Social Media and Family Mediation

I was just looking back at the original family mediation blog that I started almost 2 years ago and was struck by the post that I wrote entitled “Use of Social Media for Family Mediation” in November 2011 which started with the following paragraph:

“I have been thinking for some time that there is a need to increase the general awareness of the benefits that family mediation can bring to people’s lives when it is used, whether this be in place of more litigious routes such as court action, in parallel to these routes or simply as a way to move issues forward for people who are struggling to find solutions to the problems that they are facing without external help.”

The post then ended with me writing that “Personally, I feel that a crucial part of this awareness raising will need to take place through the use of social media and I am therefore planning to try my best to do my bit towards achieving this.”

https://godalmingfamilymediation.blogspot.com/2011/11/use-of-social-media-for-family.html

The need to use social media as a way to raise awareness about family mediation has never left my mind but I must confess that I have done very little to address this issue in the intervening 18 months. However, it does not appear that I am alone in this inaction as I believe that very little has changed over this period of time. I suspect that the main reason for this is that not many of the current crop of family mediators, many of whom are qualified solicitors (like myself) or barristers, really want to spend their time on social media websites (e.g. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) and would much prefer to be mediating instead. I can certainly vouch for the fact that this is the primary reason why, despite my best intentions, I have not put anywhere near enough energy into this issue over the years.

However, as I write this blog article, I am starting to feel that the pendulum is swinging and that I am quite enjoying spending time writing about mediation, trying to engage other people in thinking about using mediation and hopefully raising general awareness.  Whatever the reason for this new burst of energy, I am hopeful that this time around these first new seeds of engaging with social media will lead to some mighty trees being built but of course this will only work if other people are able to read these posts and if they then decide to think about them and ideally write comments about them so please do spend a few minutes to comment on this post, to share it with others and to join the campaign to raise awareness about the many benefits of family mediation via social media.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post and I look forward to reading your comments.

Euan Davidson

Family mediator

Godalming Family Mediation