Webinars
Webinars are a terrific means of continuing education and an opportunity to get together with fellow practitioners to discuss tough questions and capture shared experiences.
Webinars are free for current members of ACR.
The Family Section plans and delivers a series of hour long virtual events featuring dispute resolution professionals discussing various topics and responding to questions related to those topics.
You may access our virtual Zoom platform from any location to participate.
Click below for instructions on how to join a Zoom hosted webinar as a participant:
Webinars are free for current members of ACR.
The Family Section plans and delivers a series of hour long virtual events featuring dispute resolution professionals discussing various topics and responding to questions related to those topics.
You may access our virtual Zoom platform from any location to participate.
Click below for instructions on how to join a Zoom hosted webinar as a participant:
Schedule of Webinars
2017:
Date/Time: September 20, 2017 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM (EST)
Date/Time: September 20, 2017 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM (EST)
- Title: The Power of Two: An Integrative Approach to Conflict Resolution
- Presenter: By Kathleen Adams, LCSW
Handouts:
2016:
Date/Time: March 2nd, 2016 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM (EST)
Date/Time: March 2nd, 2016 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM (EST)
- Title: Suicide: What Every Dispute Resolution Practitioner Needs to Know and Understand
- Presenter: By Sande Roberts, MA
Handouts:
| suicide_for_acr.pptx |
Date/Time: February 1, 2016 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM (EST)
Teleseminar archive
September 29, 2015
May 20, 2015
May 5, 2015
April 16, 2015
April 1, 2015
March 18, 2015
February 9, 2015
December 5, 2012 - By Morna Ellis How to Grow your Family Mediation Practice - Download the MP3 file.
November 7, 2012 - By Karen Freed and Sue Soler - Impasse Intervention Services in Family Disputes - Download the MP3 file.
October 3, 2012 - By J. Scott Brown Mediating Bulldogs (controllers) and Terriers (histrionics) - Download the MP3 file
October 5, 2011 – Making Peacemaking Your Day Job - Forrest (Woody) Mosten - Download the MP3 file
Woody's greatest source of career satisfaction is providing inspirational mentoring to peacemakers on all levels and in every field to improve our craft at the table and to help colleagues build satisfying careers in conflict resolution that are financially self-sustaining and provide needed service to individuals and organizations suffering from conflict and to help heal our society at large. In this teleseminar, Woody will share his insights about the blend of practice and career to help us further prosper in our work.
Woody is an ACR Advanced Practitioner Member and Approved Trainer, was a Consultant Member of the Former Academy of Family Mediators, and is the former Chair of ACR's Taskforce to Establish a National Peacemaker Museum. He is the Plenary Keynote Speaker for ACR's 2011 Annual Meeting in San Diego and his topic is "The Journey from Mediation to Peacemaking." Adjunct Professor at UCLA School of Law and a worldwide trainer and keynote presenter, Woody is the author of 4 bestselling and critically acclaimed books that help define our work: Complete Guide to Mediation (1997), Unbundling Legal Services (2000), Mediation Career Guide (2001), and Collaborative Divorce Handbook (2009). In addition, he has authored numerous articles and book chapters and has been a journal guest editor of special journal issues on training, unbundling, Collaborative Practice, and ACR Magazine’s 2009 Special Issue on Marketing. Woody is the recipient of the prestigious ABA Lawyer as Problem Solver Award, the ABA Lifetime Legal Access Award, Los Angeles Bar's Conflict Prevention Award and the Southern California Mediation Association named him Peacemaker of the Year and established a conflict resolution library project in his name. The University of California, Riverside has established the Forrest S. Mosten Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution Initiative in 2010, the International Bar Association honored Woody by renaming its prestigious law school competition, Louis M. Brown and Forrest S. Mosten International Client Consultation Competition.
Woody can be reached at www.MostenMediation.com
July 2011 - Including Children in Mediation Rachel Birnbaum, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario and Nicolas Bala, Queen’s College, Kingston, Ontario Download the MP3 file. There is increasing recognition in law and social science research of the importance of having children participate in post-separation decision-making, though there is not a clear consensus on how this should be done. The presenters will discuss recent social science literature about children’s participation in mediation and the family dispute resolution process, including their own research on children’s meetings with judges, lawyers and mental health professionals. The presenters will provide recommendations for when and how interviews of children with family justice professionals should be conducted.
