Marian Roberts

Experience Keywords

International family mediation; alternative dispute resolution (ADR); child abduction mediation.; family mediation; mediation; professional regulation; professional standards; quality assurance

Research Summary

Marian Roberts is qualified as a barrister and a social worker. She has been in continuous practice as a family mediator since 1982, working in one of the first (and largest) family mediation services to be established in this country, The SE London Family Mediation Bureau, set up in 1979. Her practice focuses on high conflict disputes over children. She has been recognized under the Legal Services Commission''s competence assessment procedure for the purposes of practising in publicly funded family mediation cases. She is a member of the College of Mediators.

During the 1990''s she was responsible for overseeing the creation and development of National Family Mediation''s national training and professional practice framework. This included the development of policies, practice guidelines and training on mediation in relation to children, cross-cultural mediation and domestic abuse. She was co-manager, with Dr. Judith Trowell (Tavistock Clinic) and Professor Michael King (Law Department, Brunel University) of the first child protection mediation scheme to operate in the UK, funded by the Department of Health (piloted 1995-1999).

She was a member of the reunite Steering Group on Child Abduction and Mediation and one of its pool of mediators in a pilot (culminating in a report in October, 2006) exploring the potential of mediation in bi-national child abduction situations. She continues to co-mediate in cases of child abduction under the auspices of Reunite.

A Governor of the UK College of Family Mediators (the professional regulatory body for all family mediators) until 2006, and member (and former Chair) of its Professional Standards Committee, she also remains closely involved in the development of the regulatory framework for mediation generally. This includes having been a member of the Legal Service Commission''s Working Group on the Mediation Quality Mark and currently, a member of its Mediation Advisory Group.

She is a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, teaching on the London University Masters in Law (LL.M) Alternative Dispute Resolution course since 1989 and now the LSE ADR LL.M. She is Professorial Research Associate in the Department of Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, teaching on its ADR LL.M.