Mediation Hertfordshire
Monthly Bulletin
As this is the first edition of the newsletter this year, I would like to wish you all a happy New Year! This bulletin will be devoted to feeding back on the Business Plan Consultation event which was held on 13th February. A number of mediators and most Board members were able to attend and we had a productive and wide-ranging discussion. More on this shortly…….
We are also planning to train a group of new mediators in March. We have had a lot of people applying for the training and many of them bring masses of experience to the role, from legal backgrounds to arbitration and counselling and from business to the magistracy. We look forward to welcoming them into the team very shortly.
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As Mediation Hertfordshire needs to update its Business Plan, and is facing the prospect of changes in how it is funded as a result of the advent of commissioning and the constraints of future public funding, the timing is right to consider making changes both to how we offer our services and what services we can continue to provide, as well as thinking about new opportunities.
A draft Business Plan has been written by a small group made up of some Trustees and the Manager. The meeting on 13th February was to present the plan to mediators and to get ideas from them about what was in there and what they would like to see included.
We started off with the main mission and values of the organisation and had some debate about that. The vision statement – Delivering independent conflict resolution to our communities – led to a long debate about whether our communities included the business and private sectors as well as the communities we currently serve. It may be that the vision is shortened to exclude the words ‘our communities.’
The values underpinning the vision were as follows;
Mediators were asked to add their own ideas about values and attach them to those already identified. Generally, these mirrored the ones outlined above but there were some which could not be easily categorised. The working group will be looking at all the values again soon and producing a comprehensive list.
We then went on to look at strengths and weaknesses of the service, as identified at the AGM in October;
Strengths included being unique in Hertfordshire and having loyal and committed staff. We could build on these strengths by networking and exploring partnerships, and by supporting staff by improving communication between all – Board, staff and volunteers.
Weaknesses identified were poor marketing and publicity and the uncertainty of funding into the future. Ways of addressing these weaknesses included having both a funding and a marketing/publicity strategy. Funding uncertainty might be eased by researching the market, organising fundraising events, cutting costs and being more efficient, seeking sponsorship and working in partnership. The marketing weakness would require some investment – time and money – so that decisions could be made about future services, how they could be funded and what the target market was for raising awareness about them. Underlying all of this seems to be a feeling that firm decisions need to be made and acted upon as delay could be potentially very serious.
The draft Business Plan was distributed for everyone’s comments. The 5 areas chosen as objectives for the service are;
Feedback from the group suggests that these 5 areas are in line with most people’s thinking and that the Board can proceed to finalise the plan with some tweaking – possibly prioritising the area of financial sustainability.
Finally, we moved on to the area of concerns where we asked the group to voice concerns in a pro-active way. Below are the main ones noted;
After this, there was a closing round where everyone was invited to say whether their expectations had been met and what they would like to happen next.
We also asked for ideas to be posted into a Good Ideas box about the future and how we might do things differently. These are summarised below;
Very valuable day – a little short since there was so much to discuss. One idea is to offer as part of our services educational activities/workshops alongside mediation. This will raise awareness and attract funding, I believe.
Voluntary contributions from clients/ Coffee mornings to raise funds.
More frequent meetings with speakers/more meetings would be good!
Really useful day.
Good day – feel more involved and inspired & would attend again.
Event idea was excellent – helps achieve sense of ownership, idea sharing, direction of strategy.
Internet discussion forum.
Be more exact in relation to services to businesses – workplace not commercial mediation.
Accountability & deadlines could be set by the Board.
An extraordinary Board meeting is needed to decide on organisation status e.g. do we remain an Industrial & Provident or pursue charitable status?
RJ (Restorative Justice) is the way! Loved today and sharing ideas – great to be part of it.
Make a decision asap to go ahead with workplace mediation & training service.
Think seriously about going down the road of being a Social Enterprise, offering a range of services as well as mediation – training, restorative work in schools & the community and workplace mediation for small businesses and the voluntary sector (those with few employees and no HR department).
As people are motivated by personal benefit, maybe dangle the carrot of a course as part of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and then grab them for jobs within the organisation – and use part of the session to relay information, ask questions etc. Also, once trainee mediators have received their fantastic training, make it clear they have to do 1) so many mediations and 2) attend a certain number of meetings to retain their status. Otherwise, people can get trained for free & use it for personal progression and not the organisation/community.
As Hertfordshire is a vast county and mediators are scattered, would it be an idea to have cluster groups of mediators who meet up on a social/informative basis at someone’s house and maybe 1 mediator, who has more contact with the office, relays news, information etc and gathers ideas to feed those back to Maria and the Board. I would be happy to be a contact for Stevenage/Hitchin/Ware/Hertford type of area (Brenda).
So, what happens next, you may be thinking?
The Board will go away and do more work on the Plan to present it as a final document very shortly.
We would also ask that mediators who were unable to attend the event but would like to contribute their thoughts (particularly having read the above) get in touch and let us know what those thoughts are. There are a number of strands emerging from the discussions and these will be followed up and acted upon.
And, finally, thanks to everyone who came along and joined in the activities – it’s been a great support to the staff team to have your input and to know that you care strongly about the future of this service. And the lunch and biccies were also pretty good…………………
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Next month there will be a more traditional newsletter and we would like to include items from mediators. So, please let us have your contributions and we can use them to broaden the discussions and inform one another about what’s happening.
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