Restorative Practice in Turbulent Times: Pandemic and Beyond

by Jon S. Rice, LCSW-R

“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives,” says, Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., in his New York Times best seller, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.1

I want to live in a world where my children, and all of us, can feel safe, experiencing meaningful and satisfying lives. However, the pandemic with its many tentacles that have been imposed upon us² has threatened the very connections which are so necessary to fulfilling this desire. Personal disconnection has occurred in a variety of ways. Children and their teachers may have been separated by plexiglass if in-person instruction has happened at all.  Our facial expressions have been obscured by masks.  Illness, hospitalizations and deaths have severed connections with loved ones.  

Underlying such serious concerns lie fear, anxiety, and suffering.  It is fitting to be reminded of nature’s realm where there may exist a place of calm. For example, the “Eye” amid a hurricane’s turbulence.³ The integration of restorative practices and the Internal Family Systems’ model of Self-Leadership, provides a pathway to experience greater calm and connection – to be the “I” in the storm.4

Perhaps it’s these fears, sorrows, and woundedness we experience in the face of disconnecting experiences, of which Walt Whitman in his poem “Song of Myself” writes:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes)

When we apply restorative principles (e.g., doing things "with" rather than punishing, or neglecting our myriad thoughts, feelings, images, and sensations), we open space for something else to emerge. It’s here we experience our core "Self."⁶ It’s here we are in the best place to connect with others, offer healing opportunities, promote well-being, and become the “I” in the storm. 

It’s becoming the “I” in the storm, where we embrace Self-Led Restorative Practice, not as a new program or initiative, but rather as a way of thinking and being. From this focused place we create safe spaces for real conversations that deepen our relationships and build stronger more connected communities.7

Within these safe spaces, real conversations and more connected communities can happen – in schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and families. Imagine the potential for more meaningful and satisfying lives and the impact such communities can have on policies and practices which affect us all!⁸  

To hear multiple perspectives from members of the global Self-Leadership Collaborative⁹ on ways such paradigms and practices are being employed in schools, please visit the Foundation for Self Leadership’s free 3-part 2022 Series, "Sustaining Hope in Our Schools" (recordings available).¹⁰ 

NOTES:

1. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. (2015, p.81)
2. Managing Chronic Illness Using the Four-Phase Treatment Approach, by Patricia A. Fennell (2003)
3. Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model, by Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D. (2001)
4. Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D., Personal Communication (November 8, 2018)
5. Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (1892, Stanza 51)
6. Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D., Personal Communication (November 8, 2018)
7. "Clearing Away the Stigma Around Mental Health Issues," by Mark vander Vennen (Podcast, 2016)
8. “Proactive Restorative Practices: Creating the Conditions for Individuals and Communities to Flourish,” by Gina Baral Abrams (DrPH, EdM, LSW), Mary Jo Hebling (MS), Beth Smull (MS, CADC), (PDF, 2018)
9. Self-Leadership Collaborative 
10. Foundation for Self Leadership’s free 3-part Series, “Sustaining Hope in Our Schools” (recordings available)

Jon S. Rice, LCSW-R is Sr. Clinician with Albany Health Management Associates, Inc. and is a member of the Self-Leadership Collaborative.  He received his Bachelor of Social Work degree from Cornell University, and his Master of Social Work degree from the University at Albany. He has been serving children, families, and the community in several roles for over 30 years: Therapist; Playground Director; Division Director; Coach; Board Member; and Survivor Outreach Liaison. He’s worked in multiple settings ranging from a neighborhood center, trauma survivors’ programs, forensic mental health to community action. Jon is a Program Specialist II with the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) where he also integrates his passion for restorative practices and the Internal Family Systems framework, developed over the past 2 decades, to support wellness and healing in schools and relationships. He is also a member of the Lansingburgh School District (New York State) Leadership Team as it participates in the National Safe Supportive Schools Learning Collaborative (S3-LC).

RESTORATIVE PRACTICE'S NEXT PHASE

An Albany team integrates restorative practice with four-phase training in hopes of revolutionizing how we think about organizational behavior and relationships

Restorative justice has been described as “an ancient idea whose time has come.” The year 2005 was the right time for Jon Rice, a restorative justice trainer/facilitator and one of the organizers of a National Conference on Restorative Justice and Clergy Abuse, to invite Patricia Fennell, a research scientist, clinician, consultant, and the founder of Albany Health Management Associates, to share her four-phase treatment model during the pre-conference seminar. Thus began a more formal integration of two distinctly developed, yet synergistic, research-based approaches addressing our need for justice and healing. Among the key concepts in restorative practices — a term now used to connote a broadening of the paradigm and practices beyond the realm of criminal justice — are the elements of relationship and community.  

