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Mediation and conflict resolution

CJI provides restorative conflict resolution services for youth, adults, and older adults who are friends, family members, neighbours, teammates, coworkers, and classmates. We also work with victims and offenders.

How Mediation Works

Whether you are at odds with a neighbour, coworker, classmate, family member or someone who committed a crime, CJI can help you with a mediation in Waterloo Region.

Steps

  1. First, you speak with a CJI staff member to gauge whether our services are fit.

  2. Next, trained facilitators meet with you and other mediation participants individually to ensure all are prepared for a dialogue.

  3. A facilitator will arrange an in-person or virtual gathering if all participants are prepared to meet.

  4. At the end of the dialogue, you may leave with a better understanding of the situation, yourself, and others involved in the conflict.

Types of Mediation

Elder Mediation

Crime & Harm Mediation

Identity-based Harm Dialogue

Workplace Mediation

Housing Mediation

Family & Youth Mediation and Conflict Coaching

Sexual Harm Dialogue

School-based Mediation Training

What to expect

During a mediation, trained facilitators ensure that everyone has a chance to speak and to listen. Participants discuss how a situation impacted them and ask questions. All are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, listen to others perspectives and to repair harm. At the end of the mediation, participants leave with a mutually acceptable plan to move forward. Mediation services are not therapy or group counselling.

Types of Mediation

CJI’s mediation and dialogue services help community members connect when relationships are broken.

Elder Mediation

CJI’s Elder Mediation Services offers older adults (55+) and their families, friends, caregivers, service providers and others in their lives a process to address conflict, elder abuse, and decision-making that affect their vital relationships and their long-term wellbeing.
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Crime and Harm Mediation

CJI’s Restorative Responses to Harm & Crime (RRHC) provides dialogue services for people impacted by the criminal justice system: those who have caused harm, those who have been harmed, and the broader community.

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Identity-based Harm Dialogue

CJI’s Sulah service assists community members who have caused or experienced identity-based harm, and those who support them, to have challenging conversations. Recognizing that punishment will not undo harm or help people unlearn discrimination, Sulah offers non-punitive approaches to fostering acceptance and belonging.

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Workplace Mediation

CJI provides organizations and business partners, employers, and employees an informal,
voluntary, and confidential mediation process to address workplace conflict including
deteriorating performances, sexual harassment, discipline issues, personality differences etc.

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Housing Mediation

CJI assists neighbours, roommates, landlords and tenants to address conflicts over noise complaints, property boundaries, personal differences, parking complaints, snow removal, landlord/tenant issues, etc. Diffusing these issues leads to safer, more inclusive neighbourhoods. Referrals can be received from city bylaw officers, police officers, community agencies, or individuals.

Service is at no cost and voluntary.

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Family & youth Mediation and Conflict Coaching

CJI facilitates mediations among family members in conflict. We also offer Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) for families whose children are at risk of abuse and neglect. Our Conflict Coaching empowers co-parents, caregivers and youth to learn conflict resolution, communication, and problem-solving skills.
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Sexual Harm Dialogue

CJI’s Facilitated Dialogue provides people impacted by sexual harm with a way to have sensitive conversations. Recognizing that most sexual violence occurs within the context of relationships and families, Facilitated Dialogues works to heal broken relationships.

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School-based Mediation Training

CJI trains, coaches, and mentors elementary and high school educators to facilitate classroom meetings and restorative circles to reduce and resolve student conflict. In addition, we train and mentor students as peer mediators.
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“The work we need to do as human beings is to more justly and fairly engage with our community and humanity at large. This requires us to be willing to invest in difficult conversations.”

Mediation Participant

“You wouldn’t understand how much you’ve helped me – just having another person to talk to about everything does wonders for me.”

Program Participant

“It was our hope that Community Justice Initiatives would help to mediate tough conversations, and identify next steps so we could move forward. We’re happy to say that they did that and so much more… We would strongly recommend CJI to anyone experiencing conflict in their business, organization, or community.”

Members of the Board of Directors, Rainbow Chorus Waterloo-Wellington

FAQ

Is there a fee for CJI's mediation services?
Many of our mediation services are free. However, we do charge a nominal fee for family mediations requiring the development of a parenting plan. We also have a sliding fee scale for our housing and workplace mediations.
Mediation is a conflict resolution process used to help individuals, families, neighbours, coworkers and classmates to resolve conflict. During a mediation, trained facilitators ensure that everyone has a chance to speak and to listen. Participants discuss how a situation impacted them and ask questions. All are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, listen to others’ perspectives and to repair harm. At the end of the mediation, participants leave with a mutually acceptable plan to move forward. Forgiveness is not essential to a mediation. In a victim-offender mediation, the full benefit of victim’s needs being met and offender accountability can occur completely without forgiveness.
Mediation is a voluntary process that requires the engagement of all parties involved to be successful. When an inquiry is made, a CJI Service Coordinator will contact all parties to confirm their desire to participate. If there is consensus to proceed with mediation, two mediators are assigned to the case. Mediators have an initial confidential one-on-one meeting with each participant, called case development. During case developments, mediators explore the relationship and the causes of conflict from each participant’s perspective. After case developments are concluded, the mediator will arrange a face-to-face mediation with all participants.
Meeting rooms at CJI’s offices serve well as a neutral location for mediations. Where appropriate, we also host mediations in other neutral spaces such as a community centres. Many of our Elder Mediations occur where older adults are residing – their homes, retirement homes, long term care facilities, etc.
CJI’s mediators are trained and supervised volunteers who have completed the Transformative Mediation Training through Conrad Grebel University College. Mediators tend to work in pairs, a lead mediator and co-mediator. Lead mediators have extensive experience plus additional training.
A victim impact statement (VIS) is a written statement that describes the harm or loss suffered by the victim of an offence in his or her own words. These statements give the victim a voice and can be read in court by the victim or someone else. A VIS is important because the court considers it when sentencing the offender. A VIS also gives the offender an opportunity to reflect on the harm he or she caused another person.
Mediation works best if all people involved in a situation participate. Offenders are crucial to the process in that they can answer victims’ questions and can talk with the victim about ways to repair the emotional and material harm (to the degree that it is possible). The process can also be beneficial to the offender as s/he is able to take direct and personal accountability for their actions, as well as learn directly from the victim about the consequences of their actions.
Protecting participants’ safety is our first concern. Our service carefully screens cases for safety before they meet face-to-face. Our mediators also use strategies and specific techniques to ensure that participants are safe. After all options have been exhausted, the face-to-face meeting does not happen if the participants do not feel safe.

Other Questions or want more information?

CJI creatively, and innovatively applies restorative justice principles to challenging community problems.

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