How Does Community Mediation Work?

Home » Mediation » How Does Community Mediation Work?

How Does Community Mediation Work?

Mediation services can help you sort out disputes in different ways. Often they will simply provide good suggestions for ways you can sort things out yourself – ideas about how best to talk to your neighbour, what you should say and how you should say it. Most of the conflicts mediation services get involved with can be resolved in this way.

Sometimes an approach like this is not enough or isn’t the best way forward. In these situations mediation services will arrange to meet you to discuss things. With your agreement they will then do the same thing with your neighbour.

After the mediators have heard what you want to happen and what your neighbour wants to happen they will usually bring you together in a Mediation Meeting. These meetings are organised so that everyone has a chance to put across their view, and it is the job of the mediators to ensure everything goes smoothly. Nine out of ten mediation meetings are successful with neighbours working out a solution they can both agree on. If things don’t end in agreement you are always free to try other ways to resolve the issue such as going to a lawyer.

If there are special reasons why people can’t meet in person, we can also sometimes arrange to help resolve a dispute without a meeting, through a technique called shuttle mediation. 

Community Mediation has been around for a long time and has a really good track record It is free and private, and it is up to you whether you use it or not. Give it a try!