A child inclusive mediation allows for the voices of the children to be heard by engaging a child expert to hear from the children so the children’s views can be taken into account when reaching a parenting agreement.
The children will be separately interviewed by the child expert and their views fed back into to the parents by the expert.
Hearing directly from the children can be powerful and transformative, as it helps parents understand the dispute from the children’s experience and take into account what is important from the children’s perspective. Hearing from the children hopefully allows the parents to adopt a more empathic approach and encourage the parents to move towards positive coparenting relationship and ensure the children’s welfare is the highest priority as the parents learn directly about the impact on the children’s experience of being engaged in ongoing conflict.
Generally, children must be five years or older to successfully be involved in child inclusive mediation.
The child expert’s role is not to undertake an investigative process or gather evidence for a report or to try and determine what should be the outcome of the mediation. The aim is to facilitate the parents understanding of the children’s needs.
For a child inclusive mediation to be successful, both parents need to be open to hear from the children’s perspective and allow the process to transform their otherwise fixed position in relation to the outcome.
Child inclusive mediation is child focused, bringing the children’s voice right into the room. This can be confronting for parents to hear what the children have to say, however the aim is to allow for parties to be persuaded by what they hear and to allow for a solution which is ultimately child focused and more likely to result in a successful parenting outcome.