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These trainings are for aspiring facilitators, including volunteers, who can work with community based agencies and schools that provide restorative services for responsible youth and impacted parties.
It includes interactive learning and role-playing allowing participants to practice how to facilitate basic diversion to court referred cases involving youth who have caused harm, parties that have been harmed, family members, and support people.
Responsive Circles
A versatile restorative justice practice that fosters cooperation and responsibility in group situations with mutual responsibilities identified.
The circle is a process that brings together individuals who wish to engage in pro-active relationship building or conflict resolution, and other activities in which honest communications, relationship development, and community building are core desired outcomes.
Circles offer an alternative to contemporary meeting processes that often rely on hierarchy, win-lose positioning, and those most affected/rescuer approaches to relationships and problem solving.
Rather than merely impose a consequence to the wrongdoer, or engage in assertive discipline, Responsive Circles provide everyone with a turn to speak, and facilitate a deeper understanding of the hurt or incident, what happened, and greater satisfaction among all people in the circle.
Registration closes Friday Jan 3, 2025
Setting Boundaries with Youth
Participants will evaluate what healthy boundaries are and how to set them, why healthy boundaries are important for self-care, and how to explain boundaries to adults and children.
On completion of this workshop learners will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of their current boundaries, identify various boundary types, and identify methods to enhance or create boundaries.
Registration closes on Monday Jan 8, 2024
Youth & Truancy Mediation
Youth Mediation: A private and (usually) face-to-face meeting between those most affected by an incident to allow for a “meeting of the minds” to offer solutions to the dispute. Mediation offers an opportunity for youth to understand their behaviors and (as appropriate or if needed) receive consequences for their actions. It is also an opportunity for youth to express concern for their actions and choices with others involved and explore better decision making for the future. The mediator is impartial, neutral, and non-directive, and the participants work to create their own outcomes.
Truancy Mediation: A private and (usually) face-to-face meeting between those most affected by an offense (the school, youth, and family) and the person(s) who caused the truancy (the truant youth or a parent) with the facilitation of a trained mediator. The basic dialogue between the person(s) who caused harm and those most affected may explore what happened, who was affected, and how and gives voice to the most directly involved parties. The goals of the Truancy Mediation program are to promote improved school attendance and decreased absenteeism, return habitually truant students to a regular schedule of school attendance, increase students’ academic performance by improving attendance, teach skills that will improve family communication and provide skills that will enable students to be successful in school and in life. The program should also work to improve graduation from high school and reduction in the number of court filings by determining the reasons for the lack of attendance and providing education, intervention and accountability to the juveniles and their parents.
Registration closes on Friday August 30, 2024
Restorative (Victim/Youth) Conferencing
(Includes Victim-Youth Conferencing)
This is a structured meeting between those that caused the harm, those harmed, (and sometimes) family, friends and community members in which they deal with the consequences of the offense and decide how best to repair the harm. Neither counseling nor a mediation process, conferencing is a “sensitive to those most affected, straightforward problem-solving method” that demonstrates how people can resolve their own problems when provided with a constructive forum to do so.
Registration closes Friday March 1, 2024
Peer Accountability
(Sentencing) Circles
(aka Sentencing Circles)
A peer justice process to develop a plan of action that addresses concerns of interested parties to prevent future crimes and address underlying causes of anti-social behavior while building a sense of community and its capacity for resolving conflict and promoting and sharing common values. Sentencing Circles provide an opportunity for the youth who caused harm to see first-hand the direct and indirect injuries caused by his/her offense. In this way, the youth who caused harm may see the reasons for the limits of social tolerance. Moreover, the youth who caused harm is provided with a constructive, proactive means of repairing the injuries caused by his/her offense, with the potential to improve the overall sense of self-worth of the youth who caused the harm. This can be an effective means of promoting the well-being of the youth who caused harm. The emphasis of PA Circles is not on punishment nor on rehabilitation; rather, it is on accountability.
Registration closes on Friday July 5, 2024
Family Group Conferencing
A private structured meeting between the person(s) who caused harm, those most affected (usually family) and there may be select support people like friends and counselors. FGC is about building partnerships within and around families to protect and support child and adult family members and advance their well-being.
This means that programs adopt a posture of working with families, that the involved agencies and community groups collaborate around particular family issues, and that the family and their relatives and other close supports cooperatively develop a plan for resolving the concerns. The FGC process is designed to create a forum in which families can have a meaningful voice over their affairs.
Thus, emphasis is given to preparing family group members and professionals, weighting conference participation toward the family, respecting the culture of the family, and ensuring timely approval and implementation of plans.
Registration closes Friday May 3, 2024