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Summary

Lyon, Ben (2004). Training and accreditation; approaches to the development of best practice and regulation of practice (abstract). 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.

Link: www.euforumrj.org/readingroom/Budapest/workshop5.pdf

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