Rachel Birnbaum, Ph. D., RSW, LL.M. Rachel is an associate professor at the School of Social Work, University of Western Ontario, Kingston, Ontario. She teaches in the area of children and families, and on the intersection of law and social work. She has presented and published internationally on various topics concerning child custody and the role of children in these processes. Her work has also contributed to governmental research reports used to govern policies for children and families. Currently she is a member of the Executive of the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers.
Nicholas Bala, L.S.M., J.D., LL.M. Nicholas is on the Faculty of Law at Queen’s College, Kingston, Ontario where he earned his J.D. degree in 1977 and later an LL.M. degree at Harvard in 1980. Since 1980 he has been a law professor at Queen’s University, and he was a Visiting Professor at Duke in 1985. Much of his work is interdisciplinary in approach, dealing with such issues as custody and alienation, support, family violence, high conflict separations, child witnesses and young offenders. He has been published in many journals, including Family Court Review,and his work is frequently cited by Canadian courts, and occasionally by courts in the USA and UK.
June 1, 2011 - I am Divorcing a Stranger: When Separating Parents Have Experienced a Stroke or Brain/Spinal Column Injury. Paul Matlack, Director of Therapy Operations, MidAmerica Rehabilitation Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri Download the MP3 file. While not a common event, family mediation occasionally involves couple where one parent has been affected by an injury to their central nervous system. This has impacted the whole family and how the future will take shape. Paul Matlack will discuss the conditions that produce this result including describing these events, their prognosis and treatment, how they affect function, cognition, and emotion, and how these events effects families and parenting. This will be an informative teleseminar about a situation from which the participants will want to draw insight and conclusions for their mediation practice.
Paul Matlack, M.S., OT/L Paul has been the Director of Therapy Operations and Case Management for MidAmerica Rehabilitation Hospital in Kansas City since 2004. He has practiced in the field for 17 years. He received his B.S. in Kinesiology from the Kansas State University, and his M.S. in Occupational Therapy from Rockhurst University. His focus has been on the treatment and program development for persons with brain injuries.
May 4, 2011 - Common Sense, Legal Sense and Nonsense About Divorce Lenard Marlow, J.D. Download the MP3 file. Husbands and wives do not look to lawyers or the law when they have problems to solve or decision to make in their marriage. Rather, they solve those problems and make those decisions pretty much on their own. How do they do that? based on their common sense and the personal considerations that are important to them. Why would they do that on any other basis?Nevertheless, while that was sufficient in the past, the minute they decide to divorce their first thought is to turn to lawyers. That is because they have been persuaded by one and all, and by everything they read or hear, that they have a legal problem. That being the case, only lawyers are qualified to make the decisions in their lives.
Divorce lawyers would have you believe that this is simply legal sense. It isn’t. It is legal nonsense. Lawyers do not know what is best for us. Nor are they necessarily wise. They are just people who went to law school. This is not to suggest that a couple’s common sense will be alone sufficient in their divorce as it was in their marriage. It may be when it comes to their children and perhaps even what they will do with their home. But it won’t be sufficient when it comes to other issues, such as how much one of them should pay to the other for the support of their children. What in their experience in their marriage could possibly enable them to make that decision. In other words, how can they answer that question based on their common sense alone? They won’t be able to. That being the case, they are going to have to look to something else. There is only one other place that they can look. That is the law.
But if they look to the law, it is to be left with an answer, and if the law will do that, it deserves to be called legal sense. But if all that it does is leave them with a debate, going nowhere, as to what that answer is, then it has been of no help. That is not legal sense. It is nothing but legal nonsense, and it should be called that.
As we all know, if divorcing husbands and wives go off to separate lawyers to get the answers to their questions, their only thanks will be to be given different answers to the same question. In other words, instead of solving their problem, they will only be left with one.
