The Columbia Heights/Shaw Family Collaborative (CHSFC) is a community based organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for people in Washington D.C. It uses restorative justice interventions and provides three basic levels of programs for the community: family group conferencing, youth violence prevention, and work training and jobs for adults. Solution-focused brief therapy [...]

The  Solution-Focused Judging Bench Book was written primarily by Michael King, an Australian law professor and former judge, and was published by The Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration.  The book describes how courts can apply therapeutic jurisprudence principals, which “concentrates on the law’s impact on emotional life and psychological well-being” in court hearings.
Bench books are [...]

In October 2009 Ben Furman, a psychiatrist from Finland, and the author of numerous books including the brilliant Solution Talk: Hosting Threaputic Conversations, with his colleague Ahola Tapani, and I, developed and made available, a free web site program: www.apologyletter.org.
The simple program combines solution-focused brief therapy and restorative justice to provide a confidential program for [...]

Making effective apologies is a necessary skill.  Yet few of us know how to do it and most of us fail to teach our children how to make effective apologies.  Many of us think we can simply say, “I’m sorry,” or “Please forgive me.”  But often an apology requires that we do more.  Restorative justice [...]

About five years ago I learned about solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_focused_brief_therapy), which focuses on “preferred futures” instead of “problem talk,” and since then I have been applying it to my work and life.
While restorative justice gives us the opportunity to face wrongdoing and social injustice by imaging what we need to heal or to [...]