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Tasmania, Australia

Tasmania:

The Tasmanian Chapter of RPI is pleased to announce their next seminar in Hobart on Thursday 31 October 2013. There will be a great panel with much experience in the child protection area to discuss the question, “will a restorative practices approach improve the protection of our children and support families?”
 

Please click here to download the invitation to attend.

 

Please contact John Lennox on jolona@netspace.net.au if you would like to join the Tasmanian chapter

Report as of 21 October 2021

The Tasmanian Chapter has been slow to grow but the Steering committee has been creating interest in Restorative Practices as a result of the recent visit to Tasmania by visiting Winston Churchill Fellow Bonnita Holland.

Bonnita was able, with the assistance of the Committee, to visit fourteen schools, and meet with Tasmania Police Early Intervention officers (who facilitate restorative conferences) as well as the contracted facilitators who work for Youth Justice. These visits enabled her to gain some perspectives on our practice as well as share some of her English experience.

Bonnita kindly agreed to support the Committee by presenting at an open forum at the Law Faculty of the University of Tasmania. Over eighty people attended from a range of occupations and many sought both further contact with Bonnita and the local RPI Chapter.

The Committee are current planning the next session which will be held in November.

 

Report as of 15 May 2021 :

The development of a Tasmania Chapter of RPI was linked to the recent visit to Hobart on 7 May 2022 by RPI Director Katy Hutchison. Katy’s presentation at the inaugural seminar was attended by approximately 60 people that included State politicians, police, teachers, youth workers and members of the public. Several people have nominated to form a steering committee to grow a Tasmanian Chapter.

The committee will soon meet to plan how best to meet the needs of local practitioners and grow the use of Restorative Practices in Tasmania.

Katy’s presentation was powerful and two of the responses received by RPI Director John Lennox were:

 

A Teacher,

“Thank you so much. May I also take this time to thank you for organising Katy to speak last night. I was incredibly moved by her story and went home full of admiration for her. I made a point of telling Katy’s story to my family and reiterating to my two boys the importance of not being a bystander and always telling someone if they see something happening that they know is wrong, along with the importance of forgiveness! It is an incredibly powerful story and one that I will remember for the rest of my life. It was interesting that I could also relate my own personal stories to Katy’s in many ways despite being so different from the murder of a spouse. “

 

And from a Police Officer

“I just wanted to thank you and Les for giving me the opportunity of attending Katy’s seminar.

I have been working on the streets doing shift work on the other side of restorative justice for 14 years now, but I have always been interested in working with at risk youth and restorative programs but haven’t been quite ready to stop working on the streets.

I have worked in Early Intervention for 9 months about a year and a half ago and for the last 4 months. In that time I have facilitated formal cautions and attended community conferences which have been inspiring. I have found something that I think with some more experience I can be very good at.

The seminar has made me decide that from this point on, I want to focus my life in that direction. “