If they want to solve their problem, there is only one way to do that. Nor do they need a legal education to understand this. Their common sense will be enough to tell them. They will have to go off together to the same lawyer.
Lenard Marlow, J.D., a graduate of Columbia Law School, is a Fellow of The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyer and past President of The New York State Council on Divorce Mediation. He has presented numerous workshops and trainings, and written books and articles, on the subject of divorce mediation, including Divorce Mediation - A Practice In Search of a Theory, published by Harlan Press, and The Two Roads to Divorce and Divorce Mediation: A New Vision of the Law, published by Xlibris. His new book, Common Sense, Legal Sense and Nonsense about Divorce which will also be published by Xlibris, will be out this summer.
April 6, 2011 - Confronting Values and the Value of Confrontation: Conflict Resolution between Parties with Strong Religious Beliefs and Convictions - Donal O’Reardon Download the MP3 file. In this seminar I will challenge the commonly held view that conflicts grounded in religious beliefs are intransigent and so immune to resolution. I will explore how it is possible to separate a particular religious belief from its practical interpretation and offer strategies for dealing with parties who see their values and beliefs as a barrier to a resolution.
Donal O’Reardon, originally from Ireland, holds graduate degrees in philosophy and theology and has worked in education both at secondary and university level in Ireland, the UK, the US and Canada. Based in the Toronto area, he teaches and trains students and professionals in conflict resolution skills. Donal is also an analyst at the Workplace Fairness Institute and at St. Stephen's Community Mediation Service in Toronto. He writes regularly on the relationship between ideas, values and conflict resolution and is currently completing a book on conflict resolution and philosophy. Donal can be reached at donal@oreardonconsulting.com.
February 2, 2011 - Managing Parenting Expenses Stephen Erickson Download the MP3 file. This teleseminar will present a summary of the flaws in the current child support system and will demonstrate how parents can build a child support plan in a cooperative manner. The Children’s Checkbook is compatible with the cooperative approach used in building parenting plans and in fact, the title of the law review article is “If they can build parenting plans, they can also build child support plans.” Participants are asked to read and refer to the following article during the teleseminar, especially the grid presented on the last page.
http://www.ericksonmediation.com/files/Children's%20Checkbook%20Wm%20Mitchell%20Law%20Review%20Oct%2007.pdf
Stephen K. Erickson, J.D. is licensed as an attorney, but works exclusively a mediator. Since 1977, he has mediated over 5,000 disputes in his private practice. He received the Bush Leadership Fellowship Award for the study of mediation in 1979 and is a founder and second president of the Academy of Family Mediators. He is well known as a mediation trainer and speaker, and has published numerous articles and books on the subject. In 1996 he and his partner Marilyn McKnight were awarded the Distinguished Mediator Award by the Academy for their outstanding contributions to the field of mediation. Steve finished his three-year term as Board Member of the International Association for Conflict Resolution in 2005 where he also chaired the Taskforce on Mediator Certification. He and Marilyn McKnight have co-authored five highly successful books on mediation: Family Mediation Casebook (1988), The Children’s Book (1992), Mediating Divorce: A Client’s Workbook (1998), Mediating Divorce: A Trainer’s Manual (1998), and The Practitioner’s Guide to Mediation (2001). Steve has taught as adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School, the William Mitchell College of Law. He has recently been appointed to the faculty at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, where teaches a course in the Master of Arts in Leadership program in the fall, 2010.
January 5, 2011 - Larry Fong teleseminar "Hope in Mediation"
December 1, 2010 - Drafting Parenting Plans that Really Work for Families – Rebecca T. Macgruder Download Clear, unambiguous, and highly customized parenting plans take more time to write, but the benefits to the clients are enormous. Parenting plans may be ignored when the road of life is smooth, but when families hit the inevitable potholes, a well-written parenting plan is essential. Parents need a roadmap that is easy to read, that provides clear direction, and that takes care of children’s needs. The professional’s job is to create a user-friendly parenting plan that is specific to each family’s special needs and that takes into account the usual and unusual situations that arise after the dust of separation has settled. Join an experienced mediator who routinely writes detailed and specific parenting plans to learn the skills, strategies, and techniques of good drafting.
