Skills for the Job: Restorative practice

What is restorative practice?
The aim of restorative practice is to build, maintain and repair relationships. It involves professionals adopting a mindset in which they provide support and challenge to children and young people. When children display disengagement, conflict, and harmful behaviours, these are seen as expressions of unmet needs that can be addressed by restorative means.

Restorative practice holds that all children are responsible for the effects of their behaviours and for helping to decide outcomes to move on and put things right. To be “restorative” is to believe that decisions are best made, and conflicts resolved, by all those directly affected.

Restorative practice is sometimes confused with restorative justice – a much-used term in the news and government policy. Restorative justice is a more reactive discipline. By contrast, restorative practice or restorative approaches, are more proactive concepts that aim to deal with conflict immediately or prevent it before it arises.

What problems can restorative practice help address, and where does it take place?
Restorative practice can be used in any setting, and with any age group. But it should not be viewed as a distinct work stream or intervention. Rather, it is something that can offer an overarching framework and language for consistent multi-agency work and collaboration.

Evidence, both national and international, shows that when a setting adopts restorative practices, there is a shift in mindset, which results in improved outcomes for practitioners and young people alike.

How can I introduce restorative principles to my setting?
There are two ways of dealing with issues when they arise: planned, and unplanned. In terms of planned work, a youth worker or teacher – the “facilitator” – gets the young person to sit down with the person they have a problem with. If appropriate, others who are involved can also be part of the group. The size of the circle depends on the complexity of the problem. Prior to this, the facilitator must do some preparation with those involved to be sure that everyone knows what will happen. The facilitator will then ask a series of questions to all those involved. They follow a regular sequence such as: