What are Restorative Practices ?

In today's rapidly evolving societal landscape, fostering a culture of inclusivity, understanding, and collaboration is more crucial than ever. Restorative Practices (RP) offer a transformative approach to building strong relationships, resolving conflicts, and promoting a sense of belonging within organizations. To build a truly restorative culture, communities need strategies that they can use daily in order to create supportive environments where individuals feel valued, heard, and empowered to engage in meaningful dialogue. This is especially true when holding crucial conversations around ideas that invoke differing points of views and understanding. Implementing RP can only enhance communication and teamwork within the group, and can also help cultivate a sense of community that transcends physical boundaries and impacts those they serve.

Restorative practices are a range of approaches, strategies, and techniques that focus on building and repairing relationships, fostering empathy, and resolving conflicts through a trauma informed lens and in a constructive manner. These practices are based on principles of restorative justice, which instead of focusing on punishment, emphasizes the importance of addressing harm and wrongdoing by involving all parties affected and working together to find solutions that promote accountability and healing. RP focus on making things right and reintegrating the person(s) who caused the harm back into the community, armed with the skills and awareness to make better decisions in the future.

Restorative Practices training promotes psychological safety and a culture of learning and continuous improvement, where mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth and development. Engaging all members of a workplace in restorative practices involves creating a culture where these practices are not just a set of tools for conflict resolution but a way of doing things on a daily basis.