Arabella Tresilian – About me

Arabella Tresilian MAHons PGDipEd (Leadership & Management)

Accredited Civil, Commercial and Employment Mediator, specialising in health, social care and the workplace

Mediator Overview

• A CEDR-Accredited mediator since 2017, and a community mediator since 2016
• Registered with Civil Mediation Council as a civil, commercial, workplace  & employment mediator
• Over 100 cases undertaken since 2017, across the public, private and third sectors
• Specialist in NHS, health and social care disputes about medical treatment and care planning: Judicial Review (Mental Health Act, Human Rights Act, Equality Act), Court of Protection (Mental Capacity Act, Care Act), Family Courts / High Court (withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment)
• Extensive experience of Workplace and Employment Mediation, up to CEO, board and trustee level
• 20 years prior experience as a public sector professional, in organisational development and strategic leadership, alongside personal lived experience as a carer and service user/patient
• Specialist knowledge in mental health, neurodiversity,  disabilities, life-limiting conditions, paediatric care and end of life care
• A mediation approach which is calm, compassionate, encouraging and solution-focussed
• Languages spoken:  English, and working Spanish
• Access to a team of associates with additional knowledge and skills (eg clinical, condition-specific, legal)

Specialist in disputes involving medical treatment, care planning, mental health, disabilities, neurodiversity, life-limiting conditions, and end of life care 

Arabella is committed to offering equitable access to the benefits of mediation, especially where a disagreement affects someone with a health condition, life-limiting illness or a disability.  During the pandemic she trained 2800 public sector employees  in conflict resolution skills and mental health conversations. She was a contributing author to Living Well Dying Well’s handbook on Advance Care Planning.

National speaker and advocate on health, care and conflict resolution:  

Arabella has been featured as a speaker and advocate on health, care and conflict resolution by: Public Health England, British Medical Journal, the King’s Fund, ITN News, Sky News, Channel 5 News, BBC Radio 4’s Inside Health, Financial Times, Good Housekeeping, Psychologies Magazine and The Sun. 

How I can help you or your team:

• Resolve disagreements – from complaints to grievances, broken colleague relationships to tribunals, interpersonal disagreements to court proceedings, I am equipped to support you to find confidential resolutions to the knottiest of disputes
• Relate better – advanced communication fosters enhanced collaboration, and I have tools to boost your creative team-working, whether 1:1, as a care-giving team, or alongside your clients, patients, customers or colleagues
• Repair relationships – acknowledging the impact and root of past actions, or taking account of our role in a difficult situation, can allow for trust to be rebuilt again, and future-focussed agreements to be put in place.
• Restore wellbeing – resolving disagreements and relating better with others is good for our health.  I am a former workplace Mental Health First Aider instructor and trainer for Mind, so psychological wellbeing is at the heart of my work.

 

Dispute resolution expertise

Health & Social Care Mediation

• Care Act mediation
• Care providers: professional / client / family conflict; colleague conflict; commissioning conflict
• Court of Protection mediation [Watch Arabella’s interview with GL Law here]
• Elder mediation 
• Family carers / sibling carers of parents
• Healthcare charities: service provision disputes / trustee disputes / volunteer relations
• Judicial Review mediation [Read Arabella’s article here]
• Lasting Powers of Attorney
• Local Authority: provider / customer / family disputes; ASB; neighbours; colleague
• conflict
• Medical treatment disputes
• Mental Capacity Act / DoLs / Best Interests mediation
• Mental Health Act mediation / judicial review
• NHS: healthcare professional / patient / family conflict; colleague conflict 
• Paediatric care (HDU/NICU/PICU)  and disputes about the care of medically-complex or critically-ill children
• Palliative care / End-of-life care / Withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment / Limitations of care
• Policing involving individuals experiencing mental ill-health or disabled individuals
• Schools/Universities: disputes involving health, disability, SEND matters
• Social services / Family disputes

Workplace & Employment Mediation – in public, private and third sector organisations

• Board /Trustee / CEO disputes
• Bullying and harassment allegations
• Colleague conflicts
• Disability and Reasonable adjustments 
• Discrimination allegations
• Employee / Customer disputes
• Employee mental health and wellbeing support
• Employee sickness absence
• Employment Exit / Settlements / Tribunals
• Equality Act 2010
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (incl. race, LGBTQIA+, transgender, disability matters)
• Grievances and disciplinaries
• HR – support to manage and resolve employee conflicts
• Line manager / direct report conflicts
• Managing up / abrasive leaders
• Neurodiversity in the workplace (eg. Autism, ADHD)
• Occupational
• Health-referred mediation 
• Performance concerns
• Racism allegations
• Relationship breakdown
• Team development / facilitation
• Team dysfunction

Education Mediation (Higher Education, Schools and Charities)

• Headteacher / teacher / parent / student disputes
• HR team – support for managing employee conflict
• Boarding schools
• Medical staff 
• Private schools 
• State schools 
• SEND-related disputes 
• Workplace & Employment mediation

