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Restorative Justice Training
We invite you to review our certificate training programs in Restorative Justice, which can be tailored to your learning needs.
Building Community with Restorative Justice
A facilitator's role is to empower the primary involved parties to resolve an incident of harm, that attends to their wellbeing, and addresses the underlying issues for public safety.
Restorative justice is a philosophy that views crime, conflict, and wrongdoing principally as harm done to people and relationships. It offers a non-adversarial, non-retributive approach, focusing on meaningful accountability and reparation of harm to address the needs of the person harmed (victim), the person responsible (offender), and the community. The process aims to restore healthy relationships within the family and community, offering an effective crime reduction strategy.
Participants will learn how to prepare parties and facilitate culturally relevant restorative processes (victim-offender dialogue, healing circles, peacemaking or sentencing circles, community conferencing), how to draft resolution summaries or agreements, and how to customize consent-to-participate forms (youth and adult, pre- and post-charge).
Explore the different ways referral authorities and the community can be involved. Learn how to engage the primary parties involved in making process-related decisions to ensure they feel empowered and safe, and maintain accountability until file closure.
Family Group Conferencing
By having family and kin-like family come together, we can find creative solutions.
Learn how to authentically engage families in planning for the safety and care of at-risk children and youth. Training is relevant to Child and Family Service Agencies, restorative justice facilitators, and Elders. Restorative leadership training is provided to facilitate desired systems change.
If the goal is crime reduction, and if family is the basic unit of society, then honouring Indigenous ways of knowing to frame practice and promote family healing and reconciliation is necessary to improve the social determinants of health and foster good citizenship.
FAMILY GROUP CONFERENCING
The goals of a family group conference are as follows:
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Ensure children and youth have agency in decision-making about their care and well-being.
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Provide families with culturally relevant services to promote healing and begin their recovery journey to stop the cycle of violence connected to the experience of unresolved inter-generational trauma.
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Ensure children are connected to their family, culture, and community.
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Develop safety and family support plans to prevent apprehension or return a child to their family's care.
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Develop concurrent permanency plans, prevent foster or kinship care drift.
Restorative Peacemaking
Learn how traditional peacemaking circles build social capital.
Social capital refers to the connections among individuals, including levels of trust, mutual understanding, shared values, and behaviors that bind us together, making cooperative action possible (Cohen & Prusak, 2001).
Learn how to embody restorative principles in your role to support healthy workplace environments and address harm and misconduct incidents in a way that respects the integrity of everyone involved.
Restorative justice principles of fairness, equity, empowerment, and self-determination are universal. Learn how community values can frame policy and guide practice when addressing conflict and misconduct to restore peace and high levels of productivity.
Training is customized to your setting, may involve one to three core modules, delivered in two- to four-day segments over 4 - 12 weeks, and may include the following:
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Qualities and skills of a restorative peacemaker
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The art and science of restorative communication and facilitation skills aimed at building, maintaining, and, when needed, restoring relationships to promote social capital.
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Exploring the root causes of harm and misconduct and giving the parties agency within an informal conflict intervention process that will address the root issues (systemic and interpersonal) for their well-being.
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Receive mentorship support to practice the techniques in the training room and in your setting between classroom sessions to gain confidence applying new skills