A presentation for Resolution Institute exploring restorative conferencing practices to repair high conflict disputes.
Entrenched and unresolved family law disputes can result in years of ongoing, destructive, expansive, and protracted disputes, and years of recidivism in formal court processes and in community service agencies – particularly at family dispute resolution services. These unrelenting conflicts can damage families, destructively impacting healthy social, emotional, physical and psychological development, and eroding energies of children and adults. Additionally, these families pay a personal high price for this unrelenting acrimony and the social cost for the community is dear.
Providing family dispute resolution processes to resolve disputes is powerful, effective and impactful. As a professional industry, we need new, thoughtful and creative practices focussed on addressing these unmet, unaddressed and unresolved needs. Yet for some who remain hooked into their narratives and battles, they need a way of disengaging, particularly from their negative relationship, emotions and behaviour.
Restorative engagement practices provide a forum to effect recovery and build insights into behaviour. Guided by trauma-informed practices, these restorative processes enable a gradual redrafting of the narrative into a new story. Paralleling family dispute resolution processes alongside restorative engagement processes allows the illumination of practices, processes and facilitative strategies and tools. This engenders the evolution of an emerging model that borrows from both disciplines that can generate a shift and emergence into a new narrative.
This presentation brings together two streams of practice and will refer to the specific clinical practice that Jodie Grant was engaged in.