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Victim Offender Mediation Association. Recommended Ethical Guidelines

Guidelines developed for the conduct of mediators by the Victim Offender Mediation Association.

Merkel-Holguin, Lisa and Pennell, Joan and Rideout, Patricia and Pennell, Joan and Bird, Cornelius and Pennell, Joan and Harty, Sheila and Bird, Cornelius and Rideout, Patricia and Pennell, Joan. Bringing Families to the Table: A Comparative Guide to Family Meetings in Child Welfare

As the authors of this paper remark, the practice of including families in the decision-making process in child welfare cases has grown significantly in the past decade. There are several distinct models of practice that use family-centered principles in combination with family group meetings. The goal in these models is to bring families xe2x80x9cto the tablexe2x80x9d to discuss issues, to maximize their strengths, to solve problems, and to support each other with respect to the welfare of their children. The various models for family meetings share certain common elements; at the same time, they also possess features that distinguish each from the others. The variety of models can be confusing for child welfare practitioners, family members, and community participants in terms of determining which model to employ for family meetings. The aim of the authors in this paper then is to provide a comparative guide to the different models so the relevant parties can judge what model of family meeting to use. Toward this end, the authors provide a descriptive outline on various approaches to family meetings xe2x80x93 their commonalities, their core elements, and their unique features.

Stanislaus County Child Protective Services. Family Decision Meeting Program, Stanislaus County Child Welfare Services Handbook

In 1996 Child Protective Services determined that Stanislaus County (California) had several hundred children in foster care. In this situation too many parents were failing to reunite with their children. Administrators of child welfare services decided to change the way social work was practiced with families. Inasmuch as removing children from their homes and families could be as detrimental as maltreatment at home, Child Protective Services adopted a philosophy and practice called xe2x80x9cfamily decision meetings.xe2x80x9d A family decision meeting brings together family, extended family, friends, community persons, and service providers to discuss and plan for the care and safety of children in the family. This document is the handbook for the family decision meeting program. It provides an overview of the philosophy and program of family decision meetings, referral procedures, criteria for deciding upon a family decision meeting, the meeting process, services provided under this program, and training.

San Joaquin County Human Services Agency. Family Conferencing Process: Practice and Procedure Guide

The Human Services Agency of San Joaquin County in California employs a family conferencing model to improve the care and protection of children. This approach functions by building partnerships between the family, community, and government. The San Joaquin family conferencing model roots in the belief that the best care and protection for children can be achieved by joining the strengths of families with community and agency support systems. This document provides a guide for family conferencing practice and procedure. The guide contains a history of this approach in San Joaquin County; a definition of what is meant by xe2x80x9cfamilyxe2x80x9d and who constitutes a childxe2x80x99s family; the importance of the family; principles of family conferencing; the referral process; the family conferencing process; and the roles of participants.

Ozeer, Sheila. Confessions of a Family Group Conference Coordinator

Family group conferences (FGC) provide a means for families to come together to make decisions about the welfare of their children. As Sheila Ozeer observes, this is only possible if all those involved in the FGC process properly and credibly fulfill their roles. Ozeer, based on her knowledge and experience as a family group conference coordinator, focuses on the role of the coordinator in helping the FGC process to serve families in making those decisions. To explain the role of the coordinator, she looks at the family group conference model and process; the roles and responsibilities of all the various participants; a job description for a coordinator; an overview of the referrals in which she has been involved; and challenges and issues for coordinators of FGCs.

Yantzi, Mark. Restoring Relationships

Mark Yantzi begins this resource paper wryly noting the Canadian Law Reform Commission’s assessment in its 1974 report entitled Studies on Sentencing, namely, that if ordinary human interactions were conducted in ways similar to the ways of the criminal justice system, communication would be almost impossible. Given this assessment and the fact that the majority of violent crimes occur between people who have some prior relationship to each other, Yantzi points out that frustration with the justice system’s impact on interpersonal relationships has given rise to constructive alternatives for responding to crime. The value of restorative justice is that it focuses on the relational in order to repair and strengthen people and relationships harmed by crime. With this in mind, Yantzi urges restorative justice advocates to practice relational, restorative principles with those who work in the criminal justice system and those who have other perspectives on criminal justice.

