Giving Children a Voice with Child-Inclusive Mediation

Giving Children a Voice in the Separation Conversation

Most parents we work with want to do their best by their children.  But many are also touched by the fear of unknown solutions bubbling up that they cannot control and becoming set in stone.  This is quite natural, but child arrangements do not need to be rigid. Parents who are doing the best job they can allow for arrangements to flex or evolve as time passes, their children’s needs change and the hard edges of family life push things one way or another.

Child-Inclusive Mediation

Parents who are trying to do the best for their children, will therefore often be willing to take a turn down the corridor marked “child inclusive” where a mediator (I am one of three at FLiP offering this work alongside Dominic Raeside and Ruth Smallacombe) who is trained to work with children, will sit with their child(ren) to see how things are going for them. It is worth noting that it is a chat not an interview and:

• These conversations are not to ask the enormous binary questions that parents are unable to decide such as relocating to France;
• But children can and do share ideas about what they really like in the day-to-day arrangements and what might change to make things go even better.
• These are the things that the mediator then shares back with the parents where the children decide to do this and that the parents will want to encompass in their discussions.

How does Child-Inclusive Mediation Help Families?

These chats with a child-inclusive mediator are helpful because, in my experience of meeting parents as a mediator over the last 35 years, everyone struggles when the family evolves and has to address changes.  So, often I see children worrying about their parents and desperately wanting to avoid making hard things harder.  They don’t necessarily have the life skills to know how to manage things for the best and so they may stay quiet or tell each parent what they think that parent wants to hear. Meanwhile the parents, with (usually) too much on their plates already, are trying to do their best but are likely to struggle to hear the messages the children might be giving as clearly or well as they usually would.

That is why “child inclusive mediation” can be so helpful:

• It gives the child an outlet – a place for a friendly chat where they feel supported
• Generally children will work out messages that they want to share with their parents through the mediator
• The child’s voice is likely to anchor the parents’ discussions and help them to focus around the needs of their child(ren)
• And generally, parents make better decisions about their children as a result – and they are decisions that bed in with the family more quickly because the child(ren) have pointed the discussions in this direction.

Making Decisions about Children

A recent initiative recognises the value of this work and sees the child inclusive corridor opening up across all process approaches, not just mediation.  That can only be a good thing as:

• If we recognise that people should be consulted about the decisions that affect them; and
• If Dr Seuss was possibly onto something when he said ‘a person’s a person no matter how small’*

then why would we not want to have that view and voice in the mix, even when the decisions are ultimately taken by the parents?

(*In fact, child inclusive is usually only for children aged 10 or over and children under 10 would be seen only as part of a sibling group.)

More on Child-Inclusive Mediation and the Alternatives

My colleague, Dominic Raeside, was involved in developing the code of conduct for child inclusive mediation.  In this video, he explains what is involved in more detail and compares it to the alternative, which is usually for children to be interviewed by a CAFCASS officer from the Court: