Congratulations to Olga Ivari and Kevin Malone who celebrated seven years with RSI in November! Olga and Kevin manage RSI’s mediation programs in Illinois. Olga is the Program Coordinator for RSI’s Lake County Foreclosure Mediation Program and Kevin is the Program Manager for RSI’s Kane County Foreclosure Mediation Program and Child Protection Mediation Program.
Please join us in congratulating Olga and Kevin for all of their hard work!
I cannot believe we are already in the last month of this decade! What a wonderful and full year 2019 has been here at RSI. From court program evaluations to trainings and conferences, we have had a very exciting year and continued to make great strides in serving communities with court alternative dispute resolution! As RSI’s Resource Center Director and Court ADR Connection Editor, I have had the pleasure of sharing each exciting moment with you this year. To culminate 2019, I am looking back on all of RSI’s monumental moments this year.
This year, our Resource Center continued to provide a wealth of court ADR information and we expanded our Research Library with a plethora of new resources, including:
We also celebrated growth and several important milestones this year. In February, Alyson Carrel, Clinical Associate Professor and Assistant Director of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Center on Negotiation and Mediation, joined our Board of Directors. In March, Jennifer Shack celebrated 20 years at RSI! In May, RSI was honored with the Association of Family and Conciliation Court’s Irwin Cantor Innovative Program Award, which recognizes innovation in court-connected or court-related programs! In August, the Honorable Nancy Katz (ret.), who works with JAMS as a mediator and an arbitrator, joined our Board of Directors. Last, but not least, this month, our program coordinators Olga Ivari and Kevin Malone celebrated six years at RSI! Olga is the Program Coordinator for our Lake County Foreclosure Mediation Program and Kevin is the Program Manager for both our Kane County Foreclosure Mediation Program and Child Protection Mediation Program.
This year, our organization continued to explore ways to serve the court ADR community. Under a planning grant from the Family and Interpersonal Resilience and Safety Transformation (FIRST) Fund, we spent time this year studying the current landscape of intimate partner violence (IPV) screening tools. To support this research, in June, RSI convened a summit of experts in mediation, family law and intimate partner violence (IPV) to help us explore whether an online tool (such as a website or an app) could improve the frequency and quality of mediator screening for IPV prior to mediation. The result of our research and findings are summarized in our report, Considering an Online Pre-Mediation Tool to Screen for Intimate Partner Violence: Findings & Blueprint, which explores the gap between “best practices” and reality when it comes to mediators screening for IPV and discusses how technology may help address these deficits.
Executive Director Susan Yates and Director of Research Jen Shack also did a bit of traveling this year, attending and presenting at conferences and seminars across the U.S. In April, Susan and Jen headed to Minneapolis for the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution Annual Conference. While there, Jen presented on what her evaluations of child protection mediation programs in Chicago and Washington, D.C. can tell other courts about how to design programs that are effective, efficient and address the needs of all mediation participants. In October, Susan conducted a series of three seminars on “Building Your Court’s Civil ADR System” at New Mexico’s statewide ADR conference in Santa Fe. In November, Susan and Jen also attended the 2019 International Online Dispute Resolution Form. While there, Jen presented on what factors should be examined when evaluating litigants’ experience of online dispute resolution. If you are interested in learning about how RSI can work with your court program in 2020, send a message to our staff!
Phew! Who knew so much could happen in one year?! As December (and this decade!) nears its close, I know that each of us here at RSI are thankful for a wonderful 2019. We look forward to all that awaits in 2019!
On June 11, RSI convened a summit of experts in mediation, family law and intimate partner violence (IPV) to help us explore whether and how a tool, such as a website or app, could improve the frequency and quality of mediator screening for IPV prior to mediation. Generally, IPV screening is intended to ensure parties will be safe while coming to, participating in and leaving mediation and also ensure there has not been coercive control that would impede a party’s ability to exercise self-determination in mediation.
Unfortunately, screening is not practiced universally by mediators and approaches to screening vary widely. While some mediators employ sophisticated screening techniques, many mediators do not screen, or rely on factors such as whether an order of protection has been filed to determine whether to mediate. This means some mediators may not uncover critical information and may risk re-victimizing survivors and empowering abusers.
The group of Chicagoland-based and national experts spent the day digging into questions such as whether potential downsides outweigh likely benefits, who would be the audience for this kind of tool and how it might function. One critical question in this project is whether a tool like this is a good idea, or will its potential misuse outweigh its benefits? Overall, the group of experts was positive about the tool while also raising a number of important issues that would need to be considered in developing it.
One major theme was the role the tool could play in increasing mediator knowledge, especially about IPV, how to screen and what to do with the results. The experts valued the idea of giving mediators a thoughtful dialogue guide that would empower them to explore issues around safety and coercive control. They stressed that a tool could be very beneficial if it guided the mediator through the screening process and also provided information, such as how to refer a party for IPV services. Conversely, the group raised concerns about whether a tool could provide sufficient training for mediators to use the tool responsibly.
Relatedly, the group also discussed the usability of the tool. Ultimately, they wanted to create something that a large number of mediators would use, particularly those who are new to mediating family cases or do so on an infrequent basis. A chief concern centered on how long and robust of a guided experience the tool should provide. Finding a balance between making sure a mediator has comprehensive conversations with all parties, on the one hand, and making the guide concise enough that mediators actually use it, on the other, will be a key challenge.
Having identified some of the challenges and barriers, the group brainstormed some features that the tool could employ to address these challenges. Access to resources for the participants would be greatly beneficial, as would educational videos for the mediators. The experts were keen on using visualizations, such as radar charts, as a way to summarize and map participant responses, and identify particular areas of concern.
These are but a few of the takeaways from this informative and collaborative event. RSI is in the process of developing a full report that will summarize the consensus for developing such a tool, and lay out the steps that would be needed to make this tool a reality. RSI sincerely thanks all of the experts who volunteered their time to provide their thoughtful insights, and the FIRST Fund for their support of this project.
Images from RSI’s IPV Screening Summit. Photos taken by Gahyun Kim and collaged by Nicole Wilmet.