Training and Accreditation Policy Group. Best Practice Guidance for Restorative Practitioners and their Case Supervisors and Line Managers

The Training and Accreditation Policy Group was set up to advise the United Kingdom government on best practice, training, and accreditation for restorative justice. This document represents the final report of the Group. Based on the Group’s work over a period of time, including the production of an interim report earlier in 2004, this paper sets forth conclusions and recommendations for best practices for restorative justice practitioners. The conclusions and recommendations cover the rationale for training and accreditation, standards for practice, and means for assessing and certifying practitioners. The document also contains an updated suite of tools for guidance for restorative practitioners, their case supervisors, and line managers. It should be noted that the notion of restorative practice in the document refers to work which involves bringing victims/persons harmed, offenders/perpetrators, and others into dialogue with each other to resolve the harm. Hence, the approach and pertinent skills discussed in these pages are focused on victim-offender work.

Ott, Alice Boles. Tools for Permanency. Tool # 2: Family Group Decision Making

The National Resource Center for Foster Care & Permanency Planning focuses on building the capacity of child welfare agencies to assist children at risk of removal from their families and children already placed in out-of-home care. The Center publishes a series of “Tools for Permanency� to foster family-centered and collaborative approaches. This paper, Tool #2, explains family group decision making (FGDM) as a family focused, culturally sensitive approach to developing permanency plans for children in foster care or children at risk of entering foster care. The paper summarizes the basic principles and models of FGDM; sketches FGDM’s background in New Zealand; describes the process; points to a closely-related approach in Oregon’s family unity meeting program; provides guidelines for implementation of an FGDM program; and identifies additional resources for interested persons.

Editor. Colorado Forum: Connector for restorative justice

With proliferation of interest in and application of restorative justice principles and practices, there can be a considerable, almost bewildering diversity of approaches to restorative justice. Several years ago it became clear to many people in Colorado that this was the situation there. To address this problem, the idea emerged to have a central point or connector for restorative justice efforts in Colorado. This resulted in the formation of the Colorado Forum on Community and Restorative Justice to provide training, technical assistance, policy development, and conferences. The vision, mission, and principles of the Forum are detailed in this article.

Oxfordshire Youth Offending Team. Oxfordshire Youth Offending Team Policy on Work with Victims

The Oxfordshire Youth Offending Team (United Kingdom) was established in the late 1990s to put victims at the center of the criminal justice process. The approach in contacting and supporting victims of youth crime is to work with victims sensitively, taking account of their needs, rights, and wishes. This paper spells out in detail the policies on its work with victims. These stated policies cover the following: Youth Offending Team strategy; victims awareness; reparation and mediation; guidelines for practice; the youth court; interagency implications; and monitoring and evaluation.

Groh, Arlene. A Healing Approach to Elder Abuse and Mistreatment: The Restorative Approaches to Elder Abuse Project.

Elder abuse is often referred to as a hidden crime, writes Arlene Groh. This fact led to the development of the Restorative Justice Approaches to Elder Abuse Project in the Waterloo region of Ontario. The aim of the project is to seek a healing, safe approach to elder abuse. This document covers key elements in the development, operation, and evaluation of that project. Contents of the manual include the following: the project mission; the nature, causes, and prevalence of elder abuse; restorative justice and elder abuse; project development; integration of restorative justice into the project's approach to elder abuse; the case process; project evaluation; the future of the project; and appendices relevant to the operation of the elder abuse project.

Totten, Mark and Caputo, Tullio and Kelly, Katharine and Caputo, Tullio. Community Toolkit for a Youth Restorative Justice Project.

