How to Work Effectively with Family Relationship Centres

by Linda Kochanski

First established in 2008, Family Relationships Centres provide dispute resolution services to separating parties to deal with issues, particularly around children’s matters. The Centres were seen as a way of avoiding the litigious resolution of family disputes and also of providing the services needed to fulfil the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) requirement that a couple must attempt family dispute resolution prior to making an application to the Family Court.

Now firmly entrenched in 65 locations acrossAustralia, Family Relationship Centres are being utilised by self-referring parties and by legal practitioners referring their clients to fulfil the statutory requirements. While the dispute resolution process may be understood, what exactly happens when an individual comes to a Family Relationship Centre is still unclear. From a legal practice point of view, there are a number of concerns that practitioners express about working through a Family Relationship Centre.

One of the issues that is often raised when discussing Family Relationship Centres is the inability of legal representatives to attend the process with their clients. While it is true that legal representatives do not attend the process, the actual practice of the Centres is to not only check if the parties have received legal advice, but also to strongly recommend that advice be sought at all relevant points along the way. Referrals to community legal services or private legal practitioners may be given at any stage during the process and parties are strongly encouraged to have spoken to a legal representative to have their options explained prior to the mediation session. Certainly, from experience, if it becomes apparent to the mediator during the mediation that legal advice is necessary, or if either party requests legal advice, the mediation can be put on hold while either or both parties seeks advice from their legal representative by telephone. In fact, this process can be set up when the mediation is being arranged and parties should feel comfortable to request it.

Another issue that is often raised by legal practitioners when discussing working with Family Relationship Centres is the time it takes for parties to move through the process. This is a frustration for legal representatives referring their clients to Family Relationship Centres, particularly where there may be pending court action. While it must be said that it can take time to move through the Family Relationship Centre process, there are a number of points that affect the timeframe.

The process at a Family Relationship Centre involves a number of prescribed steps prior to entering the actual mediation session and all stages require either the participation or consent of both parties. That in itself takes coordination and cooperation, and people going through a separation often need time to work through this step. The FRC process respects this. For many parties, finding the time to attend interviews and mediations is difficult due to the fact that many parties need to return to work after a separation. Finding a time when they are not working, or with the children, may take weeks to arrange. That is why many Family Relationship Centres offer both face-to-face and telephone services, and there is a speciality Telephone Dispute Resolution Service that meets parties’ time and geographical restrictions.

While time is an issue, it needs to be considered that taking time before rushing into mediation and/or court may assist the parties. Recently-separated parties often find it hard to negotiate as they are navigating not only the issues in dispute but also their own emotional reactions to the separation. Allowing time and working with them through a dispute resolution process such as that offered by a Family Relationship Centre can assist the parties to reach more sustainable agreements without resorting to litigation.

The steps that parties follow in the Family Relationship Centre process are the compulsory steps of: (1) intake, (2) education session and (3) mediation session, with the option of a children’s session. Each step links with the others and has advantages to the parties in their completion.

Intake

Each party must have an intake interview, this interview allows the mediator to assess the issues and their suitability for mediation. But more importantly, the intake also identifies how the parties, particularly the children, are affected by the separation. It looks at the negotiability of the parties on the issues and whether they have sought legal advice on their options to resolve the issues.

It is during the intake interview that the possibility of whether the mediation may be a child-informed mediation is explored. Child-informed mediation is a process whereby the children have a voice in the mediation via consultation with a child consultant. Circumstances in which it is presently determined that child-informed mediation is not suitable are usually where children are too young or where there has been significant third-party intervention already (eg by guidance counsellors, medical practitioners or child psychologists). Whether the consultation of children should be a compulsory step for every mediation in the Family Relationship Centre process is a topic of current debate among practitioners in the field.

Children’s session

If it is assessed at both intake interviews that the matter may be suitable for child-informed mediation, extra steps are added to the process. Both parties need to be informed about what a child-informed session will be like. The parties are usually spoken to by telephone or they can have a face-to-face interview with the child consultant. Again, these would be individual interviews.

Once the child consultant has assessed the suitability to proceed it is required that both parties provide written consent for their children to be interviewed. Once consent has been given, an appointment is made for the children to be seen, either individually and/or together (children may be seen individually, or with their siblings, or a combination of both). This appointment will usually be for one to one-and-a-half hours, and may be conducted prior to the mediation session or between sessions if the need for the intervention becomes clear from the mediation session.

