Building Restorative Partnerships

Here are some of the great people who today attended the PMS Restorative Workshop, they all have a passion for their work and their community which will benefit from their enhanced restorative skills. Next week many of these restorative champions and ambassadors will attend a Train the Trainer Session and be equipped with the resources to deliver restorative workshops to their own organisations and groups. Its all part of a fresh initiative to pilot a strategy that helps groups and communities to implement and embed a new restorative culture

This pilot will produce positive change for a number of beneficiaries on several different levels. Conflict and division rip the heart out of communities and organisations. All of us work and live much better when we are surrounded by strong healthy relationships. This project will enable local support groups and voluntary organisations to strengthen their internal relations as well as equipping their key workers and volunteers with a restorative tool kit that can be positively used on the front line of their work. Little or no progress can ever be made when either colleagues or clients are caught up in entrenched positions. Having the skills to facilitate conversations and help people to stay engaged are hugely valuable when it comes to making a difference.

Our experience in every sphere of city life is that to be truly effective in any vision or mission we need to create and cultivate a restorative culture. The people we train will emerge as Restorative Champions and Ambassadors within their own organisations and for the communities in which they seek to serve. Learning to be intentionally restorative will release fresh impetus into situations that have become poisoned and polarised and help generate a unity that can achieve so much more than the division and disputes that so often characterise the challenging circumstances that we often face. To reiterate there is a real secondary benefit to this initiative – training different workers from across different organisations and sectors will be extremely positive in linking up movers and shakers in Portsmouth for the benefit of the community as a whole. At every level the project is about giving people the skills and the opportunity to strengthen relationships and forge new connections and partnerships. Restorative Practice is also proven to reduce the intervention of Police and other Statutory Services