Reflections on researching restorative approaches in schools and children's residential care

This chapter reflects on the use of Restorative Approaches (RAs) with children in two different types of institutional context, as well as the challenges inherent in researching their impact. It draws on two research projects in different settings that use different restorative approaches: Family Group Conferences (FGCs) in mainstream schools (see Hayden, 2009) and Restorative Justice (RJ) in children’s residential care (Hayden and Gough, 2010). As the key findings of these studies are already published they are not reproduced in full here. Instead this chapter sets out to consider how the approaches used in these two institutional settings demonstrated key values and practices associated with RAs. In so doing the chapter considers the transferability of RAs to different contexts that work with and care for children. Considerations to do with research design and ‘findings’ are presented to encourage discussion about how we go about researching RAs in a climate where performance management strongly influences ‘success’ criteria and how Children’s Services in the UK have to operate.