventions are developed and agreements couples can live with are reached.