Rebecca T. Magruder, M.S.W., J.D. focuses her private practice in the greater St. Louis, Missouri area on mediation, collaborative law, and other non-adversarial methods for resolving family law disputes. Ms. Magruder is an Advanced Practitioner member of ACR’s Family Section and the Past Chair of ACR’s Family Section Advisory Council. Ms. Magruder is serving a second term on the Board of Directors of the Collaborative Family Law Association and is currently President-Elect. Ms. Magruder currently serves as President of the Board of Directors for M.A.R.C.H., Inc. (Mediation Achieving Results for Children), a non-profit mediation service in Missouri, and as a member of the St. Louis Committee for AFCC-Missouri. Ms. Magruder trains and mentors new mediators and is an adjunct assistant professor of mediation at St. Louis University School of Law. Ms. Magruder is listed in Best Lawyers in America under the areas of Collaborative Family Law and Family Law Mediation.
November 2010 - Child Protection Mediation: Challenges and Opportunities, Gregory Firestone, Ph.D. Download Child Protection mediation is a multi-party dispute resolution process involving parents, parent's counsel, caseworkers, prosecuting attorneys, guardian ad litem, and others who are seeking to develop a consensus as to how to resolve the issues stemming from the allegations of child abuse and neglect. This teleseminar will discuss some of the the challenges and opportunities facing child protection mediators and will include a discussion of the Child Protection Mediation Guidelines being developed through a joint effort of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts AFCC), National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) and American Humane Association (AHA).
Gregory Firestone, Ph.D. is Director of the University of South Florida (USF) Conflict Resolution Collaborative and serves on the Florida Supreme Court Alternative Dispute Resolution Rules and Policy Committee (including seven years as Vice Chair) and on the Editorial Board of Family Court Review. Dr. Firestone has previously served on the Boards of Directors of the Academy of Family Mediators (AFM) and the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) and was the Official Observer (on behalf of ACR) to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) Uniform Mediation Act Drafting Committee. He has conducted child protection mediation training for courts and/or government programs throughout the U.S. and internationally; has published numerous articles on child protection mediation; and is one of the participants working on the Child Protection Guidelines project sponsored by AFCC, JCJFCJ and AHA. Gregory Firestone is a licensed psychologist, mediator, mediation trainer and dispute resolution system consultant and has maintained a private mediation practice since 1984.
August 2010 - Parenting Coordinator: "Staying with Conflict" in Family Conflict Resolution - Sherrill Hayes Download Parenting coordination is a growing area of practice for many family conflict professionals, but it's much more than just mediation by a different name. Recent research about the practices and experiences of parenting coordinators (PCs) has demonstrated that they serve as excellent examples of conflict professionals who are, in Bernie Mayer’s paradigm, “staying with conflict”. This presentation will look at some recent research on PCs and consider some of the lessons PCs have to teach us about the possibilities and the potential risks of "staying with conflict" in a family context.
Sherrill Hayes, Ph.D. first trained as a family mediator in 1999 as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) with Sam Margulies. He received his Ph.D. from Newcastle University conducting research on family mediation practices and policies with Prof. Janet Walker. During this time he also worked as a mediator for two different mediation services in England. Upon returning to the US, Sherrill worked as a child custody and visitation mediator for the North Carolina 18th District Court and joined the faculty of Conflict Studies & Dispute Resolution (then Conflict Resolution) at UNCG in 2006 as the first full time faculty member. He took his first parenting coordination case in 2005 (it’s closed now!). He studies and practices different forms of family dispute resolution including divorce education, family mediation, and parenting coordination. More information can be found https://sites.google.com/a/uncg.edu/swhayes/home
June 2010 - Contrasting Therapy and Mediation - Susan Kraus, June 2010 Download
- Title: Hearing the Voice of the Children: Thinking About Thinking
- Presenter: John-Paul Boyd
- Handouts: Materials
- Title: The Early Childhood Caries (ECC): More Than Just Baby Teeth
- Presenter: Dr. Leonard Smith
- Event Details: Announcement
- Handouts: PDF Materials
- Handouts: PDF Additional Materials
- Recording:
May 20, 2015
- Title: The Role of Competition in Healthy Divorces
- The Role of Competition in Healthy Divorces
- Presenter: Bernie Mayer
- Event Details: Announcement
- Handouts: PDF of PowerPoint Files
- Recording: Listen to the presentation (download required)
May 5, 2015
- Title: "Thinking About Our Thinking:" The Milan Systemic Questioning Model
- Presenter: Dr. Larry Sun Fong
- Event Details: Announcement
- Handouts: PDF of PowerPoint Files
- Recording: Listen to the presentation (download required)
April 16, 2015
- Title: Shifting Outcomes Using Mindfulness in Your Practice
- Presenter: Sharon James, M.A.
