New York City Child Permanency Mediation Program Evaluation

The evaluation of the New York City Child Permanency Mediation Program was intended to provide information to help to answer the question, “Does mediation work?” There is, of course, no single measure of whether mediation, or any program, “works.” Therefore, the evaluation considered a variety of possible outcomes to answer the questions: “Is mediation helpful to parties?” and “Is mediation helpful to the court?”

Among the outcomes considered were the following:

• Does mediation help cases to reach resolution in less time than traditional court interventions?
• Is there any evidence that parents comply better with plans developed in mediation versus court?
• How do the professionals who use the process rate its accomplishments?
• What percentage of the cases sent to mediation are able to produce an agreement in this forum?
• Are there any case characteristics that are associated with especially high or low settlement rates?