1. Facilitating Restorative Group Conferences
RGC
Facilitating Restorative Group Conferences
Lesson 4: Role of the Facilitator
Minnesota Department of Corrections
with the National Institute of Corrections

2. Lesson Objectives (1)
Listen to and communicate effectively with a wide variety of participants
Identify and deal with cultural issues
Explain the role of the facilitator including standards of conduct
Understand the legal issues including confidentiality and mandatory reporting

3. (2) Understand the variety of options to repair the harm
Conduct effective initial phone calls and pre-meetings
Assess the readiness of potential participants
Start to determine if the facilitator role is a good fit for you
Evaluate your own competency and that of a co-facilitator

4. Communication Exercise
Who are my people and where did I come from?
Who is my family?

5. What was it like to do the exercise?
How did it feel to listen? To talk?
Was one harder than the other?
Were you working against any other kind of family or cultural training about communicating?
Were your observations & guesses accurate?
If yes, have there been times when assumptions were very inaccurate?
What kind of difficulties did that create?
How did you feel talking about your people?

6. Dynamics of Difference
White middle class (mainstream) culture has been imposed upon minorities
Used to judge intelligence, mental health, beauty, appropriate communication
Mainstream values applied to others draw mainstream conclusions

7. Cultural Competence . . .
Ability to work effectively with people whose culture is different from your own
Requires understanding your own biases
Requires understanding the differences of people with whom you interact

8. Cultural Diversity Race Gender Sexual orientation Power imbalance
Age differences
Physical abilities
National origin
Lifestyle differences
Economic level
Religion
Philosophical beliefs
Education

9. Implications Implications in case assessment
Which cases are referred for conferencing
Implications during the conference
Being impartial to all participants
Drawing conclusions from the conversation

10. Cross Cultural Communication Worksheet
Eye contact: looking someone in eye
Slow speech, lots of pauses
Smiling and laughing during serious event
Sitting slouched down in chair at conference with arms crossed over chest and eyes on floor

11. Assumptions
Don’t assume you know a person’s sexual orientation, race, religion or other cultural practices
It is okay to say you are not knowledgeable about a given culture
It is okay to ask participants to help you understand how their culture affects how the harm was done or how it impacted upon them

12. What is a hate crime?

13. Hate Crimes (2) Crimes committed against a person
simply because of some physical
characteristic or belief of theirs, such as
race, sexual orientation, national origin,
or religion

14. Hate Crimes (3) What distinguishes a hate crime from other crimes?
How might a hate crime feel different to a victim? Why?
What additional considerations or concerns might you (as a facilitator) have with a hate crime case?

15. Local Culture Activity
How are people different from each other in this community?
What barriers to communication might arise with these differences?
What strategies can be employed to help make all participants in a conference feel safe and empowered?

16. Taking Care of Yourself As a Facilitator: Being Centered . . .
enables you to focus through others’ pain, frustration, extreme feelings, and ability or inability to reach agreement

17. Care of a Facilitator (1)
Before a pre-meeting or conference, establish a place of inner calm
Sit or stand with body balanced
Breathe deeply
Afterwards, talk with a colleague or another facilitator for feedback and self assessment

18. Care of a Facilitator (2)
Say out loud one thing you did well
Breathe!
Continue daily care

19. STATISTICS & PEOPLE
ACTIVITY

20. Functions of a Facilitator
Educate potential participants in pre-meetings
Bring conference treats, forms, tissues, and name tags
Create safe atmosphere
Allow for free expression of emotion
Aid participants’ communication process
Help group develop creative, realistic agreement, if willing
Write agreement; get signatures
Complete paperwork and follow up on agreement (or program staff)

21. Facilitator As Umpire You are not one of the game players
You watch the game
You remind participants of the rules if necessary
You throw the conversational ball back into the game so participants can play
You are not responsible for the final score
--Officer Paul Schnell

22. Basic Facilitator Communication Skills (1)
Eliminate distractions
Demonstrate active listening
Suspend judgement
Be empathetic
Try not to assume

23. (2) Be aware and tolerant of differences in communication styles
Allow speakers to vent
Model and teach use of "I" statements
Be aware of your emotions and biases
Acknowledge the speaker's emotions as existing and legitimate

24. Body Language Eye contact to all
Physically centered, sitting with body balanced, able to see everyone easily
Alert, but relaxed muscles
Use body and eye contact to direct speaker to talk to all

25. Vocal Language Tone of voice: encouraging, calm, reassuring
“I” statements
Neutral word choices
Use of silence: 10 counts after question, 10 counts after answers

26. Allowing Emotional Expression
Keep facial expressions neutral or supportive
Gently pass tissues to teary participants
Check in on all participants
Use silence: count 10 after a strong emotional expression
If participant expresses anger inappropriately, remind them of ground rules

27. Problematic Facilitation Techniques
Talking for participants
Interrupting
Dominating participants’ discussion
Allowing participants to only look at or talk to facilitator

28. How to Give Feedback Using Communication Checklist
Separate behavior from person
Suggest alternatives
Acknowledge skills displayed
Be honest, but talk with intention of helping to improve
Look to learn for yourself

29. Typical Duties, Responsibilities and Qualifications of Facilitators
See Participant Guide
Refer to your agency or program’s job description

30. Summary: Role of the Facilitator
Be compassionate, sincere, respectful
Listen!
Let people vent their emotions
Stay neutral (“equally partial”), while disapproving of harm done
Be a facilitator, not judge or negotiator
Do not be directive

31. (2) Don’t counsel participants Be aware of community resources
Model and teach communication skills
Be able to work independently
Be willing to keep records
Be able to do a very basic readiness check
Be willing to evaluate yourself and co-facilitator – See tool in manual!

