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Burlington as a Restorative City for Youth

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The Burlington Community Justice Center is exploring what it means for Burlington to become a “Restorative City for Youth.” A Restorative City for Youth (RCY) is one that puts its relationships with its children, youth and their adults front and center. It pledges to support children and youth through the emotional, social, cultural and economic challenges that traditionally have led to exclusion and punishment, and fused the school-to-prison pipeline. In an RCY, schools, city departments, social and mental health services, nonprofit agencies, law enforcement, and the courts commit to providing children, starting at an early age, culturally competent  educational and rehabilitative programs, such as in-home parenting sessions, family circles, mentoring, therapy, experiential and service learning, and job training. The primary message delivered is “You matter to us. You belong here. We want to keep you as part of our community.”

Through this effort we will be holding three community trainings in different parts of the City to help anyone who is interested to develop a better understanding of the power of putting relationships at the center of all that we do.   

Our goal is to offer restorative practices trainings to interested youth service organizations and community partners to help co-create strong community-building practices.  In addition, we are forming a steering committee of youth and youth service organizations from around the City to help us build this vision with the folks who are most impacted by the outcome. 

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Interested in joining us? Please contact Virginia Litchfield at vlitchfield@burlingtonvt.gov

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