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Our Role
How Might an Ombuds Help?
- By helping to surface information when people are afraid to come forward.
- By helping to clarify and thus to resolve a conflict.
- By helping to develop and evaluate options or courses of action, and assisting
visitors or callers in knowing how to pursue an option.
- By identifying dispute resolution alternatives for people who seek options and by referring individuals to appropriate services.
- By looking into a problem informally (with permission) and, when appropriate,
presenting recommendations to the visitor or others.
- By providing “shuttle diplomacy,” individually talking with
the parties involved, going back and forth between them until they are either
able to talk together or they have a better understanding of the dispute
so that an agreement between them can be reached.
- By mediating disputes by bringing together the parties involved, in
a formal way, in order to assist them in reaching their own settlement.
- By recommending systems change to appropriate individuals.
- By coaching visitors and callers on how an issue or concern may be presented more effectively.
Massachusetts