Your questions about free Children’s Court mediation, answered.

Court-based family mediation is a structured process where a trained, accredited mediator helps both parents reach agreement on care, contact or parental-responsibility matters, without a contested court hearing. At ACR Hub, mediation happens inside the Children’s Court itself, and reached agreements are converted into orders of court, giving them the same legal force as a ruling from the bench.

Yes. The Court Projects are delivered entirely free to the families involved. The service is funded by Alternative Conflict Resolution (Pty) Ltd, corporate partners through our Fund a Court scheme, and individual donors — never by the families using it.

The project currently operates at Protea Children’s Court in Soweto, delivering since May 2023, and at Johannesburg Central Children’s Court, delivering since January 2024. The judiciary has invited the project into further Children’s Courts, and expansion depends on additional funding.

The project mediates care, contact and parental-responsibility disputes between parents — the kinds of matters that would otherwise need a contested hearing to resolve who a child lives with, how contact is shared, and how decisions about the child are made.

Once a mediated agreement is made an order of court, yes — it is legally binding and enforceable in the same way as any other order of the Children’s Court.

Yes. Mediators serving the Court Projects are NABFAM-accredited, and every candidate progressing through the Mentorship Programme is assessed and signed off by a NABFAM Accreditation Supervisor before taking on independent cases.

Already-trained mediators can apply to the ACR Academy Mentorship Programme, a three-month, NABFAM-recognised pathway from certified to court-ready. Details are on the Mentorship Programme page, and applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

NABFAM, the National Accreditation Board for Family Mediators, is South Africa’s accrediting body for family mediators. NABFAM accreditation verifies that a mediator meets national training and ethical standards — which is why courts and referring organisations rely on it when assigning sensitive family matters.

Each Children’s Court costs roughly R20,000 a month to keep staffed with free mediation. Corporate partners can fund a court directly, at a level and recognition tier of their choice, through our Fund a Court scheme — see the Contact page for current tiers and to get in touch.

ACR Community NPC (registration 2024/211555/08) administers the Court Projects. It is funded by Alternative Conflict Resolution (Pty) Ltd, corporate donors, and individual giving. Every court agreement is reviewed annually, mediator accreditation is verified and kept on file, and weekly statistics are reported to the presiding magistrates.

ACR Mediation Network is the community of mediators and ADR professionals who make up the network. ACR Community is the Court Projects — the free, court-based mediation service. ACR Academy is where the Mentorship Programme and other training programmes live, including the pathway to Rule 41A Gauteng Mediation Protocol accreditation.

You can reach the team by email at info@mediationnetwork.co.za, by phone at +27 83 305 3389, or through the contact form on our Contact page.