Our Services
Open Circle provides restorative justice processes for individuals as well as research, policy and program design work in the area of restorative justice and restorative practice.
Restorative Responses for Individuals
Community-based restorative justice responses to sexual harm
Open Circle has a particular focus on community-based responses to harm, where people are pursuing a restorative justice process as an alternative to criminal legal responses. We also take referrals for sexual harm matters that have been through a criminal legal process. This is a free, voluntary, and confidential service that supports communication between a person who has experienced sexual harm, the person responsible for that harm, and sometimes other affected people.
TAC Restorative Justice Program
Open Circle is partnering with Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC) to provide a restorative justice program for people who have experienced road trauma. Participants in the facilitated dialogue part of the program can explore safe and supported communication with another person involved in the collision.
Participants in the storytelling part of the program can participate in an interview about their experience of road trauma and recovery, which is written up as a personal narrative. Through the interview the participant is also able to contribute to a collective document about road trauma, which aims to support road safety awareness. More information can be found here: https://cij.org.au/opencircle/tac-restorative-justice-program/
Weaving Repair Restorative Justice Program for Young People Impacted by Harmful Sexual Behaviours
In 2024, the CIJ received funding from the Victorian Legal Services Board for Open Circle to develop and pilot a restorative justice program that responds to young people harmed by and engaging in harmful sexual behaviours (HSB). The Weaving Repair project seeks to complement Victoria’s existing therapeutic, legal and statutory responses to HSB by offering specialist community-based restorative justice responses. The program provides an avenue for meaningful justice and healing for people who have been harmed; and for people responsible to acknowledge harm, gain a deeper understanding of the impacts of their behaviours, and commit to change. More broadly, the program seeks to tend to the wider impact of HSB on family and other relationships. Weaving Repair uses a trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate, and systemic approach that is tailored and responsive to the needs each participant. More information can be found here: https://cij.org.au/opencircle/weaving-repair/
Restorative Responses to Institutional Harm
Restorative Responses to Institutional Harm offer a safe, supported and facilitated pathway for a victim of institutional harm to meaningfully engage with the institution that harmed them. Victims of institutional harm meet with a senior leader from the institution and can share their experience of harm and its ongoing impacts, receive a personalised acknowledgment and apology, and ask questions about the steps the institution is now taking to ensure it’s addressed the failures.
Open Circle facilitators are current members of the Commonwealth Ombudsman Panel of restorative engagement facilitators, and also facilitate processes for the Australian Defence Force, the National Redress Scheme, the Territories Stolen Generation Redress Scheme, and the Beaumaris Inquiry.
Research, Advocacy and Program Design
Program Design
Open Circle designs restorative engagement frameworks for organisations and institutions that want to acknowledge past harm, offer healing and support to people who have been affected, and seek systemic cultural and organisational change to prevent future harm. We work with governments, courts and tribunals, not-for-profit entities, community organisations, including Aboriginal-led and community-controlled organisations, and private corporations. Our work includes program design, implementation, facilitation, evaluation and policy work to support organisational change.
Increasing Access to Community-Based Restorative Justice
Open Circle engages in research and systemic advocacy to make restorative justice more widely accessible and protected. More information can be found here: https://cij.org.au/opencircle/increasing-acces…torative-justice/
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Email: open.circle@rmit.edu.au
Phone: 03 9925 7708
