My concern is based on having been part of several serious conversations on standards which tend to start out with high aspirations: If we demonstrate our willingness to sign up to high standards then that can only do us good as a profession. Right? Sadly there is always someone in the room with a vested commercial interest and often that can be the "state" as much as it can be someone with a training company. If the standards are set too high then the training is expensive to do and less attractive to customers. Some would say that was a good outcome! Why do 40 hours if 24 will "do"? I did a quick survey (not scientific) of the per hour cost of 40 hour courses and 24 hour courses and the lower end comes out as 'more money for less effort' for the training organisation and lower cost for 'approval' for the participant. Tick the box. Some might say that was win-win If those organisations can say something like "our course meets the standards for such and such body" then they are likely to keep the standard.

I tried to set some high standards for CPD (CLE) with a group of very experienced mediators in the UK. I proposed a system which meant that they could include many activities, where they got extra value for mentoring (brilliant way of keeping you on your toes) and a cycle of three years to allow for learning and integration. Everyone agreed that it was a good, comprehensive and creative system. An aspirational system. A couple of cynics even did a review of the past three years and found that they qualified. They were pleasantly surprised. The number of hours was 270 for the three year period. Even with the evidence that it was achievable, it was deemed too onerous to be adopted.

The EU Directive has prompted all the European countries to look at mediation. It is optional to impose mediation within the domestic context but several have taken the opportunity to do so because it is seen as a cost saving mechanism for the state. However, when the state takes something on it has to provide it for everyone and the increase in use demands a supply of mediators which the state then has to ‘recommend’. The importance of the EU Directive has been known for a long time: some have prepared well in advance and others have been very human – leaving it to the last minute. So in some countries the only way the state could feel comfortable that there would be no comeback was if they made it part of the standards that to mediate you had to be a lawyer and if you were a lawyer then you knew all about mediation and so you wouldn’t need so much training… A case argued by Bar associations and lawyer groups across the EU. The point is that this assumes that mediation requires no more than a few hours to “get”.

As a trainer of many new mediators, I find that the background of a person is almost irrelevant to the essential skills. The good students are good because they have a certain attitude and aptitude which may be enhanced by the way they use their background knowledge but NOT because of their background knowledge. So in that sense I see all standards as a barrier to entry because they are seeking to select on the basis of the past and not the present. Of course the other sense of barrier to entry is based on the intention to select on any criteria which may have nothing to do with the ability to be good at the role.

It is all about intentions and effects for me.

Thanks again for your insights.

I am not sure that I buy the certification is designed to be a barrier to entry argument. A very good example of the benefits of certification can be found in nursing.

Certificate nursing programs developed in order to expedite getting people on the floor with some guarantee that they had been exposed to practical basic nursing skills. Rather than a barrier, this served as a portal for individuals (mostly women) to gain entry to the medical professions with less initial investment in time and education. In this case, the certification meant something – you had an employee that had already been exposed to basic practical skills that could be refined in the field.

As you point out at the beginning of the post, trust is the key. If the certification is not trustworthy, then it has limited (if any) value.

If we bear that in mind then we have a better chance of minimising the risk of making the mistakes that other professions have made in the past, the main one being creating a bureaucratic system that costs a lot to administer. By way of example: an insurer told me recently that if mediators were regulated you would likely add two noughts to the professional indemnity premium cost. That in itself would exclude a large number of potentially very good mediators.

It's striking to me how position-centered discussions of mediation credentialing and standards often becomes. It's not difficult at all to imagine and find examples of credentialing systems that are compatible with the underlying interests of maintaining a diverse world of practice in our field.