Restorative practices

Restorative practices are a way of repairing harm done to relationships when there has been some kind of conflict. Restorative practices have been used successfully across the world for many years, in prisons, communities and now in schools.

Kent Safe Schools are actively working within schools and organisations to develop restorative approaches. We do this through:

• Providing training to school staff to raise awareness of restorative approaches and how these can be embedded within the school or setting
• Advising schools on their behaviour management policies and how to include restorative practices within the policies
• Developing our own training programme for school staff which is delivered
• Working with six schools across the county in an intensive manner to help them to embed restorative practices. The results from this pilot will then be used to help the programme to be rolled out across the county.
• Running a practitioners forum across the county, which is designed to allow those staff and professionals who are using restorative practices to swap ideas and share good practice.

Building Relationships, Repairing Harm: A Three Day Training Course

The newly developed, skills based training programme, Building Relationships, Repairing Harm will be running again in early 2011. The course will be run in January/February 2011 at the Seasalter Christian Centre, Whitstable. Attendees are required to attend all three dates. The cost for this training is to be confirmed and includes refreshments and lunch for all three days as well as a comprehensive training manual.

If you would like to register for more details on this training, please contact Laura Head on 01227 284410.

For more information on restorative practices and how this could work for your school or setting please contact Kent Safe Schools on 01227 284596 and ask to speak to the Restorative Approaches Co-ordinator.

A booklet designed to help schools embed restorative practices within their school or setting will be coming out soon. If you would be interested in more information, please do contact us.