- Event Details: Announcement
- Handout: PowerPoint File (download may be required)
- Recording: Listen to the presentation (download required)
April 1, 2015
- Title: Family Mediation and What We Can Learn from Infantry, Organisations, and Restorative Justice: Experience, Conflict Intersections, and Best Practice
- Presenter: Ian Connop
- Event Details: Announcement
- Handout: PowerPoint File
- Recording: Listen to the presentation (download required)
March 18, 2015
- Title: How and When to Include Children in the Legal System
- Presenter: Dr. Lorri Yasenik, PhD., RSW, CPT-S, RPT-S (Canada)
- Event Details: Announcement
- Handout: PowerPoint File
- Recording: Listen to the presentation (download required)
February 9, 2015
- Title: Keeping Everyone at the Table: Neuropsychological and Interpersonal Process During Mediation
- Presenter: Dr. Vinay Bharadia
- Handout: Neuropsychological and Interpersonal Process in Mediation [PDF]
- Recording: Listen to the presentation
December 5, 2012 - By Morna Ellis How to Grow your Family Mediation Practice - Download the MP3 file.
November 7, 2012 - By Karen Freed and Sue Soler - Impasse Intervention Services in Family Disputes - Download the MP3 file.
October 3, 2012 - By J. Scott Brown Mediating Bulldogs (controllers) and Terriers (histrionics) - Download the MP3 file
October 5, 2011 – Making Peacemaking Your Day Job - Forrest (Woody) Mosten - Download the MP3 file
Woody's greatest source of career satisfaction is providing inspirational mentoring to peacemakers on all levels and in every field to improve our craft at the table and to help colleagues build satisfying careers in conflict resolution that are financially self-sustaining and provide needed service to individuals and organizations suffering from conflict and to help heal our society at large. In this teleseminar, Woody will share his insights about the blend of practice and career to help us further prosper in our work.
Woody is an ACR Advanced Practitioner Member and Approved Trainer, was a Consultant Member of the Former Academy of Family Mediators, and is the former Chair of ACR's Taskforce to Establish a National Peacemaker Museum. He is the Plenary Keynote Speaker for ACR's 2011 Annual Meeting in San Diego and his topic is "The Journey from Mediation to Peacemaking." Adjunct Professor at UCLA School of Law and a worldwide trainer and keynote presenter, Woody is the author of 4 bestselling and critically acclaimed books that help define our work: Complete Guide to Mediation (1997), Unbundling Legal Services (2000), Mediation Career Guide (2001), and Collaborative Divorce Handbook (2009). In addition, he has authored numerous articles and book chapters and has been a journal guest editor of special journal issues on training, unbundling, Collaborative Practice, and ACR Magazine’s 2009 Special Issue on Marketing. Woody is the recipient of the prestigious ABA Lawyer as Problem Solver Award, the ABA Lifetime Legal Access Award, Los Angeles Bar's Conflict Prevention Award and the Southern California Mediation Association named him Peacemaker of the Year and established a conflict resolution library project in his name. The University of California, Riverside has established the Forrest S. Mosten Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution Initiative in 2010, the International Bar Association honored Woody by renaming its prestigious law school competition, Louis M. Brown and Forrest S. Mosten International Client Consultation Competition.