The purpose of this toolkit is to describe, in plain language, how to plan for, deliver, and evaluate a youth restorative justice program in your community. The material in this toolkit may be freely copied by people involved in restorative justice work. Your ‘community’ might be a school, neighbourhood, an ethnic group, or church congregation. Depending upon your needs, the focus might be solely on criminal behaviour. However, many harmful behaviours are not against the law. Therefore, your most pressing need might be to resolve interpersonal conflicts between tenants or students. Or, your neighbourhood may be experiencing racial conflict. Our intent is to provide a generic framework which is applicable to any youth setting. You do not need to get new funding to run this project, although a small budget will make tasks easier. Many of the resources and supports discussed in this toolkit are available at no cost. The breadth and strength of your partnerships is key. Good partners are able to bring resources to the project from their own organizations. Other partners volunteer their time and link you up with needed neighbourhood supports. (excerpt)

Crawford, Donna and Bodine, Richard. Conflict Resolution Education: A Guide to Implementing Programs in Schools, Youth-Serving Organizations, and Community and Juvenile Justice Settings; Program Report

The first chapter defines conflict as a natural condition and examines the origins of conflict, responses to conflict, and the outcomes of those responses. It presents the essential principles, foundation abilities, and problemsolving processes of conflict resolution; discusses the elements of a successful conflict resolution program; and introduces four approaches to implementing conflict resolution education. Each of the next four chapters discusses one of these four approaches and presents examples of programs that use the approach. One chapter describes an approach to conflict resolution education characterized by devoting a specific time to teaching the foundation abilities, principles, and one or more of the problemsolving processes of conflict resolution in a separate course or distinct curriculum. Another chapter describes an approach in which selected, trained individuals provide neutral third-party facilitation in conflict resolution. A chapter presents an approach that incorporates conflict resolution education into the core subject areas of the curriculum and into classroom management strategies, and another chapter presents a comprehensive whole-school methodology that builds on the previous approach. The next two chapters address conflict resolution education in settings other than traditional schools, including juvenile justice and community settings. The final three chapters address more overarching topics: conflict resolution research and evaluation; a developmental sequence of behavioral expectations in conflict resolution; and the process of developing, implementing, and sustaining a conflict resolution program. Abstract courtesy of National Criminal Justice Reference Service, www.ncjrs.org.

Raye, Barbara. How Do Culture, Class and Gender Affect the Practice of Restorative Justice? (Part 2)

Barbara Raye observes that in the United States people of color -- especially African Americans and Native Americans -- are disproportionately arrested, charged, convicted, and incarcerated. At the same time, the number of people of color working in the field, leading criminal justice services agencies, or receiving services is under-represented. In this context, Raye further asserts that the values and practices designated as "restorative justice" by "religious, peace-driven, middle class and educated white men of the early 1960s" are actually rooted deeply in indigenous and feminine experiences and contexts. Her fundamental point is that biases of gender, race, and class affect indigenous and feminine sub-cultures within the larger Western worldview. Therefore, to address these biases with respect to indigenous people and women in restorative justice, three areas need attention: (1) selection and recruitment of facilitators; (2) referral of cases; and (3) practitioners' understanding of crime and effects of crime.

Dyck, David. Are We-Practitioners, Advocates- Practicing What We Preach?

For people and organizations committed to restorative justice ideas and processes, is restorative justice what they believe in and practice when dealing with clients (e.g., victims, offenders, and others in circumstances of conflict), or is it what they also believe in and practice when developing and delivering programs, and operating in general? Put another way, is restorative justice how they operate externally, or is it also how they operate internally? This is the question of practicing what is preached. David Dyck refers to this as xe2x80x9ccongruency,xe2x80x9d and it is the issue of congruency that he discusses in this chapter. He starts from the position that the question of congruency implies that the answers matter xe2x80x93 that restorative justice advocates and practitioners have an obligation to live out restorative justice values in the pursuit of program development and delivery, and in response to conflict within their organization and their personal life. As he further states, the effectiveness, credibility, and promise of the field depend, at least in part, on the ability of advocates and practitioners to be living examples of the principles they espouse.

