Looking back on the child only mediations I have worked on during the past 8 months, I have noticed an interesting trend. It seems that younger parents (where one or both parents are under 28) are emerging as the most successful age group when it comes to mediation outcomes; success defined as achieving full or partial proposals and improved communication as a direct result of attending mediation.

I initially put this down to the duration of the relationships in each group. Older parents were more likely to have been in their relationship for longer and might have more embedded issues than their younger peers. However the difference in the average span of the relationships in both groups was only approx. 18 months – 3.7 years in the older group compared to 2.4 in the younger group. Is this gap significant enough to explain the disparity?

And are we seeing enough separated young parents in Mediation? Stats from the MOJ for the first quarter of 2014 showed a worrying lack of take up. In London for example the LA reported that only two families, where one parent or both were under 25, achieved full or partial agreements between Jan and April of that year. That’s right. Just 2 young families in the whole of London.

Could more be done to encourage younger parents to come to mediation? After all my experience shows that once they get to mediation they turn out to be rather good at it.