Woody can be reached at www.MostenMediation.com
July 2011 - Including Children in Mediation Rachel Birnbaum, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario and Nicolas Bala, Queen’s College, Kingston, Ontario Download the MP3 file. There is increasing recognition in law and social science research of the importance of having children participate in post-separation decision-making, though there is not a clear consensus on how this should be done. The presenters will discuss recent social science literature about children’s participation in mediation and the family dispute resolution process, including their own research on children’s meetings with judges, lawyers and mental health professionals. The presenters will provide recommendations for when and how interviews of children with family justice professionals should be conducted.
Rachel Birnbaum, Ph. D., RSW, LL.M. Rachel is an associate professor at the School of Social Work, University of Western Ontario, Kingston, Ontario. She teaches in the area of children and families, and on the intersection of law and social work. She has presented and published internationally on various topics concerning child custody and the role of children in these processes. Her work has also contributed to governmental research reports used to govern policies for children and families. Currently she is a member of the Executive of the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers.
Nicholas Bala, L.S.M., J.D., LL.M. Nicholas is on the Faculty of Law at Queen’s College, Kingston, Ontario where he earned his J.D. degree in 1977 and later an LL.M. degree at Harvard in 1980. Since 1980 he has been a law professor at Queen’s University, and he was a Visiting Professor at Duke in 1985. Much of his work is interdisciplinary in approach, dealing with such issues as custody and alienation, support, family violence, high conflict separations, child witnesses and young offenders. He has been published in many journals, including Family Court Review,and his work is frequently cited by Canadian courts, and occasionally by courts in the USA and UK.
June 1, 2011 - I am Divorcing a Stranger: When Separating Parents Have Experienced a Stroke or Brain/Spinal Column Injury. Paul Matlack, Director of Therapy Operations, MidAmerica Rehabilitation Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri Download the MP3 file. While not a common event, family mediation occasionally involves couple where one parent has been affected by an injury to their central nervous system. This has impacted the whole family and how the future will take shape. Paul Matlack will discuss the conditions that produce this result including describing these events, their prognosis and treatment, how they affect function, cognition, and emotion, and how these events effects families and parenting. This will be an informative teleseminar about a situation from which the participants will want to draw insight and conclusions for their mediation practice.
Paul Matlack, M.S., OT/L Paul has been the Director of Therapy Operations and Case Management for MidAmerica Rehabilitation Hospital in Kansas City since 2004. He has practiced in the field for 17 years. He received his B.S. in Kinesiology from the Kansas State University, and his M.S. in Occupational Therapy from Rockhurst University. His focus has been on the treatment and program development for persons with brain injuries.
May 4, 2011 - Common Sense, Legal Sense and Nonsense About Divorce Lenard Marlow, J.D. Download the MP3 file. Husbands and wives do not look to lawyers or the law when they have problems to solve or decision to make in their marriage. Rather, they solve those problems and make those decisions pretty much on their own. How do they do that? based on their common sense and the personal considerations that are important to them. Why would they do that on any other basis?Nevertheless, while that was sufficient in the past, the minute they decide to divorce their first thought is to turn to lawyers. That is because they have been persuaded by one and all, and by everything they read or hear, that they have a legal problem. That being the case, only lawyers are qualified to make the decisions in their lives.
Divorce lawyers would have you believe that this is simply legal sense. It isn’t. It is legal nonsense. Lawyers do not know what is best for us. Nor are they necessarily wise. They are just people who went to law school. This is not to suggest that a couple’s common sense will be alone sufficient in their divorce as it was in their marriage. It may be when it comes to their children and perhaps even what they will do with their home. But it won’t be sufficient when it comes to other issues, such as how much one of them should pay to the other for the support of their children. What in their experience in their marriage could possibly enable them to make that decision. In other words, how can they answer that question based on their common sense alone? They won’t be able to. That being the case, they are going to have to look to something else. There is only one other place that they can look. That is the law.
But if they look to the law, it is to be left with an answer, and if the law will do that, it deserves to be called legal sense. But if all that it does is leave them with a debate, going nowhere, as to what that answer is, then it has been of no help. That is not legal sense. It is nothing but legal nonsense, and it should be called that.
