Restorative Practice

St Joseph’s Mercy Secondary school are currently undertaking whole-school adoption of a Restorative Practice ethos and culture and the consistent use of restorative thinking and skills in the whole school community.

Restorative Practices (RP) is an approach that helps people to strengthen relationships, build community, and prevent conflict.

When things go wrong, restorative communities work together to try to repair the harm caused and collaboratively find ways to make things right.

Restorative practice is based on the idea that the best way to help someone who has done wrong is to give them the opportunity to put things right.

At its most basic, Restorative Practices improve the quality of relationships we have. Using this approach can both avoid and minimise conflict while helping us to manage it better when it does arise.

Restorative Language

A cornerstone of the implementation and integration of restorative practices relates to the language we use to communicate with each other. In the context of restorative approaches this relates to both how we speak to each other and how we listen to each other.

Everyone has their own unique and valued experience, thoughts influence emotions and emotions influence actions, empathy and consideration, needs and unmet needs and collective responsibility for problem solving and decision-making. Affective statements and questions, are the explicit and intentional use of short statements that connect a person’s experience of another’s behaviour and the emotional impact of this behaviour. The premise here is that when we tell someone how we feel, we engender connection, which helps build the relationship. A key component of restorative language is the use of restorative questions. Key characteristics of these questions include the opportunity for people to speak about what has happened from their perspective, what they were thinking and feeling at the time, who has been affected and how have they been affected and what needs to be done to repair the harm caused.