ABSTRACT
This chapter develops two themes that are implicit in restorative and responsive approaches to human services. One is that of empowerment, especially in highly disempowering contexts that involve the coercive power of the state, the power, for instance, to remove children permanently from their parents and terminate parental rights. The other is the dependence of restorative and responsive practice, not only on processes and values that support it, but also on the habits and dispositions, the qualities of character—in short, the virtues—required for and developed by such practice.