The ability to conduct interviews with the children of the parties is something that makes the work done in Family Relationship Centres valuable for dispute resolution and should be an important consideration when considering the use of a Family Relationship Centre for the mediation process. Such interviews can occur in conjunction with mediations done by private mediation practitioners, or within a collaborative law setting, but the cost of adding another professional to the dispute resolution process can be prohibitive. As Family Relationship Centres are government-funded this intervention can be conducted on a cost-effective basis.

At a practice level, the use of the child consultant within the mediation process can assist both the mediator and the parties substantially. For the parties, being confronted with the impact of the separation on their children can provide a focus to make decisions that are more workable and more sustainable in the long term. For the mediators it can provide a strategy to break any potential deadlocks by using both the children’s voices and the recommendations of an expert to brainstorm possible options.

Education session

Both parties are required to attend a compulsory information and education session prior to a mediation being scheduled. Education sessions are usually run in a group environment of up to 10 people. They can be conducted on a one-to-one basis should there be geographical or other special circumstances, but the benefits to the parties often come from the interaction with others in the group. The group ideally is made up of a mixture of genders and experiences. Ex partners do not attend the same group so there is freedom to exchange ideas and opinions.

The information imparted in the education session can be broken into three areas:

1. Impact of separation on adults. In this section of the education session, the group is directed to consider the types of emotions they may experience as they move through the separation process. Not only are they asked to consider the impact on how they may be able to negotiate with the other parent of their children, but also, importantly, how what they are experiencing and portraying may impact on the children.

2. Impact of separation on children. It is often in this session that many parties realise that children are not impacted by the actual separation of their parents, but by the conflict and tension that often accompanies the separation. This part of the session will often utilise different mediums to convey the same message, including the use of a number of DVDs and workshop booklets produced by the Attorney-General’s Department. Clear messages about not putting children in the middle and not using the children as weapons are reinforced. Participants are encouraged to share. They are not focused upon or individually challenged at this point but they are certainly asked to consider what impact their continued and ongoing conflict may have on their children. Referrals can be made to assist participants further should it be considered appropriate (eg to parenting courses, education courses about communicating with the other parent etc).

3. How to prepare for mediation. What happens at mediation is again highlighted. This would already have been discussed at the intake, but for many participants intake is stressful and a large amount of information is exchanged. The education session reinforces the need for legal advice prior to mediation and uses material to assist the parties to determine the questions they may want to ask their legal representatives. Parties are encouraged to consider a range of options on each of the issues that they wish to discuss. A brief overview of negotiation is sometimes given to allow the parties to understand their roles as well as the mediator’s.

 What makes the education sessions particularly valuable is the opportunity for the parties to hear about the above topics, not only from the group leader, who will often be a mediator or community educator, but also from other people going through the same experience. For many group participants just hearing other people expressing their fears and concerns can normalise the separation process for them. For some it is also the opportunity to hear the other side of the story and, while it may not change their opinion of their ex partner, it may assist in how they negotiate their disputed issues.

Participants are encouraged to ask questions along the way and, while some participants do ask questions, even for those who do not, just being able to hear the questions and answers can be helpful. Many participants often come to the group leader after the session has finished seeking further advice. The education session is productive for all, and it is also something that is not offered within the private mediation sector, again due to time and cost issues.

Mediation session

Mediation within Family Relationship Centres is conducted in sessions which range from two to four hours in length. After both parties have completed their education group, a mediation session will be scheduled. A case manager will identify any special needs for the session (eg shuttle mediation, co-mediation model based on gender or discipline, or whether it needs to be a telephone meditation). This case management allows the mediation to fit with the parties and not the other way round, which is often the case when parties enter into mediation with panel-selected private mediators.

As the majority of mediations completed at Family Relationship Centres are matters dealing with children, the mediators often work with the parties to either make short-term arrangements or trial arrangements to see how the children cope and to iron out any difficulties the parties may have. Often, in private mediations, due to the demand to settle as quickly as possible, the ability to trial and refine arrangements is not utilised. The ownership and workability of any arrangements regarding children is clearly the focus of mediations conducted within Family Relationship Centres.

Certainly they are critics of Family Relationship Centres and their processes, but for particular parties, and more particularly their children, the use of Family Relationship Centres and their expertise should be considered.

The citation for this article is (2011) 1 Fam L Rev 231.