Training and accreditation; approaches to the development of best practice and regulation of practice (abstract).

Source: (2004) Paper presented at the Third Conference of the European Forum for Victim-Offender Mediation and Restorative Justice, “Restorative Justice in Europe: Where are we heading?”, Budapest, Hungary, 14-16 October. Downloaded 24 May 2005.

This presentation will explore the development of a common approach to best practice, training and accreditation
in England and Wales. The Government’s position expressed in the strategy document published last year and the
work that has taken place since to develop an agreed approach to best practice, covering both mediation and
conferencing approaches will be set out as well as the challenges that this has presented in terms of the different
perspectives and traditions of the two approaches coming together. Then it will be discussed how these agreed best
practice standards will be translated into national occupational standards and accredited awards open to
practitioners in any professional or voluntary setting to achieve, and how the establishment of a new professional
association for restorative practitioners could have an important role in future in licensing practitioners. Then the
discussion will be opened up to ask people in other countries how they have taken forward regulation of the
training and accreditation in other countries. In the UK we are likely to take quite a deregulated approach – i.e. that
anyone in any professional field can become a practitioner, and that anyone can train practitioners, but they must
then prove their competence on-the-job and get a recognised award to become members of the professional
association. But we are aware that other countries have approached this very differently and it would be good to
discuss those different approaches. Author’s abstract.