08/12/2026
Jon Graham and Dr Lorri Yasenik met in 2014 at an international family law symposium in Montreal. Jon, a Sydney-based family mediator with two decades of clinical experience, had spent years working with families affected by separation and, since 2010, developing models to support families made more vulnerable by family violence. Lorri, a Calgary-based play therapist and trauma specialist, had spent her career on the other side of the same problem, how children actually process and communicate what's happening to them.
Different training. Same question underneath: how do you authentically include a child's voice in a process built by and for adults?
That question became the Child-Centred Continuum Model, published in the Family Court Review in 2016, and eventually the guidelines for the Child Consultant/Child Inclusive Mediator designation, adopted by the Alberta Family Mediation Society in 2018, the first of its kind in North America. For us, this goes beyond what the research shows works; it is about a child’s right to be heard properly by people trained to do it well.
It's the reason ICCFL's training doesn't sit neatly in one lane. A family violence specialist and a play therapist built it together, which means the frameworks carry both a legal practitioner's grounding in process and safety, and a clinician's grounding in how children actually communicate.