As we all know, if divorcing husbands and wives go off to separate lawyers to get the answers to their questions, their only thanks will be to be given different answers to the same question. In other words, instead of solving their problem, they will only be left with one.
If they want to solve their problem, there is only one way to do that. Nor do they need a legal education to understand this. Their common sense will be enough to tell them. They will have to go off together to the same lawyer.
Lenard Marlow, J.D., a graduate of Columbia Law School, is a Fellow of The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyer and past President of The New York State Council on Divorce Mediation. He has presented numerous workshops and trainings, and written books and articles, on the subject of divorce mediation, including Divorce Mediation - A Practice In Search of a Theory, published by Harlan Press, and The Two Roads to Divorce and Divorce Mediation: A New Vision of the Law, published by Xlibris. His new book, Common Sense, Legal Sense and Nonsense about Divorce which will also be published by Xlibris, will be out this summer.
April 6, 2011 - Confronting Values and the Value of Confrontation: Conflict Resolution between Parties with Strong Religious Beliefs and Convictions - Donal O’Reardon Download the MP3 file. In this seminar I will challenge the commonly held view that conflicts grounded in religious beliefs are intransigent and so immune to resolution. I will explore how it is possible to separate a particular religious belief from its practical interpretation and offer strategies for dealing with parties who see their values and beliefs as a barrier to a resolution.
Donal O’Reardon, originally from Ireland, holds graduate degrees in philosophy and theology and has worked in education both at secondary and university level in Ireland, the UK, the US and Canada. Based in the Toronto area, he teaches and trains students and professionals in conflict resolution skills. Donal is also an analyst at the Workplace Fairness Institute and at St. Stephen's Community Mediation Service in Toronto. He writes regularly on the relationship between ideas, values and conflict resolution and is currently completing a book on conflict resolution and philosophy. Donal can be reached at donal@oreardonconsulting.com.
February 2, 2011 - Managing Parenting Expenses Stephen Erickson Download the MP3 file. This teleseminar will present a summary of the flaws in the current child support system and will demonstrate how parents can build a child support plan in a cooperative manner. The Children’s Checkbook is compatible with the cooperative approach used in building parenting plans and in fact, the title of the law review article is “If they can build parenting plans, they can also build child support plans.” Participants are asked to read and refer to the following article during the teleseminar, especially the grid presented on the last page.
http://www.ericksonmediation.com/files/Children's%20Checkbook%20Wm%20Mitchell%20Law%20Review%20Oct%2007.pdf
Stephen K. Erickson, J.D. is licensed as an attorney, but works exclusively a mediator. Since 1977, he has mediated over 5,000 disputes in his private practice. He received the Bush Leadership Fellowship Award for the study of mediation in 1979 and is a founder and second president of the Academy of Family Mediators. He is well known as a mediation trainer and speaker, and has published numerous articles and books on the subject. In 1996 he and his partner Marilyn McKnight were awarded the Distinguished Mediator Award by the Academy for their outstanding contributions to the field of mediation. Steve finished his three-year term as Board Member of the International Association for Conflict Resolution in 2005 where he also chaired the Taskforce on Mediator Certification. He and Marilyn McKnight have co-authored five highly successful books on mediation: Family Mediation Casebook (1988), The Children’s Book (1992), Mediating Divorce: A Client’s Workbook (1998), Mediating Divorce: A Trainer’s Manual (1998), and The Practitioner’s Guide to Mediation (2001). Steve has taught as adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School, the William Mitchell College of Law. He has recently been appointed to the faculty at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, where teaches a course in the Master of Arts in Leadership program in the fall, 2010.
January 5, 2011 - Larry Fong teleseminar "Hope in Mediation"
December 1, 2010 - Drafting Parenting Plans that Really Work for Families – Rebecca T. Macgruder Download Clear, unambiguous, and highly customized parenting plans take more time to write, but the benefits to the clients are enormous. Parenting plans may be ignored when the road of life is smooth, but when families hit the inevitable potholes, a well-written parenting plan is essential. Parents need a roadmap that is easy to read, that provides clear direction, and that takes care of children’s needs. The professional’s job is to create a user-friendly parenting plan that is specific to each family’s special needs and that takes into account the usual and unusual situations that arise after the dust of separation has settled. Join an experienced mediator who routinely writes detailed and specific parenting plans to learn the skills, strategies, and techniques of good drafting.
