Restorative justice, mediation and relational conflict resolution in work with young people in residential care

Original article can be found at: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713665951~db=all Copyright Informa / Taylor and FrancisConflict resolution approaches such as restorative justice and mediation are becoming increasingly important in policy and practice in work with children and young people, be this in relation to work with separating parents to minimise the difficulties and conflicts involved for their children, or in relation to youth justice. One of the main aims of such conflict resolution approaches in social work is to develop techniques and skills for workers and service users to enable them to deal with their conflicts and disputes in a more positive manner than is often currently the case. This article examines these approaches in family disputes and youth offending areas, and then develops these considerations further to examine the possibilities for extending restorative justice approaches within a relational conflict resolution approach for young people's residential units, and more widely in group care settings.Peer reviewe

Values and cultural issues in social work

This article examines issues of culture in English social work, with particular reference to current policy and practice in the treatment of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME), migrant and minority faith groups in England within the child protection and Youth Justice Systems. Several themes are explored: · cultural differences and the effects of policies and attitudes towards such differences · the types and scale of discrimination due to such differences · the role played by professional decision makers and · the overall impact lack of appreciation of cultural issues has on policies and practices. It moves on to consider our understanding of the role that ethnicity cultural factors and the theory of ‘Otherness’ play in the structures and outcomes of child protection and youth justice systems, and subsequent issues arising for professionals within their work roles. The article sets out how social workers have an ethical duty to understand these issues, and how to work positively with such difference in order to avoid unfair discrimination against such culturally different groupsPeer reviewedSubmitted Versio

Beyond Regulation

The ‘standard model’ of electricity reform has been refined in many countries but not extended to others. Government is supplanting the role of regulation. Revised calculations suggest that the benefits of UK electricity privatisation were higher than previously estimated and more widely shared with consumers. Other calculations suggest that generation market power in the US is less than previously estimated by Lerner index calculations. Unduly tight price controls explain why there has been less customer switching in some residential electricity markets. There has been significant development of fixed price contracts in Nordic markets, posing questions for regulation in the absence of retail competition. There are alternatives to regulation of network monopolies. In Australia regulated interconnectors have been less economic than merchant interconnectors. In Argentina arrangements for users to determine transmission expansions have worked well. In Florida negotiated settlements have secured a better deal for customers than regulation

UK domestic energy contracts, the 28 day rule, and experience in Sweden

In the UK, domestic customers must be able to terminate energy contracts at 28 days� notice. This has been seen as a transitional protection for customers and for competition. This paper reviews the arguments for and against the 28 day rule, and examines the extent to which UK suppliers have offered fixed-price fixed-term contracts. It also looks at experience in Sweden, where there is no such restriction and where there is greater use of fixed-price fixed-term contracts. The paper concludes that there is no longer a need for the 28 day rule to protect customers, and that it is more likely to restrict than to protect competition

Municipal Aggregation and Retail Competition in the Ohio Energy Sector

We study incumbency advantage in a dynamic game with incomplete information between an incumbent and a voter. The incumbent knows the true state of the world, e.g., the severity of an economic recession or the level of criminal activities, and can choose the quality of his policy. This quality and the state of the world determine the policy outcome, i.e., the economic growth rate or the number of crimes committed. The voter only observes the policy outcome and then decides whether to reelect the incumbent or not. Her preferences are such that she would reelect the incumbent under full information if and only if the state of the world is above a given threshold level. In equilibrium, the incumbent is reelected in more states of the world than he would be under full information. In particular, he chooses inefficient policies and generates mediocre policy outcomes whenever the voter's induced belief distribution will be such that her expected utility of reelecting the incumbent exceeds her expected utility of electing the opposition candidate. Hence, there is an incumbency advantage through inefficient policies. We provide empirical evidence consistent with the prediction that reelection concerns may induce incumbents to generate mediocre outcomes

