Mediation can reduce the pain to children of family strife

BY THE time Campbell Taylor and his wife separated after 10 years of marriage, his daughters had already been exposed to considerable domestic strife. The break-up, unsurprisingly, did not make things any easier.

“We struggled to agree on anything. I wanted to look after the kids more and they wanted it to be more like 50-50 too, but I struggled to get any contact at all. My oldest, who was 12 at the time, took it particularly badly,” the 41-year-old says.

Resolving the issue through the courts did nottake away the communication problems. but mediation, via the Cyrenians’ Scottish Centre For Conflict Resolution has made a big difference.

“The mediator was able to speak to the kids and to me and my ex-wife and enabled us to communicate without everything becoming an argument. It has made such a difference and the girls are better off,” said Tr Taylor.

This sort of situation was the focus of a conference last week about how Scotland can pull together to help reduce family conflict. It saw the launch of a report warning that thousands of young people and their parents are being affected by arguments behind closed doors and are not seeking help because of an attitude that asking for help is a weakness. But the report warns that conflict at home – over a variety of issues, not just marital break-up – causes mental health problems, family breakdown and at worst homelessness. Every year, the charity claims 4,450 young people in Scotland become homeless due to family relationship breakdown.

Mark McDonald, Minister For The Early Years, was at the event and heard calls to adopt Cyrenians’ five-point plan, which calls for mediation services to be made freely available in every council area, work to dispel the stigma around asking for help, and for schools to provide conflict resolution training within the curriculum.

The charity also wants to see research on the impact of conflict resolution on longer term health, criminal justice and education outcomes.

Finally, councils are being encouraged to include Cyrenians’ Scottish Centre for Conflict Resolution techniques into housing hubs working with young people at risk of homelessness.