Mediation and Local Knowledge - A Note From the Director

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Over the last few weeks, CRJI workers and voluntary practitioners have been involved in delivering mediation services within the community. This dialogue process is a key method for solving many different types of community disputes and it’s great to be present during the sessions.

The value of having the mediation facilitated by local people is huge. People from the community who are in dispute are often unsure of the process they are about to embark on and having someone known to them or known in the community for this type of work is settling.

Many people have concerns about mediation, such as who are the mediators? How does it work? Will it work and concerns for their own safety. This is were the local practitioner comes into their own as they very often have some sort of relationship with the clients, either directly or indirectly and are able to put their concerns in context. Of course the major focus for participants in pre mediation meetings is the constant questions about the “other side”. This for an experienced mediator opens the door for discussion and being able to begin the process of building confidence. The questions often fired at mediators are indeed in reality the questions that each party need to be asking within the framework of mediation, once the parties begin to grasp this they start to warm to the whole idea of sitting down together.

Over the years I have had the privilege of facilitating mediations across Belfast and wider afield. In each occasion I have been impressed at the dignity that people display, particularly those who have been clearly harmed. The process has always given me something, new learning, new insights, better understanding of people and a renewal in the capacity of people to repair and restore their own issues. It is really something to witness people having entered the mediation room as adversaries and leave not necessarily as friends but having achieved resolution to their issues and having begun to repair the damage done to their relationship through the dispute.

The local knowledge, experience and very often commitment of the local Restorative Justice practitioner can often be a deciding factor of assisting people over the line of resolution as they employ their greatest skill of all, trust in the process, trust in their own abilities and above all trust in the people who are in dispute.