A CONFERENCE focusing on children's behaviour is to draw more than 1,000 people into the city.

Hull has been chosen to host the World Restorative Practice conference in recognition of the groundbreaking work the city is doing in tackling children's unruly behaviour.

It is the only city to have adopted restorative practice (RP), which encourages children to take responsibility for their actions.

Restorative practice was piloted in the Riverside area of the city and, following impressive results in schools and communities, has been rolled out across the city.

The idea behind the practice is to allow children to understand the consequences of their behaviour and make amends themselves.

The approach is based on the belief the people best-placed to resolve a conflict or a problem are those directly involved and that punishing children is less effective.

It means instead of children being disciplined by staff, the issue is discussed and pupils come up with their own way of resolving the problem, for example by apologising, or where damage such as graffiti has occurred, cleaning it up.

Hull City Council's children's services department decided to adopt the method after it was used successfully in Collingwood Primary School in Collingwood Street, city centre.

The conference will run from October 13 to October 15.

Ted Wachtel, of the International Institute of Restorative Practice (IIRP), in Pennsylvania, who is organising the conference, told the Mail: "Hull has been the most exciting project we have ever been involved in. We have never had the opportunity to work on this scale.

"The part which is exciting about the conference to us is that it is going to be held in the centre of Hull, where people can see the attractive downtown area.

"We will be using the City Hall, and the city agreed to shut the Ferens Art Gallery, so we can use eight rooms there and also a couple of rooms in the Maritime Museum.

"It means people can walk anywhere in ten minutes and choose which sessions they want to go to."

Visitors are expected to come from across the globe for the event, including Australia, Canada and America.

Nigel Richardson, director of children and young people's services at Hull City Council, said: "It is fantastic that an organisation such as IIRP has chosen Hull as the venue for such a prestigious conference and it will really put Hull on the map for its unique approach to this exciting work.

"As a city we are committed to developing a citywide approach to the use of restorative practices that is already able to demonstrate phenomenal results across a wide variety of childcare settings. For example in schools there has been an improvement in behaviour and attendance.

"We have a history of this practice across the city in pockets, such as children's social care and youth justice, but it is this umbrella approach to developing the world's first restorative city which is allowing us to take this good practice to another level."

Links

Hull City Council

www.hullcc.gov.uk

International Institute for Restorative Practice

www.iirp.org