About me

• 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.

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.