Helen Adam

(Family Mediator of the Year 2022  & Child Inclusive Mediator of the Year 2022 Winner)

Book a free consultation

Helen read law at Cambridge and qualified as a solicitor in 1990.  Her legal career started with a leading private client practice in London, and she then moved to a High Street practice to broaden her experience. Following a career break she decided not to return to work as a solicitor, limited to representing one parent, and in 2007 retrained as a mediator.  She is a founding partner of Wells Family Mediation and works with clients online and in person in Tunbridge Wells and Central London. 

Helen is one of the foundation trainers for the Family Mediators’ Association and also a Professional Practice Consultant and a Child Consultant. She is an advocate of bringing the voice of the child into mediation and expects age-appropriate children to be offered the opportunity to be consulted.   

She promotes an integrated approach to mediation and, as well as working with other professionals within mediation, encourages her clients to seek legal, financial, personal or parenting support outside of the mediation meetings. 

Helen is also involved in family policy work.  She was the mediator representative on the Private Law Working Group and in 2020, was invited to set up and chair the Family Solutions Group.  Its report “What about me?”, focusing on the needs of the child following family separation, was published later that year.  Helen continues to chair the Family Solutions Group and their paper “Language Matters” was published in September 2022 and ‘A Child’s Right to Matter’ in November 2023.  

Helen is a regular speaker on the need to reframe support for families following separation to be less adversarial and more child-focussed.  She delivered the John Cornwell memorial lecture at the Family Mediators’ Association conference in 2021, and the Bridget Lindley memorial lecture at the Family Justice Council conference in 2022. 

Helen was awarded ‘Family Mediator of the Year’ and ‘Child-Inclusive Mediator of the Year’ at the National Mediation Awards in 2022. 

Helen’s clear and unshakeable professional goal is to support parents, where safe to do so, to handle their separation in a way which enables them to cooperate as parents for the years ahead, to the lasting benefit of their children. 

I would like to thank you for the time you have spent in achieving in 4 hours, what we never achieved in 4 months. I think it is by far a much better process than solicitors and court.

I honestly feel that we now have a good chance of proceeding in an amicable way that hopefully in time will become a friendship with the children at its core. I do not think we would have achieved this through solicitors, and feel huge gratitude for your patience and gentleness.

It’s so much better to go through this process together in a calm and neutral setting, rather than being defensive at home or seeing a solicitor individually. You’ve been a great adviser on a tricky topic and the meetings were really productive.

Throughout this whole horrible process we have both felt that the system is designed to leave us hating each other and to have had your support in helping us get to this point has meant a great deal, so thank you for your support of us both and for reflecting everything so well.

Thank you for all you have done to make a very sad and painful process somewhat less painful!

Thanks for all your help. We are talking a lot more and generally getting on much better, we even stood next to each other at rugby AND are going to parents’ evening together!

You did more in 4 hours than our lawyers had done in 1 year. For that I am very grateful.

If you would like to talk through your options or discuss the mediation process, call us on 01892 506906 or fill in the form below.

Name(Required)