The history of mediation in this country has shown that mental health professionals (MHPs) have led the way in providing mediation.

This has hitherto been largely in relation to children's issues and through the Court Welfare Service.

The dual model of using a solicitor and a social worker was necessary because MHPs could not deal with the financial issues in mediation.

The groups that currently use this model are National Family Mediation (NFM) and the Family Mediators Association (FMA).In the wake of the white paper on divorce reform these groups have decided to create a UK College of Family Mediators limiting the participation to their groups.

The Law Society was invited merely to observe.

Articles published in the Law Society's Gazette and in Family Law by Thelma Fisher of NFM put forward the argument that solicitors should wait for training until the new college had been set up and national standards agreed.

In other words, they wish to determine unilaterally who will be trained and when.

Such advice is, I fear, borne not of any interest in the development of solicitor mediators.Ms Fisher suggests that five-day training courses are no longer suitable.

NFM and FMA were trained by Dr John Haynes, the founder of family mediation, in a series of five and three-day training programmes followed by special training for supervisors and for UK trainers.

Why do they now claim the method by which they learned is unsuitable for solicitors? The answer lies in their further assertion that training can only be undertaken when followed by supervision and by that they mean supervision by them of us.

A classic case of putting the fox in charge of the chickens.

NFM, FMA and Family Mediation Service (FMS) are all dominated by MHPs and the social work ethic.

As such, we must expect them to try to claim mediation away from solicitors.

Social workers have traditionally provided mediation in children cases for low income families and have done a great job in providing that service.

However, as mediation spreads, we can expect to see the same development as has taken place in other countries, ie people with higher incomes and larger estates preferring to be mediated by solicitors with their wider knowledge of business affairs, the complexities of modern financial matters and their skills in the field of family law.We should model our approach on one that has worked well in other European countries.

In Holland, only solicitors do mediation for the fee-paying population.

They are self-regulating and mediation is far more widely accepted there than in the UK.

In Germany lawyers and mental health professionals have joined together in a new organisation which has set standards for all types of mediators and includes equal representation from both fields.

Similar developments have taken place in other countries.

It is time for all groups to come clean and declare their professional interest and to identify the interests of the consumers of mediation services.

The discussion should take place publicly and involve all potential providers of mediation.

A college without equal solicitor representation would seek to limit or exclude solicitors from mediation.