11 April 2017

Integrative Mediation training, May 11-12, 2017 in Vancouver, BC

The Collaborative Divorce Vancouver Society is sponsoring the first Canadian training session on Integrative Mediation on May 11 and May 12, 2017 in Vancouver, BC.   

Integrative Mediation is a form of interdisciplinary co-mediation in which all aspects of a dispute — legal, emotional and financial — are addressed, enabling participants to resolve conflicts efficiently and reach deeper levels of resolution, healing and closure. Lawyers, mental health professionals, financial consultants and mediators with other professional backgrounds will learn to work together effectively to help clients reach enduring and mutually-satisfying resolutions.

Learn and practice this model from the initial client contact to the final resolution of the case, using realistic scenarios tailored to the needs of the training participants. Thursday will be the introductory, nuts-and-bolts training, and Friday will be an intermediate and advanced training, building on basic training.

The course has been approved by the Law Society of British Columbia for 13 hours of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits and for the Law Society's mediation accreditation and qualifying credits, for BC lawyers seeking to become certified as family law mediators.  The course has also been approved for MediateBC's required CPD credits and the BC Collaborative Roster Society's qualifying and annual CPD credits.

The registration form and additional information can be found on the Collaborative Divorce Vancouver's website.  The deadline for registering is April 28, 2017. 

In this two-day course, you will learn how to:
  • work effectively with other professionals in a seamless and integrated manner
  • reframe dispute resolution as a legal, psychological and emotional process
  • cut through impasse and bring meaningful resolution, healing and closure to your clients by getting to the heart of any dispute
  • improve your dispute resolution skills in all kinds of cases you practice, whether IM, solo mediation, arbitration, med-arb, or Collaborative
  • adapt your already existing skills to a new, carefully structured paradigm
  • recognize and work with emotional and psychological issues that are often conflated with positions in legal disputes
  • MPHs: apply clinical skills in a non-clinical, dispute resolution context, and learn how to differentiate clinical skills from psychologically-related mediation skills
  • assess suitability of participants
  • increase self-awareness of participants, maximizing their capacity for meaningful involvement
  • develop capacity of MHPs acting as neutral dispute resolution professionals to remain open, unguarded and empathic when working with individuals in varying states of vulnerability and crisis
  • practice skills working with professionals from other disciplines




"Interdisciplinary Settlement Conference (ISC) 

Marin Superior Court has implemented an innovative and effective program called the Interdisciplinary Settlement Program, designed to better meet the needs of families in high conflict custody matters. Once a party has filed a request for a child custody order and at the request of either party the court may set an Interdisciplinary Settlement Conference (ISC). This is a judicially supervised proceeding in which a volunteer mental health professional and a volunteer family law attorney work together with a judicial officer to help parents resolve custody disputes. The goal is to reach agreement by defusing hostility, initiating better communication and cooperation, and offering research-based information about the developmental needs of children. Self represented litigants should contact the Family Court Facilitator to obtain information and forms to file requests for order and an ISC."