Find Your FDR Training Pathway in Two Questions

An accredited FDR practitioner, working with separating families and issuing section 60I certificates? Then you are on the accreditation track, and question two decides which of the two qualification pathways is yours.

A more capable professional in your current role, mediating workplace, community or client conflict without practising as an FDRP? Then the Mediation Skill Set is your program, and you can stop reading here. Three nationally recognised units, $1,500, fully online and self-paced, no placement. It is general mediation training rather than an FDR accreditation route, and for most HR professionals, managers and community workers it is exactly the right size.

For the accreditation track, the fork is defined by the Attorney-General’s Department’s accreditation pathways, and it turns on qualifications, not experience:

• You hold a relevant bachelor degree or higher (family law or another field of law, psychology, social work, conflict management, mediation, dispute resolution or similar), or you hold current accreditation under the Australian Mediator and Dispute Resolution Accreditation Standards (AMDRAS) and have held it for two consecutive years at the time you apply: the six core units are your pathway. AMDRAS replaced NMAS on 1 July 2025, and time held under NMAS carries across.
• Neither of those is you: the full CHC81115 Graduate Diploma is your pathway, whatever your industry experience.

One caveat on the degree route: the fields above are examples, not an automatic pass. The Attorney-General’s Department assesses whether your specific qualification is relevant, so confirm before you enrol; our entry requirements guide covers how that assessment works.

That second bullet is the one that surprises people, so here it is plainly: work experience, even decades of it, does not open the shortened six core route. That route exists for people whose degree or established mediator accreditation already covers ground the Graduate Diploma would otherwise teach. Experience is not wasted, though. It can open the door into the Graduate Diploma: entry is available through a related qualification, through documented evidence of previous experience in a dispute resolution environment involving independent judgement and self-directed application of knowledge, or by completing the Mediation Skill Set first, which is the route we most often recommend because it also builds the foundation mediation skills the Graduate Diploma assumes.

Coursework for every program is fully online and self-paced: you can start any time, study from anywhere in Australia, and take up to two years to complete. The two family dispute resolution programs also include a 50-hour supervised work placement with an accredited FDR practitioner.

The two qualification pathways finish at the same door: an application to the Attorney-General’s Department, which grants FDRP accreditation once all of its requirements are met, including matters beyond training such as insurance, complaints scheme membership and suitability checks. No training provider can grant accreditation, and completing a course is a step toward it, not the thing itself. For the full picture of the accreditation stage, see our guide to the three FDRP accreditation pathways.