Reflection: Maintaining Restorative Practices - When the going gets tough....

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of putting energy, time, and heart into something only to return and see that the change hasn’t taken hold the way you’d hoped. It’s frustrating. It’s disheartening, and honestly, it’s easy to stand back and say, was any of it worth it?

I recently visited a school where I had spent time helping embed restorative processes. When I stepped back into the environment, I was met with a wave of disillusionment, many of the restorative elements I had worked with this community to embed weren’t visible. The shifts I felt and saw when working with them originally, that I thought would create lasting change seemed to have faded.

It would’ve been easy to walk away discouraged, to be honest in the first few days after, that’s where I was, convinced that the effort hadn’t been worth it, but restorative work is not about quick fixes it is about the slow burn. It’s about consistent, sustained commitment to connection, fairness, and understanding, and that means we must reflect, reassess, and continually recommit, because rarely does anything work first time every time.

One of the hardest lessons in any change, and Restorative Practice is no different, is accepting that change is not going to be immediate or even visible for quite some time. Creating cultural synergy takes time, systems don’t transform overnight, and just because restorative principles aren’t always openly displayed, doesn’t mean the seeds haven’t been planted.

Our logo at the Centre 4 Restorative Practices is green to represent growth. Restorative Practice can be likened to gardening, and like any garden, growth takes time and commitment. On any given day growth can appear patchy, failure to thrive is in some sections of the garden is seen and growth can be challenged by multiple factors. Yet some days, the progress is clearly on show, new shoots pop up, everything looks healthy, well cared for and nurtured. The one sure thing is that if commitment to change is embraced, beneath the surface, roots of change will take hold.

Reflective practice teaches us to step back and assess with clarity, to view setbacks as normal in achieving goals and reaching destinations. When we feel like our efforts have stalled, instinct is often to pull away, assume the community wasn’t ready or that the work wasn’t undertaken correctly. Disillusionment and disengagement, however, are the enemy of restorative change. Staying focused, even when progress feels slow, is what ultimately allows transformation or growth.

Instead of walking away when community doesn’t immediately reflect restorative principles, we should lean in more, listen a little harder, work with the community and support practice. We all need reminding that respect, fairness, and accountability require a consistent approach and that sustainable culture takes time.

One of the misconceptions about restorative practice is that it must be formal, that it’s all structured circles, long restorative conversations and detailed frameworks, but a real restorative focus happens in the small everyday interactions and in our thinking. If we are thinking about restorative approaches, we are intently being restorative and we are half way there, whether every restorative action we adopt works every time, in every situation or not, because we all know life isn’t like that, there is no 100% guarantee with any human interactions.

Even if an entire community hasn’t fully embraced restorative practice, individual actions make an impact. Every time someone experiences fairness, connection, or understanding, they feel it, and it is that palpable feeling of Restorative Practice present in the moment, and I often feel it when entering a school or a workplace that lends itself to long term, consistent commitment to change.

In the days that followed after leaving that school, I had a choice…. focus on disappointment or to recognise something deeper than what I was seeing on the surface. Restorative Practice is ongoing work. It doesn’t always look perfect. it isn’t always on show, but the tools and processes are there to continually draw from and that is what matters.

When we feel discouraged, the answer isn’t to stop, the answer, as I said earlier, is to reflect, reassess, and recommit. Staying connected to restorative values, even when progress feels slow, is what ensures that those seeds of change eventually grow into something real and lasting.

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Amanda