Special Grant Development Project:
COLLABORATIVE EVALUATION/MEDIATION
(AGING AND INCAPACITATED FAMILY MEMBERS)
OFI has pioneered the use of a collaborative evaluation and mediation process for family disputes involving custody and parenting time during and post divorce. This process helps family members focus on the best interests of the children, and provides a process for helping parents express complex concerns while providing a concrete solution based on complete information.
OFI is interested in expanding the use of this collaborative evaluation/mediation (CEM) model to the issues, complexities and disputes of families who are in transition due to the aging or incapacitation of a family member.
Whether this is an elderly parent, a person who has survived accident or trauma, these situations can be very devisive for families, and difficult to process for courts. Placement of elderly can involve legal, social, financial, and emotional issues, and involve medical, care facilities, insurance companies, neighbors and other systems.
Our courts will not be able to handle the influx of cases involving powers of attorney, adult guardianship, incompetency, and other legal responses, which often miss the complexity of the situation. Siblings, parents and spouses can disagree about placement and care, as we have seen from recent headlines in the Schiavo case. We need a better, more coherent and comprehensive approach to conflict and dispute within families.
These situations could benefit from an organized approach to collating all the relevant information in a complete evaluation process, that allows all family members and their helping professionals their input. It is critical that there be a better way to make important placement decisions - with full information, and a mediated agreement by family to the plan of action.
OFI submitted a grant proposal to Meyer Memorial Trust August 15, 2005, for $289,000, but the proposal was denied October 5, 2005. The grant proposal included a 2 year scope. The first year would have been spent researching, developing the model, eliciting support from the health care and elder care community, and also from the courts. The second year involved setting up and evaluating two pilot project sites, one rural and one urban, to try the model and further refine it. OFI Directors John Deihl, Richard Sessions, and Executive Director Alison Taylor, plus Judith Chambliss, a local mediator with training in geriatric concerns, worked to develop this opportunity.
Recently OFI has met with the Elder Mediation section of OMA to see if we can collaborate with this group to develop services. Alison Taylor will be working with the Elder Mediation program in East Gresham in April 2008 to do training for mediators currently working with elder disputes.
This area serves as a rich opportunity for OFI and other community collaborators to work together to develop programs and services that will help courts and families.
