by Rosie Chadwick
It’s tempting for advocates of restorative practice to think that the benefits speak for themselves, but if we want to make the case to doubters we need to appeal not just to the heart but also to the head and more especially the wallet.
Evidence is frustratingly scarce. When it comes to gathering more of it, we might usefully concentrate on some ‘big ticket’ items where savings can potentially be substantial. Here are my suggested top 3 candidates. Are there others we should add and/or is there evidence you know of that can be widely shared? If so, please let us know!
1. School exclusions.
There’s good evidence that restorative practice helps bring down school exclusions. Government data on the cost of school exclusions is quite old but a 2017 study by the IPPR think tank estimated the cost of exclusion at around £370,000 per young person based on a range of factors including the costs of alternative provision, lost taxation from lower future earnings, associated benefits payments, higher likelihood of entry into the criminal justice system, increased likelihood of long-term mental health problems and so on.[1] Total cost for every year’s cohort of permanently excluded young people were put at £2.1 billion, and that’s without adding in exclusions not captured in the official data. Even a modest reduction in exclusions of, say, 1% equates to a saving of £20 million.
2. Looked-after children
A 2019 study by the Institute for Government found that 47% of local authority spending on children’s care (£7.9 billion in total) went on services for looked after children, with costs and demand both rising steeply in recent years.[2] An evaluation of the Leeds Partners in Practice, published in 2020,[3] found that introducing ‘restorative early support interventions’ generated savings of over £400,000 a month, largely due to a drop in the number of looked after children. If replicated elsewhere, this may help to ease the acute pressures being felt by children’s services.
3. Savings in health: the benefits of a ‘restorative just culture.’
Over to health, and research published in 2019 found economic as well as many other benefits when one NHS Trust - Mersey Care – put a ‘restorative just culture’ at the heart of its response to incidents, patient harm and complaints against staff.[4] The researchers estimate the economic benefits of introducing a restorative justice culture at about £2.5 million, equating to about 1% of the Trust’s total costs and 2% of its labour costs, and with savings arising from less staff sickness absence, fewer suspensions with pay and less spending on legal costs and terminations in employment. With an NHS workforce of 1.2 million and hospital staff sickness rates of around 4% pre-pandemic, tangible benefits like this surely merit all of our attention.
References
[1] Making The Difference: Breaking the link between school exclusion and social exclusion | IPPR
[2] Children's social care | The Institute for Government
[3] Leeds Partners in Practice: Reimagining child welfare services (publishing.service.gov.uk)
[4] (PDF) Restorative Just Culture: a Study of the Practical and Economic Effects of Implementing Restorative Justice in an NHS Trust (researchgate.net)