The Family Relations Course is designed to meet the requirements for family mediation, parenting coordination and arbitration accreditation in Ontario. It is also an extremely valuable course for anyone working in the family law field.

The course runs over a period of three weeks. The on-demand recordings provide theory and skills to help family law professionals identify, assess and manage the dynamics of the individuals and families with whom they work. The course combines on-demand lectures, multimedia and tests, and coach-led individual and group exercises, case examples and discussions in mandatory-attendance weekly tutorials.

For the full course description, please see the Syllabus.

Course Objectives:

• To provide a more comprehensive understanding of family systems, family relationships, and family dynamics in diverse contexts, cultures, communities and couples.

• To develop an understanding of the concepts of attachment, childhood development and adverse childhood experiences to be able to better assess how these may impact the work of FDR professionals.

• To learn a range of tools, approaches and skills to assist in developing effective dispute resolution strategies for separating couples and families, including venograms, echograms, culturagrams, trauma-informed, transformative mediation and narrative mediation practices.

• To enhance knowledge of mental health, mental illness and mental distress to better enable professionals to recognize and address such issues when they present in mediation, arbitration and parenting coordination.

• To enhance knowledge of the process and impact of grief on parents and children.

• To learn the differentiated family dynamics and resultant procedural needs within LGBTQ2+ communities and apply that knowledge to FDR practice.

• To better understand and appreciate the diverse aspects and meaning of family for African, Caribbean and Black clients and to be able to apply this knowledge to practice.

• To learn the distinct aspects of family dynamics in faith-based communities.

• To better understand concepts of intergenerational trauma and how they can impact the work of family law dispute resolution professionals.