Family mediation

A short history of family mediation in England and Wales

Family mediation is often thought of as a modern idea, but it has been part of separation and divorce in England and Wales for around half a century. It grew from a single local service into a recognised profession, and then into a step the family court expects most people to take before they apply. Understanding that story helps explain why mediation works the way it does today.

This page traces the development of family mediation from the late 1970s to the present day, with a timeline you can scan. For the wider picture, see our guide to family mediation.

Where family mediation began

The roots of family mediation lie in the late 1970s. Until then, couples who separated relied on solicitors and the courts to settle everything, which was often slow, costly and adversarial. The idea took hold that a neutral person could help parents reach their own arrangements, especially for their children, without fighting it out in front of a judge.

The first out-of-court family conciliation service in England and Wales is generally traced to Bristol, where a scheme began to help separating parents agree arrangements for their children. It was small and local, but it proved the principle: given the right help, most couples could reach agreements themselves.

At the time this was a genuinely different way of thinking about separation. The courts dealt in winners and losers, but conciliation started from the idea that both parents wanted the best for their children and could work together with support. That simple shift in emphasis, from fighting to problem-solving, still sits at the heart of family mediation today.

From conciliation to a national movement

The Bristol model spread. In the early 1980s the National Family Conciliation Council was formed to coordinate the growing number of local services and to set some common standards. Over the following years the word conciliation gave way to mediation, and the organisation eventually became National Family Mediation. Training programmes and codes of practice began to take shape, turning a good idea into a developing profession.

By the 1990s mediation had moved from the margins towards the mainstream of family breakdown. Mediators were building shared standards for impartiality, confidentiality and safeguarding, the same principles that define the principles of family mediation today.

The Family Law Act 1996

The first major piece of legislation to recognise mediation was the Family Law Act 1996. It reflected a growing view in government that separating couples should be encouraged to resolve matters out of court, and it made public funding, then called legal aid, available for family mediation. Although the divorce reforms in the same Act were never fully brought into force, its support for mediation was significant and lasting.

From this point, mediation was no longer just a voluntary service run by charities. It was something the state actively supported and funded, which helped it grow and professionalise over the next decade.

Funding mattered because it opened mediation to people who could never have paid for a solicitor. It also signalled that government saw real value in keeping families out of court, both to spare them the stress and to ease the pressure on an overstretched court system. That twin aim, better outcomes for families and less strain on the courts, has driven every reform since.

The Family Mediation Council

As mediation grew, so did the need for a single body to set standards across the different membership organisations. The Family Mediation Council (FMC) was formed in the mid 2000s to bring these bodies together. It now approves training, maintains a public register of mediators, and publishes the Code of Practice that all registered mediators follow.

The FMC also introduced the accredited standard, FMCA, which marks a mediator as fully qualified and able to carry out the formal tasks the court relies on. You can read more in our guide to family mediator training and accreditation.

MIAMs become the gateway

The biggest change came with the Children and Families Act 2014. From April that year, most people wanting to apply to the family court about children or finances first had to attend a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting, or MIAM, unless an exemption applied. Mediation had become the expected first step, a statutory gateway to court rather than just an option.

This is why so many people first hear about mediation when they are thinking about court. The requirement comes from section 10 of the Children and Families Act 2014, and the detail sits in the family court rules. It did not make mediation compulsory, but it did make considering it a required step for most applicants.

The voucher scheme and NCDR reforms

Two more recent milestones stand out. In 2021 the government launched the Family Mediation Voucher Scheme, offering up to £500 towards mediation in cases involving children, which helped thousands of families try mediation who might not otherwise have done so. You can read the detail on our family mediation voucher scheme page, or check your eligibility with our voucher eligibility checker.

Then in April 2024, reforms to the family court rules strengthened the push towards resolving disputes away from court. The changes let courts adjourn cases so people can try non-court options and allow a judge to take an unreasonable refusal into account when deciding costs. This wider approach is now known as non-court dispute resolution, explained in our guide to NCDR.

Family mediation timeline

How mediation itself has changed

The story of family mediation is not only about statutes and organisations. The way mediation is delivered has changed a great deal too. Early conciliation was face to face, in a single room, and focused mainly on arrangements for children. Today mediators offer a range of formats to suit different families and different levels of conflict.

These are additions, not replacements. A modern service might offer any of them, chosen to fit the family in front of it. You can read more in our guides to online mediation, shuttle mediation and child-inclusive mediation.

The organisations that shaped family mediation

No single body built family mediation. It grew through the work of several organisations over four decades, each adding something to the profession we have today.

The move from many separate bodies towards common standards is a large part of why family mediation is now a recognised profession rather than a patchwork of local schemes. It is also why the FMCA accreditation and the public register matter so much today, a point we cover in our guide to family mediator training and accreditation.

What has stayed the same

For all the change, the founding idea has not moved. From the first Bristol scheme to the video calls of today, family mediation has rested on the same principles: an impartial mediator, a confidential conversation, and decisions made by the couple themselves rather than imposed from outside. Screening for domestic abuse and safeguarding has become far more rigorous, and the law around mediation has grown, but the belief that most families can reach their own agreements with the right help is unchanged.

That continuity is worth holding onto. The formats have multiplied and the statutes have piled up, yet the reason mediation began, sparing families the cost and conflict of fighting in court, is the same reason people are pointed towards it now. Those enduring ideas are set out in our guide to the principles of family mediation.

Why this history matters today

The way mediation grew explains a lot about how it feels now. Because it began as a voluntary, problem-solving alternative to court, it has always kept decisions in the couple’s hands rather than a judge’s. Because the state chose to support and then require it, most people now meet mediation as a step on the way to court rather than something they seek out first. And because standards were built gradually across many bodies, accreditation and the public register carry real weight.

Understanding that arc can also make the present system easier to make sense of. The MIAM you may be asked to attend, the voucher scheme you might use, and the wider push towards non-court dispute resolution are all recent chapters in a story that started with a single service in Bristol. Each was a deliberate step to help more families resolve things calmly and to ease pressure on the courts.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Family Law Act 1996, legislation.gov.uk. Accessed 9 July 2026.
2. Children and Families Act 2014, section 10, legislation.gov.uk. Accessed 9 July 2026.
3. Family Mediation Council, About us, familymediationcouncil.org.uk. Accessed 9 July 2026.
4. GOV.UK, Family Mediation Voucher Scheme, gov.uk. Accessed 9 July 2026.