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Family & Community Focused Conflict Management
Though conflict is an inevitable and often an uncomfortable part of family life, addressing disagreements doesn’t need to be so daunting.
The Director General Alternative Dispute Resolution (DGADR) is partnering with the Edmonton Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC) to provide the Family and Community Conflict Management Pilot Project (FCCMPP). The pilot project will provide families of Canadian Forces (CF) members with training about conflict management and conflict resolution, as well as intervention services such as facilitation. The goal of the project is to provide families with skills to resolve conflicts through respectful dialogue, cooperation and mutual understanding.
“The project is very strongly based on the Alternative Dispute Resolution courses we offer to Department of National Defence staff and CF members,” says Meaghan Welfare, FCCMPP Manager. “We’re providing consistency by allowing CF personnel and their family members to address issues using the same language.”
A Community Conflict Management Pilot Project has been trialed in Petawawa, and a second pilot project is now underway in Valcartier. In both locations, the projects have maintained a community focus to address base neighbourhood conflicts over things like garbage, noise, unruly pets and neighbour-to-neighbour relationships.
Though such community issues are widespread, the Petawawa pilot found that relationship conflicts within the family can become an even more pressing concern, especially for families experiencing deployment and reunion. When DGADR decided to evolve the project to focus on family conflicts for the Edmonton pilot, a partnership with the local MFRC was the logical next step. FCCMPP now includes services for intra-family conflicts, such as communication challenges between partners, parent-teen disputes, reintegration and reunion conflicts. The Project does not offer divorce or separation services.
“I think it’ll be a great program for our families,” says Roza Parlin, Edmonton MFRC Executive Director. “I see FCCMPP as a way for us to complement the services we already have available to families, and fill in some of the gaps. Because we have deployments and reunions happening, offering these communication skills to families is now especially important.”
Meaghan and Roza have refined the training modules, and spoke with stakeholders in the Edmonton community to raise awareness and drum up support. In November 2009, Meaghan began a train-the-trainer program to instruct and evaluate five MFRC staff members to become FCCMPP trainers and facilitators. This will prepare them to run formal and informal programs for families beginning in January 2010.
The FCCMPP trainers and facilitators will provide a variety of conflict and relationship management services for family members age 16 and up. They will train 12-hour training courses designed to give participants the tools to manage and resolve their own conflicts, and will supervise a home-study version of the project for those who can’t make it to the classroom for a full 12 hours. The trained staff will also provide facilitation and intervention services to address individual conflicts that arise. Throughout these programs, Dispute Resolution Centre Edmonton (DRC) will be there to support the new trainers/facilitators with any questions and concerns.
“For the MFRC, conflict management services are going to be one more valuable tool available for CF families, especially as they deal with deployment stress,” says Roza. The project also has benefits for deploying CF members: the better families are getting along at home, the more CF personnel can focus on their operational missions.
