About Mediation

What is Mediation?

In mediation, an independent person helps you to reach an understanding with someone you find it hard to talk to when you have a dispute. Mediation offers a safe place to discuss the problems, and a step-by-step approach in which feelings are explored and listened to. No one is forced to take part, and both sides are treated equally. The mediators help you to communicate, to search for common ground and to focus on the future, not the past, so you work towards a solution that everyone can accept. No one decides the result except you, the people involved.

  • Mediation is voluntary: Nobody is forced to take part in mediation.
  • Mediation is confidential: Anything you say to a mediator is confidential. They won't pass it on to the other side unless you say so. They won’t tell anyone else what happens in the mediation. Due to this confidentiality, everyone can be honest and open up more. Trusting the process, you are more likely to produce your own solutions.
  • Mediation is safe: The mediators manage the situation and set ground rules to promote a constructive conversation in a safe environment.
  • Mediation can handle difficult issues: Mediation allows difficult issues and strong feelings to be explored so each person can acknowledge the other's point of view. The mediators help you work through these feelings.
  • Mediation looks to the future: Mediation helps everyone involved to find a new way of living or working together.
  • Mediation works: Mediation produces outcomes that you have found for yourselves and agree to. The process is empowering and the solution is more sustainable than one forced upon you.

Last year 80% of our mediated community cases reached an agreement

What types of disputes are mediated?

CALM deals with disputes involving:

  • Neighbours
  • work relationships
  • family relationships
  • offender/victim
  • two or more sides
  • any situation where each side is willing to mediate and an informal solution is possible

How mediation works?

CALM’s mediation has two stages.

  • Stage 1: Pre-mediation – individual meeting
    • Two mediators meet you, privately, to listen to what has been happening.
    • The mediators ask how you would like to see things improved.
    • CALM offers you a meeting with your neighbour and two mediators, somewhere neutral.
  • Stage 2: Mediation – joint meeting
    • You meet your neighbour, with the two mediators, and have a discussion. Your aim is to reach an agreement on how you will both improve your situation.
    • We make a follow-up call within 6 weeks.

What does the Mediator do?

The mediator is there to support positive, constructive communication, allowing feelings to be aired, concerns addressed and misunderstandings cleared up.

Mediators do not take sides, prove anyone’s guilt or innocence, or give an opinion.

You decide the terms of any agreement reached, which aims to improve the future for everyone involved.

The agreement is not legally binding but relies on the goodwill of everyone who has agreed to it.

Why does Mediation Work?

  • Mediation enables the people involved in a dispute to come up with a practical solution that will benefit all of them.
  • Mediation offers a safe, supportive structure for people to have their say.
  • Mediation lets people hear other points of view and know that theirs is being heard too.
  • Mediation lets people take control of their problems, face their own difficulties and solve them.
  • Mediation tackles problems directly.
  • Mediation can be used at any stage in a disagreement (the earlier the better). It can stop problems escalating and getting worse.
  • Mediation clears up misunderstandings and helps people look to the future.
  • Mediation promotes community cohesion, because it is voluntary.
  • Mediation allows people to rebuild relationships.
  • Mediation offers an alternative to formal proceedings involving the police, Environmental Services or court action.
  • Mediation is faster and cheaper than other options.