Restorative Practices (RP)

While modern practice dates to the 1970s and has gradually gained traction in recent years, it echoes social practices employed for centuries by many indigenous communities around the world, from Native Americans to the Maori of New Zealand. According to the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), RP refers to “a social science that studies how to build social capital and achieve social discipline through participatory learning and decision making.” 

The use of restorative practices, says the IIRP website, helps to reduce crime, violence, and bullying; improve human behavior; strengthen civil society; provide effective leadership; restore relationships; and repair harm.  Such practices include “the use of informal and formal processes that precede wrongdoing, those that proactively build relationships and a sense of community to prevent conflict and wrongdoing.” These practices are both proactive, and when necessary to address harm, responsive.

The formal end of the intervention spectrum is characterized by a structured facilitated meeting, of some or all those affected by a crime or wrongdoing.  This responsive “conference” involves asking pointed questions of  one who has done harm “to” another, the person who has had harm done “to” them, and those who care about each of those parties. The focus is  on what happened, the aftereffects, and what steps, if any, can be taken toward repairing that harm. This approach stands in contrast to a criminal justice system focused on “who dunnit” and the subsequent punishment that person “deserves.”

Fennell Four-Phase Treatment Model (FFTM)™

The model’s developer, Patricia Fennell, agrees with the essential tenet of restorative practice, that everything works much better if you don’t do stuff “to” people or “for” people, but instead, do things “with” people. The circle, a key formation within a restorative process  — whether in a family therapy session, a classroom, or a workplace meeting — implies equality among all the people involved, regardless of hierarchy. In hospice work, Fennell found that even if one is a clinician — an “expert” — that person also has to be a peer. The same is true with restorative practice. And this, Fennell says, “is revolutionary thinking.”  

As with RP, Fennell brings a collaborative approach to her work across a variety of conditions.  Starting in the early 1980s, when she was a founding clinician in one of the first sex-offense units in the country, she began developing what is now an internationally acclaimed treatment model. Bridging her work with trauma in multiple settings — including the trauma she encountered among the bereaved, from her perspective as a hospice worker — Fennell began thinking about how to apply what she was learning to the care of chronically ill patients. These formative experiences culminated in a new model for care based on the four phases she identified of what patients — and the people around them — experience during chronic illness. Understanding these phases — crisis, stabilization, resolution, and integration — helps the patient, caregivers, and family navigate the condition or situation, productively, at each phase. Fennell has published several books on the subject, which are widely used as textbooks. Whether one has dealt with one or more sides of sexual trauma, been the loved one, or not so loved one, of someone who has died, or is being treated for a physical or even a mental illness, the same frameworks apply, there are commonalities among them all.

An Amalgam

Fennell points out that the phase approach helps practitioners determine the “timing” of their restorative approaches. Together with timing, there are other shared values: 

• Equality between practitioner and individual/family/system
• Collaboration
• Appreciation for the physical, social, and psychological aspects and contexts within which one functions
• Respect that encourages the affected person(s) to determine whether, when, and how to share their story (or not)

Fennell and Rice have gone on to train or work with others from these blended perspectives, including: police who may have to respond to a mental-health situation; church members affected by clergy abuse; and direct-care staff working with residents recovering from mental illness. 

Rice also had a hand in work carried out by Fennell and David Kaczynski, whose involvement in the arrest of his brother Ted (known to the public as the Unabomber) brought him face to face with the issue of restorative versus retributive justice. Rice brought Fennell and Kaczynski together in the mid-2000s. When Kaczynski presented on violence and how it affects the various people involved,  Fennell would contextualize  the situation he described utilizing  the four phases: crisis, stabilization, resolution, and integration.

Fennell and Rice share restorative phase practices (RPP)™; with providers seeking to work  ‘with’ those who are experiencing complex chronic conditions in order to bring about effective and well-timed interventions.

Written by Jon Rice

© Albany Health Management Associates  

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Jon S. Rice, LCSW-R, has over 30 years of direct service experience working with youth, adults, and families across multiple areas of concern including child welfare; sexual abuse and other trauma; family and relationship conflicts; chronic illness; and forensic mental health. Jon is a Program Specialist 2 with the Office of Mental Health, is in private practice as senior clinician with AHMA, and co-leads psychotherapy groups at St. Anne Institute in Albany. First exposed to restorative justice through the Presbyterian Church (USA), Jon subsequently became a licensed restorative practices trainer. He has trained people in law enforcement; education; clergy abuse mediation; and graduate students, among others. He has served in various leadership roles through Habitat for Humanity and the Presbyterian Church. In his remaining spare time, and he has also found joy in coaching Little League baseball and youth basketball.