Rebecca T. Magruder, M.S.W., J.D. focuses her private practice in the greater St. Louis, Missouri area on mediation, collaborative law, and other non-adversarial methods for resolving family law disputes. Ms. Magruder is an Advanced Practitioner member of ACR’s Family Section and the Past Chair of ACR’s Family Section Advisory Council. Ms. Magruder is serving a second term on the Board of Directors of the Collaborative Family Law Association and is currently President-Elect. Ms. Magruder currently serves as President of the Board of Directors for M.A.R.C.H., Inc. (Mediation Achieving Results for Children), a non-profit mediation service in Missouri, and as a member of the St. Louis Committee for AFCC-Missouri. Ms. Magruder trains and mentors new mediators and is an adjunct assistant professor of mediation at St. Louis University School of Law. Ms. Magruder is listed in Best Lawyers in America under the areas of Collaborative Family Law and Family Law Mediation.
November 2010 - Child Protection Mediation: Challenges and Opportunities, Gregory Firestone, Ph.D. Download Child Protection mediation is a multi-party dispute resolution process involving parents, parent's counsel, caseworkers, prosecuting attorneys, guardian ad litem, and others who are seeking to develop a consensus as to how to resolve the issues stemming from the allegations of child abuse and neglect. This teleseminar will discuss some of the the challenges and opportunities facing child protection mediators and will include a discussion of the Child Protection Mediation Guidelines being developed through a joint effort of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts AFCC), National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) and American Humane Association (AHA).
Gregory Firestone, Ph.D. is Director of the University of South Florida (USF) Conflict Resolution Collaborative and serves on the Florida Supreme Court Alternative Dispute Resolution Rules and Policy Committee (including seven years as Vice Chair) and on the Editorial Board of Family Court Review. Dr. Firestone has previously served on the Boards of Directors of the Academy of Family Mediators (AFM) and the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) and was the Official Observer (on behalf of ACR) to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) Uniform Mediation Act Drafting Committee. He has conducted child protection mediation training for courts and/or government programs throughout the U.S. and internationally; has published numerous articles on child protection mediation; and is one of the participants working on the Child Protection Guidelines project sponsored by AFCC, JCJFCJ and AHA. Gregory Firestone is a licensed psychologist, mediator, mediation trainer and dispute resolution system consultant and has maintained a private mediation practice since 1984.
August 2010 - Parenting Coordinator: "Staying with Conflict" in Family Conflict Resolution - Sherrill Hayes Download Parenting coordination is a growing area of practice for many family conflict professionals, but it's much more than just mediation by a different name. Recent research about the practices and experiences of parenting coordinators (PCs) has demonstrated that they serve as excellent examples of conflict professionals who are, in Bernie Mayer’s paradigm, “staying with conflict”. This presentation will look at some recent research on PCs and consider some of the lessons PCs have to teach us about the possibilities and the potential risks of "staying with conflict" in a family context.
Sherrill Hayes, Ph.D. first trained as a family mediator in 1999 as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) with Sam Margulies. He received his Ph.D. from Newcastle University conducting research on family mediation practices and policies with Prof. Janet Walker. During this time he also worked as a mediator for two different mediation services in England. Upon returning to the US, Sherrill worked as a child custody and visitation mediator for the North Carolina 18th District Court and joined the faculty of Conflict Studies & Dispute Resolution (then Conflict Resolution) at UNCG in 2006 as the first full time faculty member. He took his first parenting coordination case in 2005 (it’s closed now!). He studies and practices different forms of family dispute resolution including divorce education, family mediation, and parenting coordination. More information can be found https://sites.google.com/a/uncg.edu/swhayes/home
June 2010 - Contrasting Therapy and Mediation - Susan Kraus, June 2010 Download