Introducing the GBV Restorative Pathways Facilitator Training from Regional Red Deer Restorative Justice
When someone has experienced gender-based violence, the path forward is rarely straightforward. Survivors carry harm in their bodies, their relationships, their sense of identity, and their daily lives. The question restorative practitioners face is not simply how to address what happened — it is how to create conditions where a survivor can name the impact, reclaim their voice, and move toward healing without being retraumatized in the process.
That requires skill, structure, and the right tools.
The GBV Restorative Pathways Facilitator Training from Regional Red Deer Restorative Justice is a four-session, eight-hour online program delivered over four evenings. It prepares restorative practitioners to facilitate trauma-informed, survivor-centred non-contact restorative pathways with people who have experienced gender-based violence. It is grounded in real tools, built for real practice, and designed for practitioners working across contexts.
What Are Non-Contact Restorative Pathways?
Non-contact pathways are restorative processes that centre the survivor’s healing and impact naming without requiring any direct interaction with the person who caused harm. They are not a consolation prize or a waiting room for conference. They are substantive, powerful restorative work in their own right.
For survivors of gender-based violence, non-contact pathways offer something that many restorative processes have not historically provided: a process that moves entirely at the survivor’s pace, on the survivor’s terms, without the pressure of contact before they are ready — or ever, if contact is not what they need.
What Practitioners Will Learn
The training moves in deliberate sequence across four evenings, building from foundational understanding to applied practice.
Evening 1: Understanding Gender-Based Violence
Practitioners develop a clear, nuanced understanding of what gender-based harm is, how it shows up across different survivor experiences, and why restorative practice is needed alongside — and sometimes instead of — other responses. This session covers forms of GBV, the dynamics of power and coercion that underlie it, and how to recognize harm that is often invisible to those not trained to see it.
Evening 2: Trauma-Informed Practice
This session builds the foundational skills every restorative facilitator working in GBV contexts must have. Practitioners learn how trauma lives in the body, what fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flooding responses look like inside a session, and how to apply the six core trauma-informed principles to their facilitation practice. The session draws a clear and honest line around the facilitator role: what it is, and what it is not. Practitioners leave with a grounding technique toolkit they have practised and can offer naturally.
Evening 3: The Three Houses Restorative Crossing Model
The Three Houses model is RRDRJ’s structured framework for moving survivors from understanding to action through steady, intentional steps. Practitioners learn the House of Strength, the House of Harm, and the House of Restoration, and all seven steps of the crossing process. Using real case scenarios, they practise walking the model and making sequencing decisions: knowing when to begin with strength, when to begin with harm, and why that choice changes everything.
Evening 4: Non-Contact Pathway Tools and Practice Integration
The final evening is where everything comes together. Practitioners learn to facilitate all four non-contact pathway tools: journal writing, expressive art, letter writing, and storytelling. They practise choosing the right tool, opening with grounding, using core prompts, monitoring for escalation and drift, and closing sessions in a way that leaves survivors centred. Documentation requirements and follow-up protocols are covered in full.
Who This Training Is For
This training is for practitioners working in restorative justice, victim services, community support, social work, and related fields who facilitate or want to facilitate restorative processes with survivors of gender-based violence. It is relevant across practice contexts — community, institutional, and organizational.
- Restorative justice practitioners working with GBV cases
- Victim services workers and advocates
- Social workers and community support practitioners
- Practitioners in any context who want deeper, more grounded skills in trauma-informed restorative facilitation with survivors
Training Details
- Format: 4 sessions online, 2 hours each | 8 hours total, delivered over four evenings
- Delivery: Online, facilitated live by Regional Red Deer Restorative Justice
- Includes: Full session participation, practice activities, scenario-based role play, and a participant workbook
- Approach: Trauma-informed | Survivor-centred | Education and practice combined
Why This Training Matters
Gender-based violence is one of the most common and most underserved areas in restorative practice. Many practitioners working with GBV cases have received little or no training specific to the intersection of trauma, gender-based harm, and restorative facilitation. The result is processes that are well-intentioned but not equipped for the complexity of what survivors are carrying.
Non-contact pathways, done well, can offer survivors something profound: the experience of being heard, of naming what was taken from them, and of beginning to move forward without being pushed into contact they are not ready for.
This training exists so practitioners can do this work well.
