Cuts in funding

Brenda Cavanaugh, Executive Director of Community Mediation, New Haven, Connecticut (CT), USA, informs me that mediation services are not recession proof across the Atlantic (www.community-mediation.org).

I met Brenda when preparing to take Peaceworks very successful Mediation Skills Training programme to the USA. Communty Mediation generously offered to host the course and also wanted an additional session for their volunteers on some of the 'soft skills' essential to any mediator's tool kit e.g. how to maintain a non-anxious presence.

In recent email correspondence Brenda tells me that their contract to supply mediation services to the Judicial Branch of the criminal courts is to be terminated as of October 31 this year. Two other centres in CT are similarly affected. One of these in the city of Hartford, state capital of the Connecticut, and its third largest city, the Mediation service has also lost its contract, and so all community mediation in the city will cease. So often statutory funding has a far greater reach than we ever can imagine.

One is left wondering as to the wisdom of the specific cuts governments make. Recession surely increases the need for speedy, economic settlement to disputes; and mediation is surely the best vehicle for achieving this. However, not in Connecticut it seems!