My Lords, my name is attached to a number of these amendments. I would like to raise some issues that I came across in eight years’ involvement in CAFCASS and many years before that as a social worker. I hope that the Government will look at these issues between now and Report. I would like mediation to be replaced by meetings where information is given. At these meetings, people can find out what they should be doing next; they are
often highly successful in helping the parties talk to each other in a different way. If you use mediation, it has a special nature.
Mediators often say that they will not intervene to give direct information and advice, certainly not as regards helping parties to think directly about the implications of their behaviour. Mediation is often about sitting back and thinking things through. When you are using the court arena simply to fight your battles, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, so eloquently described, that type of mediation is totally unhelpful. I have been allowed to sit in and watch CAFCASS officers intervene on parties in an extremely direct way. That has had much more impact than the kind of therapeutic situation which is often delivered through the mediation association—I chaired a government working party on this many years ago—in which people, particularly those in conflict, find it very difficult to sit and reflect on their behaviour.
It is certainly important that we have recognised mediators but I hope that mediation will be looked at in a much broader sense than simply reflective mediation. That was one of the issues which came forward in the pre-legislative scrutiny to the 2006 Act. I think it was that Act although it could have been another—I have been here too long. A number of people from mediation groups came to talk about how they could not direct, or be directed themselves, in their work with families. These families often need a much more behavioural approach, rather than a reflective one. We need to think through some of these issues before we come to a conclusion. However, I stand by my name being attached to those amendments which seek to leave out “mediation”.