The Creation of a Market for Retail Electricity Supply

In this paper we discuss the EU policy on electricity markets integration by reviewing the experience of the Electricity Regional Initiatives. The regional approach to market integration delivered important results in areas such as coordination among national transmission system operators, implementation of market-based mechanisms for cross-border transmission capacity allocation and transparency. Furthermore, the inclusive governance process lead by ERGEG gave voice to all relevant stakeholders. However, there are indications that the regional model reached its limit when faced with the objective of coordinating day-ahead and real-time markets. The unanimity approach at the regional level made the intra-regional decision-making process extremely slow. Further, inter-regional integration issues have not been solved yet and attempts to tackle them by prioritising projects in some Regions weakened the pluralistic attributes of the regional model. The Third Legislative Energy Package has the potential to overcome some of these shortcomings by empowering pan-European institutions (ENTSO and ACER) and by involving Member States in the decision making process. Some weaknesses of the second-package, though, persist in the new framework. First, there are no provisions ensuring that ENTSO will have appropriate incentives to act in the interest of European consumers. Second, the Third Package perpetuates the separation between within-country congestion management – which remains a national issue – and cross-border congestion management – to be dealt with at the EU level. This two-tier approach is inconsistent with the highly meshed nature of the European network and is likely to result in inefficient market design. Further, the implementation of coordinated cross-border and national congestion management mechanisms requires considering geographically differentiated prices within countries, a politically unattractive result for most Member States.retail competition, electricity regulation

The bird in hand: stipulated settlements and electricity regulation in Florida

In the last two decades many major regulatory issues in Florida have been resolved by means of stipulated settlements between the utilities and interested parties, notably the Office of Public Counsel, instead of by the traditional method of hearings and litigation before the Public Services Commission. This paper investigates the extent, nature and effects of these stipulations in the electricity sector there. They have now largely superceded the litigated process. Their purpose is not to save costs, which are orders of magnitude less than the revenues at stake. Stipulations have brought reductions in electricity revenues worth over $3 billion, mainly during the last decade. These reductions are greater than would have otherwise occurred: about three quarters might never have occurred at all. In some cases a change in the method of rate reduction favoured industrial consumers but other customers are nonetheless likely to have benefited despite this. Some benefits were outside the scope of the commission to confer. Other benefits reflected a more flexible accounting policy. Most importantly, there has been a shift from conventional rate of return regulation, and from earnings sharing schemes with profits caps, to prices fixed for specified periods of time with revenue-sharing incentive arrangements. Stipulations have transformed the regulatory landscape in the Florida electricity sector, and their use seems worth considering elsewhere.stipulations, settlements, consumer advocate, regulation.

‘UK domestic energy contracts, the 28 day rule, and experience in Sweden’

In the UK, domestic customers must be able to terminate energy contracts at 28 days’ notice. This has been seen as a transitional protection for customers and for competition. This paper reviews the arguments for and against the 28 day rule, and examines the extent to which UK suppliers have offered fixed-price fixed-term contracts. It also looks at experience in Sweden, where there is no such restriction and where there is greater use of fixed-price fixed-term contracts. The paper concludes that there is no longer a need for the 28 day rule to protect customers, and that it is more likely to restrict than to protect competition.competition, electricity, regulation

Competition in Retail Electricity Supply

This paper presents an analysis and defence of competition in retail electricity supply. It includes some account of its development in the UK over the last dozen years, to the point where all retail price controls have now been removed. The development of this competition illustrates a number of the themes in Israel Kirzner’s writing - for example, the nature of competition as a process over time, the entrepreneurial and learning nature of this process, the role of marketing in alerting customers, the role of competition in establishing price and in discovering the services and suppliers that customers prefer, and the advantages of competition over regulation.competition, electricity, regulation, Austrian economics

Reform and Regulation of the Electricity Sectors in Developing Countries

Reform and Regulation of the Electricity Sectors in Developing Countrie