Family Centers and City of Stamford to Form Mediation ProgramFamily Centers and the City of Stamford’s Mayor’s Youth Services Bureau have recently collaborated to create a new program that would provide mediation services to city families. Called Mediation Encourages New Direction (MEND), the program will be managed by Family Centers and will help the Mayor’s Youth Services Bureau’s Juvenile Review Board (JRB) resolve cases of parent-teen conflict. The JRB is a volunteer council of police officers, mental health and substance abuse specialists, youth, Stamford Public Schools personnel, youth workers, Department of Children and Families staff, and juvenile probation officers that meets monthly to review the cases of youths charged with a misdemeanor for the first time. The MEND program is expected to launch in early summer, and services will be administered by a group of specially-trained mediation professionals. Initially, the program will serve families appearing before the JRB. However, Family Centers and the Mayor’s Youth Services Bureau are exploring funding options to make the program available to the entire community. The idea for the MEND program was formulated late last year when the JRB discovered that mediation services often garner positive results when working with first-time offenders. By allowing teen offenders and their parents to resolve their issues in a supportive, non-punitive atmosphere, the JRB found families are more likely to resolve their conflicts and work toward acceptable and beneficial outcomes. More importantly, mediation has been shown to help families in crisis avoid court intervention. For more information on the MEND program, contact Leslie P. Sexer, Family Centers’ director of Clinical and Outreach Services, at 203-324-3167 or Mary Willis, Director of the City of Stamford’s Mayor’s Youth Services Bureau, at 203-977-5674.
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