Our Flagship Course:
Restorative Justice:
Modern Skills & Solutions
Our flagship course builds on the RCMP’s program, Restorative Justice: Recommitting to Peace and Safety (2010).
Its “Community Justice Forum” model is well-established and commonly used throughout British Columbia.
While honouring the model’s core principles and philosophy, we have built it out considerably to reflect modern restorative justice ethics, skills, and best practices.
Restorative Justice: Modern Skills & Solutions includes RJ history, theory and practical skills.
You will learn each step in the RJ process—from initial referral to case conclusion—including the checklists, forms, and knowledge needed to provide a professional restorative justice service.
If you are new to restorative justice, we will give you the knowledge and confidence to begin your caseworker journey.
If you are an experienced practitioner, your voice and perspective will enrich the learning for others, and you’re sure to gain new knweoledge too.
Course Structure:
Restorative Justice: Modern Skills and Solutions involves 21 to 24 instructional hours, depending on your organization’s particular needs.
We will customize the content and intensity meet your requirements.
Our standard delivery starts with a series of self-paced online lessons, totaling about 5 hours, to complete in the weeks leading up to the in-person workshops. Most are “micro-lessons of 3 to 12 minutes each, which can be completed on your phone, tablet or desktop computer.
Then we gather for two days of in-person workshops. Typically this is done over a single weekend, but the workshops can be done on weekdays, half-days, or any other format that fits with your organization.
Restorative justice is a hands-on, humanistic, intensely communicative service.
The in-person workshops are essential to understanding the nuances, like non-verbal cues and group dynamics, that are essential for safe and productive settings and successful outcomes.
Course Content:
- Community Justice Forum restorative justice model, placed in the context of other models.
Every RJ model has its advantages and having a broader knowledge enables you to meet the unique needs of each client and case.
- Restorative Justice’s history and its place in our criminal justice and dispute resolution systems.
- Restorative justice theory and core principles.
- Restorative justice law, regulation and ethics.
- Analyses contrasting retributive and restorative justice, and offender- and victim-centered approaches.
- Cultural competency and cultural safety in restorative justice services.
- Anti-bias and anti-racism theory and skills.
- Trauma theory, and how to support clients in a trauma-informed manner.
- Affect theory, and responding to emotions, fear, stigma and shame in restorative justice meetings.
- Reparation and reintegration.
- Practice Standards & Professionalism
- And much more.
Your trainer will have the certificates, credentials, and practice experience to support your learning in all of these skills.
Capstone Experience
We use group interaction and role-play exercises to bring your new skills to life: on the final day we facilitate a capstone experience by role-playing every step in the process based on a true-to-life restorative justice case.
Participants have a lot of fun, and report that this full-day role play helped them put all the pieces together and gain confidence and a fuller understanding.
Course Materials:
Each student receives,
- ~250 page colour workbook that includes the original RCMP manual, a printout of the course PowerPoint with space for notes, resources such as Duty to Report brochures, and all the documents and checklists needed to manage a case confidently from start to finish.
- Bibliography and links to practical online resources.
- Training certificate documenting successful completion of the course.
Healing
“The training course was excellent! Restorative justice is such a beneficial way to repair harm and support healing”
Community
“Every member of the community who is interested in positive social change should take this course! Informative and well-instructed”
ROI
“This course was well worth the time and investment”