The free mediation clinic hosted by Susquehanna University was one of a few exceptional ideas that have germinated around the court system in recent years to improve the delivery of justice.
Run by attorney Allan D. Sobel, with able support, the mediation clinic served Union and Snyder County courts with trained volunteer mediators who helped people work out mainly domestic disputes associated with child custody and divorce.
Mediation was an opportunity for parents to reach binding agreements on their own for the sake of their children. The operating theory was that such self-designed agreements would have more personal investment by those who had to live with them, and the mediation process would reduce the time and money spent on custody cases in the county courts.
Established for a little more than a year, the embryonic mediation clinic was just hitting its stride when Susquehanna University closed it down last week. Thinly staffed from the beginning, the center was temporarily without its director when a key staff member resigned for more permanent work elsewhere. Without full-time champions, the 18 trained mediators were a resource without a bridge to the court system.
When the decision to discontinue was announced, it was not clear how much effort had been expended to continue the project, nor were operating terms, seed financing and the risk exposure explained. It was a done deal.
If we could collect and measure the effort and expense that goes into simply keeping it all together, we might discover that social support is a big piece of the Valley’s economy.
Sadly, those occupied in the public and nonprofit sectors with efforts to help or otherwise deal with people whose lives are going or have gone off the rails may be the busiest workforce in the region. Truth is, the work is necessary, even if clear-cut victories are few and permanent solutions elusive. So people do what they are trained to do, what they are supposed to do and rarely wonder how it all adds up.
Lean (and apparently fragile), the free mediation clinic looked like that all-too-rare idea that could draw out the best in people at their worst of times so they could get themselves back on the rails at minimum expense to everyone else.
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