Thursday, March 20th
8 a.m PST| 11 a.m EST
Our special guest this week, Dr Barbara Sunderland Manousso, Ph.D., MPH, CFRE, will Present on:
Family Mediation: Elder and Adult Care, Not Divorce or Child Custody
Family Mediation includes elder care and adult mediation, not just divorce or child custody. It also includes mediation resolution between family members for a variety of issues, ranging from miscommunication to no communication. Our sessions are not therapy, but an hour of mediation can make a healthy difference in a quality relationship between and among siblings, cousins, and other family combinations.
Family dynamics are complicated. They have taken years to evolve or erode and they are further compounded by the transitions inherent in the changing lifestyle, relationships, and needs of an elder or care-driven family member. Family disputes that have been simmering for years often can obscure the best intentions of all involved. Mediation enables proactive families to have good discussions and opportunities to resolve conflicts that could potentially tear them apart financially and emotionally. In mediated family meetings, everyone has the opportunity to privately explore the needs and feelings of all involved and to deal rationally with the problems and issues under discussion outside of a courtroom. The family knows what is best for them, and mediation gives them the vehicle to make their own best decisions.
When a family needs a quality conversation to make decisions that might include the health, well-being, financial management, and end-of-life decisions of a loved senior, family mediation is ideal. The mediation can be held at our conference room, your dining room table, an assisted living or nursing facility, or where the senior might reside or a conversation needs to be held. The objective is to have the family together and to make decisions that support the relationship of the whole family. We strive for a quality conversation that is assisted by a third party neutral, the mediator.
When you’re thinking about where to donate, please consider supporting the food bank, Rhode Island Food Bank
Our presenter:
Barbara Sunderland Manousso, Ph.D., MPH, CFRE Fellow, World Mediation Organization Texas Distinguished Credentialed Mediator Dr. Barbara Sunderland Manousso, Ph.D., M.P.H., CFRE, is CEO and founder of Manousso Mediation and Arbitration, LLC: Solution2Conflict. She has trained, lectured, and practiced mediation and arbitration worldwide, since 1993. Her PodCast, Manousso Musing, is available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. Dr. Manousso earned her baccalaureate from Brown University; Master of Public Health, from the University of Texas School of Public Health; and Ph.D., from Nova Southeastern University. She attended South Texas College of Law. For over the past thirty years, Dr. Manousso has been involved in shaping worldwide Family Mediation for Elder and Adult Care by training other mediators to help families have new conversations to find solutions to family challenge.
As a trainer and lecturer on family mediation beyond divorce and child custody, she has worked interculturally and intergenerationally with families reinventing their communication. She served as a commissioner for the state of Texas under three governors to elevate care in long-term care facilities, was recognized as a Federal Longterm Care Ombudsman, served on the University of Texas Consortium on Aging as the only member not on Texas Medical Center campus, has participated with the city, state, AARP, and United Way programs on aging, and for the American Bar Association helped create an elder abuse profile tool. Her research and doctoral dissertation centered on the Executive Director’s Conflict Management Skills and Its Impact on Nursing Home Resident Safety. Recently published, she wrote on workplace conflict, De Gruyter Handbook of Organizational Conflict Management, The HearT of Mediation chapter, for the seminal business conflict management textbook, as well as authoring numerous other articles and presentations.
She is close to publishing a mediation book on critical race theory and cultural diversity in family mediation. In 2019, Dr. Manousso received the highest honor in Texas mediation, the Suzanne Adams Award from the Texas Association of Mediators. In 2018, she was recognized for a Lifetime Achievement Award in mediation and arbitration from the Association for Conflict Resolution Houston Chapter, A Houston Business Journal Mentor, and A Woman Who Means Business by the Houston Business Journal. In 2010, she was recognized as One of the Fifty Most Influential Women in Houston by the Houston Women’s Magazine. The 2016 to 2019 Chair of the Association for Conflict Resolution International section for Training, Education, and Research Committee and formerly Health Care Section and Workplace sections.
For over ten years, she was adjunct faculty at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX, in Global Dr Barbara Sunderland Manousso’s 2024 brief bio Conflict Management, training foreign service officers and a guest lecturer at Brown University’s School of Public Health in Conflict Management. As a business owner for over 60 years, in 1992, she has been recognized by the Egyptian Suez Government for training Egypt’s Ministers of Health. In 2003, she trained the Ministers of Health in Ireland on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and hospital care. In 1972, she was recognized by the U.S. White House as Rhode Island’s Outstanding Small Business. She has been the treasurer of the Texas Mediation Trainers Round Table since 2020, serving on the Executive Committee, the Texas consortium of ADR trainers. She also served as president and now board member of the Association for Conflict Resolution Houston Chapter and the Houston Gerontological Society.
Offered by Will Work For Food, founded by Natalie Armstrong-Motin (www.HowToMarketMyMediationPractice.com and moderated by Jeff Kichaven (www.JeffKichaven.com ) and Jean Lawler (www.LawlerADR.com)
This worldwide conversation will be like nothing else. Join in! Share, learn, have fun, and raise money for food banks.