Development Of Mediator Training In England And Wales

The article by James South on Development Of Commercial Mediator Skills Training In England And Wales appeared on www.mediate.com [April 2009] and in a different form in Nederlands-Vlaams tijdschrift voor mediation en conflictmanagement [December 2008].

The UK mediation market has developed organically, both in a self-regulatory sense and in the development of training programmes and growth of the market in general.  This compares with the development of mediation in other international jurisdictions where regulation and standards have tended to come before the mediation market is established.  The primary difference in approach is that in the UK, mediation and mediator training tends to be flexible and practical, the development and delivery of training programmes often being led by practising mediators.  In other countries with a much more rigid approach to regulation and common standards, the content and structure of training tends to be theoretical often being