32. Know thyself. --Socrates
Self Assessment
Know thyself.
--Socrates

33. Preparation Meetings Enable All Participants to …
Recall and sort out feelings about the incident
Gain comfort with the process and facilitator
Learn the process expectations and benefits
Decide whether to participate
Understand the process and agree to the ground rules
Minimize their fears
Plan what they want to say about the effects of the harm done

34. Work on their communication skills
Work through some of their feelings
Decide who they would like as support people
Understand restorative concept and begin thinking about options for the agreement
Decide where and when to meet
In a case with many people harmed or many people doing harm, decide if there will be one or several meetings
Develop realistic expectations

35. Pre-Meetings Allow the Facilitator to …
Inform potential participants about conferencing process, to aid their informed choice
Decide whether participants are appropriate and ready for a meeting
Develop a strategy to deal with potential difficulties or complicating factors
Determine which support persons are appropriate and possibly prepare them

36. Initial Phone Calls
Offender and parents
Victim and supporter

37. Preparing for Pre-Meetings: Safety Issues
If juveniles, schedule with parent
Never enter or remain at residence in which you feel uncomfortable
Never continue meeting if you feel parties are too angry or are under influence of a chemical
Be careful about revealing any private information

38. Preparing for Pre-Meetings: Conference Co-Facilitation
More difficult to coordinate scheduling
Increases safety
Allows observing things one person might have missed
Helps facilitate difficult or complex sessions
Enables shared feedback, viewpoints

39. Preparing for Pre-Meetings: Legal Issues
Confidentiality
Admissibility in court
Data privacy restrictions
Mandatory reporting
Protection against lawsuit
For facilitation
For damage or injury in completing reparation
Parent’s legal financial responsibility

40. Preparing for Pre-Meetings: Options for the Agreement
Financial payment
Work for victim
Work for the charity of victim’s choice
Restorative community service
Apology
Participation in education, assessment, or program
Anything else that feels fair to all participants
Combination of the above

41. Preparing for Pre-Meetings: Facilitator Standards of Conduct
In small groups, spend 5 minutes brainstorming and recording:
What should be the standards of conduct for conference facilitators?
(Don’t look further in Participant Guide!)

42. Model Standards of Conduct
National civil mediator standards are in your manual
Review on your own time

43. Pre-Meetings Allow the Offender and Parent to
Consider how the harm may have impacted others
Understand difference between conferencing and disciplinary or justice processes
Perhaps learn about the victim’s attitude and circumstances
Make an informed decision about participating
Consider some ways they might realistically make up for the harm done

44. Tips for Working with Parents
Validate the parents’ feelings
Allow them to vent
Treat them with compassion
Allow time for them to talk
Find time to visit with the youth alone if possible

45. Parents Needing Special Consideration
Controlling - frequently intervene for their children
Minimizing - make light of the behavior of their child
Angry/punitive - fed up and want their child to be punished
Passive/overwhelmed - have given up emotionally and possibly in every other way

46. Offender and Parent(s) Initial Face to Face Meeting

47. Processing Questions How did it feel in each of your roles?
What did you see that you liked?
Was a reasonable agreement reached?
What made it difficult to reach consensus?
What helped to move the group along?
How could the facilitator have improved their performance?

48. Pre-Meetings Empower the Victim to …
Vent their anger and frustration
Experience validation of their feelings
Understand the difference between conferencing and disciplinary or justice processes
Learn about rights, alternatives and resources
Perhaps learn about the offender
Make an informed decision about participating
Develop realistic expectations
Decide if they wish to speak first

49. Victim and Supporter Initial Face to Face Meeting

50. Processing Questions How did it feel in each of your roles?
What did you see that you liked?
Was a reasonable agreement reached?
What made it difficult to reach consensus?
What helped to move the group along?
How could the facilitator have improved their performance?

51. Preparing Supporters and Other Community
Invite those that belong
Avoid those who are inappropriate
Make sure everyone is clear on roles
Supporters & other community members will:
Bring resources and knowledge
Bring creative perspective for repairing harm
Help re-integration
Strengthen the community itself
Establish base of support for program

52. Problem Points: Multiple Offenders
Preference of the victim
Safety of all individuals
Power imbalance
Offenders disagree about their personal shares of the culpability

53. Conferencing with Multiple Offenders
Consider separate conferences when:
Victim requests to see them separately
Many offenders and few (or only one) victim
Offenders are in placement
Offenders have disproportionate levels of culpability