We offer this training to everyone working with people who have suffered harm, as well as those who have caused harm, as well as those in related fields who want to strengthen and develop their practice.

A shame-informed approach complements and builds on trauma-informed practice.

This training is particularly relevant for those working with individuals and groups in areas such as criminal justice, conflict resolution, restorative justice, peacebuilding, community arts and social justice.

Sandra has over 30 years of experience in leadership, particularly in creative consultancy, programme management, individual and group facilitation, research, and mentoring, with specialism in multi-disciplinary arts practices.

Sandra’s leadership experience spans a wide breadth of practice inclusive of NHS and community health, national Theatre, Deaf and Disabled Arts practices, Early Years and Primary Education, and Criminal Justice. Over the past 16 years, Sandra has worked closely with the charity’s storytellers to lead, adapt, and manage the award-winning prison programme RESTORE.

As a joint research fellow with the Griffin Society and Cambridge University’s Department of Criminology, Sandra has researched the relationship between shame and resilience with women of lived experience of prison, and subsequently co-created a training resource exploring how practitioners can develop a Shame-Informed Approach in practice.

With a passion to embed grassroots practices in diverse communities, Sandra’s focus as Executive Director is to nurture rich and meaningful collaborations with inspiring community leaders, storytellers, peers, and academics to offer the world hope, restoration and healing.

Ruth works as a forensic psychotherapist in a personality disorder unit in a women’s prison in the UK. Her work includes long-term psychotherapy with women, as well as providing supervision and line management to the team, alongside training and reflective practice spaces for the mental health team. She also has a private practice.

Ruth has worked with The Forgiveness Project for 17 years as a facilitator on its prison programme RESTORE, an award-winning and intensive group-based intervention run in both men’s and women’s prisons. Over this time, she became curious about the relationship between shame and trauma, as she and her colleagues witnessed the powerful hold shame can have; how it isolates individuals and prevents deeper relationships and connection.

This led her, alongside Sandra Barefoot, to undertake formal research with The Griffins Society, aiming to better recognise and understand shame, and to explore the conditions that enable women with lived experience of prison to make meaning of their shame without being diminished by it.

This work, combined with her research, informs Ruth’s psychotherapy practice and has deepened her understanding of how to develop a language for shame, how to build resourcefulness in working with our own shame and that of those we support, and how to help people relate to shame in a way that reduces its power and influence.