Bowen, Helen and Marshall, Chris and Boyack, Jim and Marshall, Chris. How Does Restorative Justice Ensure Good Practice?

Restorative justice in New Zealand grew out of dissatisfaction in the Maori community with treatment of them and their young people by social agencies and the criminal justice system, write Jim Boyack, Helen Bowen, and Chris Marshall. Thus originating as a self-sown, community-based initiative, restorative justice gained official sanction in New Zealand through a series of legislative acts in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The authors note that from the outset restorative justice providers in New Zealand recognized the need to monitor and improve facilitation of conferences (for adults and for youth) and other processes. The question being discussed then by providers is how to ensure good practice in restorative justice programs. Boyack, Bowen, and Marshall sketch the values-based approach to defining standards of good practice chosen by the Restorative Justice Network in New Zealand.

Toews, Barb and Katounas, Jackie. Have Offender Needs and Perspectives Been Adequately Incorporated into Restorative Justice?

From two quite different life experiences, Barb Toews and Jackie Katounas collaborate in this chapter on the question of the adequacy of restorative justice to address offender needs and perspectives. Barb Toews has long worked as a mediator between victims and offenders in the juvenile sphere; more recently she has begun restorative justice work in prison in Pennsylvania. Jackie Katounas had long been involved in criminal activity, yet in recent years she has turned from that and begun to seek a more constructive life, including in at least one instance making amends for an act of wrongdoing. From her experience, she gained first-hand knowledge that restorative justice can work, and she is now a restorative justice project manager for Prison Fellowship New Zealand. With all of this in mind, they sketch ways in which restorative justice can better incorporate offender needs and perspectives into its aims and processes.

Stutzman Amstutz, Lorraine. What is the Relationship Between Victim Service Organizations and Restorative Justice?

As Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz puts the matter, relationships between victim service organizations and restorative justice advocates and practitioners has been tenuous at best. To the extent there is dialogue, it is frequently characterized by an “us versus them� approach. Victim groups often feel left out by restorative justice proponents who talk about victim, offender, and community needs but fail to involve victim groups in planning community initiatives. In this context, Amstutz reports on the results of a study project that addressed the deficiencies of restorative justice practice in relation to victim participation and providers of victim services. Involving victim and restorative justice advocates in structured dialogue among themselves and with victims, the study was conducted in 1999 and 2000 in seven states in the United States. Amstutz summarizes key findings concerning contrasting perceptions between victim services providers and restorative justice practitioners.

Immarigeon, Russ. Reconciliation between victims and imprisoned offenders: Program models and issues.

Compiled by Russ Immarigeon for the Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Office on Crime and Justice, this report is intended to give people useful information for either starting a victim-offender mediation program or setting up a specific victim-offender meeting at a local jail or prison. Immarigeon begins by presenting an overview of victim-offender reconciliation programs, both in the community and in penal institutions. This leads to descriptions of models of jail- and prison-based programs that address victim-offender concerns. Then he identifies critical issues to consider in planning such programs or meetings. At the end is a bibliography of resource materials and a list of resource centers.

Editor. Support People Can Be Crucial

It is commonly understood and accepted that, in justice processes, victims of crime will bring along people for support. After all, victims have been harmed by crime. It is less understood, remarks Cathy Brown, restorative justice coordinator for Dunedin District Court (New Zealand), why it is important for offenders to have people alongside them for support. Brown and other restorative justice coordinators in New Zealand courts, speaking from their experience, explain why this is important. They also discuss what people should know prior to and while offering support to an offender. To make the issue of support for offenders concrete, this article profiles two cases where support people played a critical and positive role for youth offenders.