This chapter presents an overview of the restorative justice movement in the twenty-first century. Restorative justice, on the other hand, offers a very different way of understanding and responding to crime. Instead of viewing the state as the primary victim of criminal acts and placing victims, offenders, and the community in passive roles, restorative justice recognizes crime as being directed against individual people. The values of restorative justice are also deeply rooted in the ancient principles of Judeo-Christian culture. A small and scattered group of community activists, justice system personnel, and a few scholars began to advocate, often independently of each other, for the implementation of restorative justice principles and a practice called victim-offender reconciliation (VORP) during the mid to late 1970s. Some proponents are hopeful that a restorative justice framework can be used to foster systemic change. Facilitation of restorative justice dialogues rests on the use of humanistic mediation.

This chapter describes some of the recent restorative justice innovations and research that substantiates their usefulness. It explores developments in the conceptualization of restorative justice based on emergence of new practices and reasons for the effectiveness of restorative justice as a movement and restorative dialogue as application. Chaos theory offers a better way to view the coincidental timeliness of the emergence of restorative justice as a deeper way of dealing with human conflict. The chapter reviews restorative justice practices that have opened up areas for future growth. Those practices include the use of restorative practices for student misconduct in institutions of higher education, the establishment of surrogate dialogue programs in prison settings between unrelated crime victims and offenders. They also include the creation of restorative justice initiatives for domestic violence and the development of methods for engagement between crime victims and members of defense teams who represent the accused offender.

This chapter focuses on office automation and systems that are useful in the mental health field, along with principles to be aware of when considering the use or purchase of such systems. Most managers have to rely on input from outside in order to form an opinion about how to resolve complex issues. The complexity of the issue increases significantly when the current federal health care laws are incorporated into the task of choosing appropriate clinical information management software. The significance of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) would seem to dictate at least a brief foray into its content because it lays the foundation for virtually everything that is happening in the clinical information management (CIM) realm. The information provided in the chapter can give a backdrop by which current practices can be examined for goodness of fit with the available client information management systems.

This chapter explains a set of guidelines to help mental health professionals and clients move away from the gender stereotypes that perpetuate inequality and illness. Identifying dominance requires conscious awareness and understanding of how gender mediates between mental health and relationship issues. An understanding of what limits equality is significantly increased when we examine how gendered power plays out in a particular relationship and consider how it intersects with other social positions such as socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. To contextualize emotion, the therapist draws on knowledge of societal and cultural patterns, such as gendered power structures and ideals for masculinity and femininity that touch all people’s lives in a particular society. Therapists who seek to support women and men equally take an active position that allows the non-neutral aspects of gendered lives to become visible.

This chapter focuses on more integrated approach or process for developing a health intervention for ethnic minority groups that incorporates accepted principles of medicine and scientific methodology. The changing demographic has led to complex challenges in the U.S. health care system. The delivery of effective health care services hinges on health care professionals’ ability to recognize varied understandings of and approaches to health care across cultures. Health care providers may employ different strategies to increase participation of service users by bridging barriers to communication and understanding that stem from these racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic differences. In the context of health or health care improvement, little debate exists concerning the recognized need to help ethnic minority patients maintain and restore health. There are two general approaches for developing culturally appropriate health interventions. The first approach is from science to practice and the second approach is from practice to science.

This chapter lays the foundation for facilitative leadership from the unique social work perspective. Social work’s Code of Ethics and social work practice principles contribute to the value-based leadership that is part of the facilitative leader’s core. Among the important expectations of social work leadership are cultural sensitivity and competence. Five discussion areas have been selected as essential to facilitative leadership from a social work perspective: inclusion, strengths-based leadership, power and the difference between power over and power with, oppression and social justice, and the elusive but critically important concept of empowerment. There are different types of power and power relationships such as productive power and destructive power. Being conscious of privilege and oppression are precursors to understanding social injustice and working toward social justice. The social work program identifies social justice as a professional obligation of social workers to attempt to improve the quality of all people’s lives.

This chapter discusses the client’s ability to self-regulate and handle high levels of affect. The maintaining factors of the effects of trauma- or anxiety-based disorders include fear, avoidance, and loss of control. Building or reinforcing coping strategies allows the client to regain some sense of control over what is happening, which, in turn, can have a positive impact on the fear and avoidance. Many novice Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) therapists report additional performance anxiety when their client is a mental health professional. Hyperarousal after a traumatic experience is normal. It occurs when a person’s brain believes that person is at risk again because it misreads an external signal or trigger. Grounding techniques can be taught very easily to clients and are another tool to help the client prepare for dealing with a possible abreaction while undergoing EMDR therapy.

This chapter introduces the theoretical basis for restorative justice (RJ). It assesses the empirical evidence for RJ programs, and explores the challenges and opportunities associated with applying core competencies. The chapter describes competencies of specific interest which include: engaging diversity and difference in practice, and engaging with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. It also discusses skills essential to the success of RJ which include supporting processes that value the experiences of people associated with a crime or harm. The chapter suggests the importance of practical and context-specific knowledge and skills relevant when individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities find themselves in conflict and require support. Programs that rely upon restorative principles have been used at a variety of points in the criminal justice process. The chapter discusses a practice, a family group conference, which was first developed in New Zealand involving social workers considerably.