Community 

• Antisocial / Nuisance behaviour
• Boundary / party wall 
• Community land use
• Housing association / Social housing disputes
• Housing officer / tenant disputes
• Neighbour disputes
• Noise complaints
• Policing 
• Restorative justice / victim support 
• Tenant wellbeing support 

Local Government

• Adult social care 
• Political parties –  internal disputes (policy / equality matters)
• Social services 
• Social housing / tenant disputes
• Refugee / asylum seeker matters
• Workplace and employment disputes / HR matters

Families

• Elder care planning / LPAs  
• Intergenerational estrangement 
• Parental alienation
• Parents of children with SEND
• Co-parenting 
• Disputes with public services 
• Neighbour disputes 

Client feedback

Workplaces & HR	Charities	Education & Higher Ed
“Arabella was supportive and understanding, listening with patience. She gave me the confidence to express my ideas in our meeting and I found the process to be productive, focussed and extremely helpful. Working with Arabella has improved my working relationships and I am happier and more settled in the workplace.” Employee, workplace mediation	“If Arabella could clone herself and send us a copy! Many thanks – a job very well done.” Trustee – Board dispute “I found the whole experience incredibly professional and enlightening. I felt supported by you the whole time. All the work you’ve done with us has given immense clarity.” Financial Director, board dispute mediation	“I highly recommend working with Arabella on team development. Arabella’s warmth and understanding attitude creates an environment where you feel that you can share anything without judgement.” HE Employee, Workplace Mediation
Healthcare & NHS	Legal	Social Care
“Mediation feels quite daunting, scary and uneasy initially, but after some time of being with Arabella and my colleagues and passing ideas around, you feel much more at ease and start to gain valuable ideas and get somewhere.” Patient (Judicial Review Mediation) “Arabella was an excellent mediator helping us navigate our way through an initial period of a new team structure.”  Service Manager	“Thank you very much Arabella for all your hard work over the last few months… You helped us to find a new perspective on this extremely complex dispute.” Public law solicitor, Judicial Review (re.Mental Health Act) mediation “Thank you very much for your help – we found it very useful.” Solicitor (Public Law), Judicial Review Mediation	“Mediation is something we never considered. Once there you made us feel safe. The structure of the day gave everyone an opportunity to speak openly but knowing you were there gave us a safe place to do this and not be judged. Thank you once again for enabling us to be listened to and to listen to others.” Foster Carers (Court of Protection Mediation)
Police & Law Enforcement	Local Government & Civil Service	Mediation providers
“I feel a lot more confident to deal with things as they come up now in a calm manner. Thanks for your support – it has made a difference to me and my family.” Social housing tenant, Police referred anti-social behaviour mediation	“Time and space to reflect. Support during reflection. An enjoyable experience in a fun and creative atmosphere. You created a supportive and safe atmosphere where I felt able to express any fears and concerns, and you were great at enabling me to work through thought-processes and reach outcomes.”  Manager, Local government mediation	“Thanks a million for your assistance. It was wonderful to have your support with the technical side, emotional support for particular parties and especially for your tenacity in drafting  the agreement.” Mediator, on assistant mediator services provided

My style and my specialisms

I came to the practice of Conflict Resolution and Mediation through two distinct routes. One was through doing management consulting in the health and social care, and coming to understand just how much stress, inefficiency and sadness arises from communication and conflict difficulties in the workplace.

The other route was through being a patient, a parent of children with disabilities and a family carer, and witnessing how difficult it can be to make plans for the future when the present involves difficult discussions and many people.

So I specialise in making sure that people feel comfortable with the process they undertake with me, and that it leads them towards feeling comfortable and confident about their future. I aim to be thoroughly supportive, reassuring and encouraging at all times.

My 25 years of professional work and personal experience in health and social care mean that I am particularly experienced in supporting people who are living with a health condition, disability, a mental health condition or life-limiting illness. I have particular personal experience of working to support people who are deaf or hearing impaired, on the autism spectrum, experiencing mental illness, living with dementia or stroke, and at the end of life. 

Why I love being a mediator

I came to mediation through a confluence of circumstances which made me think, ‘There must be a better way for people to deal with their difficulties than to threaten legal action, or refuse to engage in communication at all!’ I realised that a great deal of my management consultancy work was really… conflict resolution. It gave me such pleasure and relief when long-held rifts within and between teams melted away after some good, authentic communication. This piqued my interest to find out more about the art of conflict resolution, and I did my first certificated training, and started practising as a community mediator. Later I qualified as a civil and employment mediator, and have been mediating ever since.

It’s astonishing to witness people’s lives turn from a turmoil of distressing, intractable ‘stuckness’, to a new phase in which, for example, neighbours can conceive of greeting each other again; or work colleagues re-establish trust between each other after maybe years of mistrust, stress and non-communication. Mediation takes empathy, patience and persistence, and it is a skill I will develop and hone endlessly over years to come, but its core aspect is a belief that people really can find peace again, given the right support and a safe space to explore options for settling differences. Facilitating such processes is a real honour. Nothing beats the sight of former disputants smiling, shaking hands, or even (more often than you would think) hugging, at the end of a mediation.