This course is highly interactive and participants will be asked to engage with each other and work together outside of class. It is ideal for anyone who needs to work with people and manage them.

Course Aim: To equip participants with the knowledge, skills, attitude and awareness required to intervene positively and/or mediate with people experiencing conflict and difficulties in a variety of situations. It is suitable for leaders, managers, HR consultants and employees along with those wishing to specialise in conflict intervention and communication.

• To develop participants understanding of the theory of conflict and ADR how conflict happens, escalates and impacts people and organisations.
• To develop awareness of conflict styles and facilitate skill development so that participants can expand their repertoire of conflict behaviours to suit the contexts they find themselves in.
• To attain a good understanding of core mediation and ADR concepts, theories, models, processes, and principles.
• To develop participants’ mediation skills to the level of competency as laid down in MII certified assessment requirements.
• To raise participants’ awareness of how their own triggers and biases can impact the mediation process and to facilitate ways of managing them.
• To learn how to create an environment of trust, rapport and empowerment when facilitating people in conflict.
• To provide participants with essential information which guides mediator’s behaviour e.g. The Mediation Act (2017) and the MII Codes of Ethics and Standards.
• To provide participants with opportunities to work with power and develop their own reflective practitioner.

To confirm a place before paying please contact Catherine at:
Email: Catherine@blossomdevelopment.com
Phone: 0879936237

Catherine is an experienced and accredited Mediator, Restorative Dialogue Facilitator and trainer in Certified Mediation Programmes and Restorative Justice and Practice programmes. She is also a CINERGY™ Conflict Management Coach and Trainer.

From 2014 to 2022 Catherine has been a lecturer in restorative practice, mediation, negotiation, and conflict management coaching at at Maynooth University. She also has been engaged in various peace building projects run by Maynooth University.

Catherine provides conflict management coaching, restorative facilitation and mediation in workplace, community, and family settings. She develops bespoke training in Conflict Management and Communications skills for leaders, groups and organisations and uses the Enneagram Personality System as a tool for personal and professional development. In late 2020 she developed and delivered online training for the European Forum for Restorative Justice in Restorative Justice.

Up to January 2022 Catherine was on the management committee of Restorative Practices Ireland (RPI) and Facing Forward both organisations that promote the use of Restorative Practices in and alongside the Justice System and in organisations and society generally. She co-presented a workshop for the International Institute of Restorative Practice Conference in May 2017. She was a research project between Facing Forward and Dr Marie Keenan entitled “Sexual Trauma and Abuse: Restorative and Transformative Possibilities”.

Catherine has written “Building Bridges”, an article about a Restorative Justice Initiative in Green Bay Maximum Security Prison Wisconsin for the ‘Journal of Mediation and Applied Conflict Analysis’ published online by Maynooth University.

In 2018, alongside her colleague Barbara Walshe, she undertook a consultation on the ‘Options and Appropriate Courses of action available to Government in relation to the site of the former Mother and Baby Home, Tuam County Galway’ (April 2018). In 2019 and 2020 and 2021, again with Barbara Walshe, she worked with survivors of Institutional abuse on the themes and issues they wished to consult with Government on to explore the, as yet unmet needs of survivors and how they could be best met. The 2019 initial report can be read here. They then facilitated a survivor led group and the Department of Education to identify means of meeting these needs. This resulted in the group presenting a proposal to the Minister for Education and her advisors in December 2020. Final solutions have yet to be identified. In 2021, Catherine and Barbara Walshe facilitated restorative engagement with Jesuits and victims of abuse by a Jesuit priest when children (now adults in their 50’s and 60’s) were in the care of Jesuit schools to try to address the harm done. That work is ongoing.

Currently Catherine is a PhD candidate with Maynooth University exploring how restorative approaches in an organisation can impact the conflict management practices and quality of relationships experienced by people working there.

Associations that Catherine belongs to includes Mediator’s Institute of Ireland, Mediation beyond Borders, The Association of Conflict Resolution, Restorative Practices Ireland, the Restorative Justice Council (U.K) and the European Forum for Restorative Justice.

http://www.blossomdevelopment.com/resources/Catherine%20O’Connell%20Biography%202020.pdf