Meet Our Mediators
Stephanie Leibbrandt - Family Mediator - Gloucester & Tewkesbury
Stephanie has worked as a fully qualified mediator for over 15 years delivering mediation in Gloucestershire, she also has a supervisory role as a Professional Practice Consultant for other mediators, and is also qualified to talk with children when parents in mediation request that their children are consulted.
Before and during her early years as a mediator she worked in restorative justice and family group conferencing. Working within the Probation and Youth Offending services ignited her interest in the consequences of relationship and family breakdown which were often evident in the circumstances she worked in. While her own family was young Stephanie worked with children both as a play-leader, part owning and running her own facility, a family helper and as a foster parent.
Stephanie has run businesses and managed mediation and child counselling services. She is a qualified life coach and master NLP practitioner. She has studied other various tools designed to assist people experiencing difficulties or impasse and uses these where appropriate in her practice.
Stephanie has knowledge of all the various forms of mediation techniques from therapeutic through narrative to solution-focussed. She adapts her style to the needs of each client respecting the uniqueness of their situation and needs. She is an experienced community mediator and trained in workplace mediation.
Apart from her mediation work Stephanie works with individuals looking to change aspects of their lives through www.time-to-change.co.uk and she currently offers appointments in Tewkesbury and Gloucester.
Mandy Nardiello - Family Mediator - Kidderminster & Stourbridge
Mandy is qualified in both community and family mediation and has worked as a mediator for five years delivering mediation in Worcestershire and mediation in West Midlands. She is experienced in direct work with children, both within and outside the mediation process. In previous employment Mandy was a Home Start co-ordinator for 13 years, where she gained vast experience of working with families experiencing difficult and complex situations, working closely with both adults and children.
Mandy has also undertaken a number of voluntary roles: Nightstop mediator (Parents and teenagers), child worker for Noah’s Ark (Family bereavement) and working within women’s refuges (support worker).
Mandy has a working knowledge of different forms of mediation; she combines this with active listening skills and the ability to empathise with clients, enabling clients to focus on the decisions that need to be made and to reach their own outcome. She recognises the uniqueness of each situation and adapts her approach accordingly.
Anne-Lise Wall - Family Mediator - Cheltenham & Stow-on-the-Wold
Anne-Lise is a senior mediator accredited with the Family Mediators Association and the Family Mediation Council. She practiced as a family lawyer for over 30 years and was the senior partner in her own law practice before merging with a larger practice where she worked as a Consultant Family Lawyer and mediator. She was one of the first family lawyers to train as a mediator in the early 1990s.
Anne-Lise’s career as a Family Lawyer led her to believe strongly that the pain and distress of the divorce court could be avoided using the mediation process. By talking in a calm, supported and structured way, couples can resolve difficult issues relating to parenting their children, or dealing with their finances following separation or divorce, in such a way that they retain control. Anne-Lise has mediated very many cases in this way with great success.
Anne-Lise is also qualified to have Direct Consultation with Children in mediation. However, in her experience, once the children are aware that their parents are working together to find solutions, they often find this very beneficial.
Vernon Wright - Family Mediator - Redditch
Vernon has amassed a decade’s worth of experience in the provision of focused, efficient and responsive family mediation services to families in the West Midlands, Derbyshire and now Worcestershire. This experience has been acquired through service delivery on behalf of Birmingham District Family Mediation, West Midlands Family Mediation, National Family Mediation, Relate Family Mediation and Mediation and More in Redditich.
Vernon is fully qualified and accredited in all aspects of family mediation including direct child consultations by the Family Mediation Council.
Previously, Vernon worked as a project manager/consultant with private and public sector organisations conducting research, business planning and feasibility studies, managing and satisfying various stakeholder interests and requirements.
Vernon is a versatile and experienced Family Mediator with a clear understanding of the requirements to deliver effective mediated outcomes; facilitating the conveyance of disparate views to mutually coherent solutions employing analytical, lateral and creative thinking. This is all underpinned by an awareness of the principles associated with Diversity/Equal Opportunities, Confidentiality and Safeguarding, particularly for vulnerable adults and children.
Claire-Elaine Arthurs - Commerial and Community Mediator
Claire-Elaine is a CEDR Accredited Mediator, Solicitor and Business Consultant
“Claire-Elaine is a competent, efficient, understanding and delightful person . Her knowledge and insight have been invaluable.” - Client Feedback
Professional Background
Claire-Elaine is a Partner at Gunnercooke LLP. She has a reputation for her robust representation of parties when necessary, but the majority of her clients never set foot near a Court due to her solution orientated approach. Alongside her legal work, Claire-Elaine also acts as a Non-Executive Director and Business Consultant.
Claire-Elaine has been involved in bringing matters to a successful resolution through mediation for over a decade. She has a wide range of expertise, particularly in property and commercial disputes.
Due to her dual qualifications as a Solicitor and Business Consultant, her approach is insightful, commercial, and pragmatic, affording the parties an opportunity to make informed decisions within a confidential and privileged process. She keeps sight of parties’ respective interests and is able to use her insight and empathy to facilitate a pragmatic resolution of their dispute.
Caroline Lamming-Chowen - Civil and Commercial Mediator
Caroline is a Business graduate with a highly varied career in the public and private sector, including public health, clinical commissioning, and local authorities. Her broad background in education, business, health and law has included advocacy work in the areas of property, disability, armed-forces complaints, and clinical negligence with a keen understanding of health policies and practices. Caroline is highly experienced in both private sector and public sector negotiations and brings a wider range of understanding to her mediation practice.
Caroline strongly advocates that mediation provides a safe opportunity to explore and narrow issues through facilitated and open dialogue; understanding the facts of a dispute and allowing conversations where parties can re-examine their own positions. Caroline sees mediation as the opportunity to seek resolution through reflection, safety, good listening, and the opportunity to be heard with a style that is facilitative, and outcome focussed. Caroline brings to mediation her coaching style and desire to help people to resolve conflict.
Trained and accredited by PDSL mediations, Caroline has a particular focus on commercial and civil disputes with a emphasis on: personal injury, clinical negligence, service and contract disputes, regulations and policy and employment disputes.
Confidentiality
Mediation is a confidential process. We will not give information to your legal or other advisers, or to any other third parties, without obtaining your joint permission. There are, however, two exceptions to this confidentiality.
The first would be where you, or any other person (most particularly a child) is at risk of serious harm. In these exceptional circumstances, we would take the necessary action to safeguard/protect the child or adult concerned, in line with both the Family Mediation Council and the College of Mediators’ Codes of Practice.
The second is where we are required to make disclosure to the appropriate government authorities under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and/or the relevant money laundering regulations.
Affiliations
All our mediators are individual members of the College of Mediators, www.collegeofmediators.co.uk, who are members of the Family Mediation Council.
All our mediators are members and they are all required to undertake regular training to maintain our high professional standards and update their practice. In addition some mediators are members of other recognised organisations.
Our mediators are professional, experienced and independent. They are registered with the Family Mediation Council (FMC) as FMC Accredited Family Mediators (FMCA) for family and child arrangements, which authorises us to conduct Mediation Information and Assessment Meetings – MIAMs.
Complaints and Compliments
We welcome constructive comments about the service we provide, and we also periodically seek the views of a sample of users. A copy of our complaints procedure is available on request.
File Storage
We will return any original documents requested during mediation to you as soon as we can. Mediation files are securely stored electronically at the main office and confidentially destroyed six months after the case closure date (the last contact with the mediator). In financial cases the mediator will destroy any sensitive financial material as soon as they have completed a financial schedule. Once a file has been destroyed, any further contact will be considered a new referral and case.