Family Mediation | Protocol IT Ltd

Jul

#Givemeyourhands

Tags: #fmaconf2016, givemeyourhands, loughborough, Social media, Technology, training, workshop

About the workshop…

#givemeyourhands

Social media has become the latest trend – everyone says you need to jump on board to survive – but as a mediator, is it relevant marketing tool for your service?

Last month, the Office of National Statistics released the latest bulletin on Internet access by households and individuals. It shows that during 2016 the internet was used daily or almost daily by 82% of adults (41.8 million) in Great Britain, compared with 78% (39.3 million) in 2015 and 35% (16.2 million) in 2006. In addition 70% of adults accessed the internet ‘on the go’ using a mobile phone or smartphone. The communications regulator Ofcom publishes annual statistics for the UK, the latest (2014) showing that the proportion of online adults using social networking sites rose to 72%. So why are so few family mediation services using it?

In keeping with the Family Mediators Association (FMA) annual conference theme of Shakespeare, the workshop is titled ‘Give me your hands and we’ll be friends” playing on the line from ‘A midsummer night’s dream’. Its goal is to explore the latest and greatest social media and digital marketing tools that are available, and hopefully inspire some delegates to embrace rather than fear it for their mediation services. It is targeted at those who have had a little dabble or no exposure to social media, and will provide a couple of key reasons why family mediation services should be using social media.

As a practical demonstration of what can be achieved with social media, we’ve created a video for YouTube two months prior to the conference. This has then been linked on a number of the social media platforms as a practical experiment. How successful will it be? Come along to the workshop to find out! You can watch the promotional video for the workshop here.

About the workshop facilitator…

Paul Gadd became involved in family mediation five years go, when asked for some IT advice from Sue West. He has become passionate about spreading the ‘good news’ of the power of mediation in the UK. He started his first listing website findmediation.co.uk five years to ago to help promote family mediation, and has since launched findcommunitymediation.co.uk and findcivilmediation.co.uk

This year he has helped organise and run Family Mediation Week 2016. and is on the UK Mediation Awareness Week 2016 working group using various digital media and social media streams.

Nov

Family mediation – a better way

Categories: Family Mediation

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The story behind ‘A Better Way’…

This special Christmas video was created to highlight the benefits of family mediation compared with going to court. It was launched at the Heaney Watson DR conference on the 26th November 2015.

Family mediation – a better way

The concept for the video came towards the end of 2014. Since Christmas is an especially stressful time for families, it’s a key time for informing people about dispute resolution options – including family mediation.

The characters and background were originally developed for Protocol IT by Kerf Design was used in a video ‘Understanding Family Mediation’. Developed with Professor Elizabeth Stokoe, it highlighted the benefits of family mediation compared with the court system, and was later adopted by the Ministry of Justice. The Christmas video was released on the 31st December 2014, but due to short timescales, elements of the video had been compromised. In October this year I decided to give it a make-over ready for Christmas this year.

Lisa Parkinson is a leading authority in the UK on Family mediation, writing many articles and books on the subject. Her book Family Mediation has become the authoritative and practical guide to family mediation, and has become a primary resource for many mediators. She has graciously acted as a sounding board and provided valued assistance in the project.

Having recently developed special versions of ‘Understanding Family Mediation’ and ‘Understanding Community Mediation’ for the District of Columbia Court with English and Spanish voice overs, it illustrated the effectiveness of the spoken word. I decided to use a child’s voice to add weight to the subject material.

Since video has a Christmas theme, I wanted to create backing music to reflect this. I set about composing something ‘festive’ to accompany the images based on the traditional ‘God rest ye merry gentlemen’ but with a more contemporary feel. As the video introduces the concept of the mediator, the beat changes from a steady backbeat to a more up tempo dance beat. As with any film, the addition of the voice over and music plays an important role in creating an emotional connection with the audience.

All of the elements are covered by UK copyright law and must not be copied or re-used in any form without written permission. However I am really keen to see it used to promote family mediation, and would be thrilled to see family mediation services embed the YouTube or Vimeo links on they websites:

YouTube link – Family mediation – a better Way

Vimeo link – Family mediation – a better Way

You can also find a shortened 15 second, wide screen version on Instagram.

Best wishes for a very happy Christmas.

Paul Gadd – Director of Protocol IT

Mar

Red nose day – fund raising

Categories: Family Mediation, Fund raising

Tags: Red nose day 2015, understanding

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Friday 13th March and it’s #comicrelief Friday or #RedNoseDay. We decided to do something a little different this year to promote the work of #comicrelief. As well as the traditional cake sale at the Innovations Centre at Loughborough University, we wanted to combine the fun activities along with raising the awareness of Family Mediation as an alternative to going through the courts.

Clearly Family Mediation is not a fun experience for any of the parties, but we decided in the same way that #comicrelief uses the opportunity to raise awareness of other serious subjects (like dementia) we could help to do the same.

We’ve developed our own special Red Nose characters (based on people we know!), and have then re-used our street scene from the video ‘Understanding Family Mediation‘ and hidden a number of our special nosey Red Nose Day characters in the scene. Click on the link below to the full sized image to see if you can find them all! We’ve set a number of targets for re-tweets, and each time we hit one of the targets (25/50/100/200/300/400) we will donate £10 to #comicrelief.

Spot the Red Noses.

To find out more about Family Mediation or search for a local family mediation service near you, go to our FindMediation search tool.

All posts in Family Mediation

#Givemeyourhands – workshop

#Givemeyourhands

Family mediation – a better way

The story behind ‘A Better Way’…

Red nose day – fund raising