Reasons to be (more) cheerful: the outlook for mediation in lockdown

I’ve been gauging family mediators’ perspectives on the current state of play for our profession this past week.

It’s evident there has been a shift in outlook since I wrote my last Family Law article. Then I outlined the transitions mediators had been making in order to continue delivering their services praising the spirit of collaboration that was developing between family law professionals.

That spirit remains and indeed has strengthened yet the difference is that as I write this there is a genuine sense of cautious optimism for the future of family mediation. Let me outline three reasons for this:

Firstly mediators and support staff have now broken through the initial pains of having to delivering services in a different way. Some of these difficulties were technological couple by a resistance to change that is perfectly natural in a work setting. Others related to the challenges of balancing homeworking with myriad other domestic responsibilities.

Whilst it’s true these are no different from the ones experienced by workers up and down the country I’m sure that mediators in our...

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