When a child is removed from their family for their own safety, the goal is almost always to bring them home again. But what does “home” really mean if it was never safe to begin with? That question sat at the heart of a recent Lunchtime Conversation on children and family restoration, hosted by WWSOSA and the Faith Action Collective. Three voices anchored the discussion: Dr Selina Palm, who chairs the Faith and Violence against Children working group within the SVRI’s Faith and GBV Community of Practice; Dr Shaheda Omar, Director of the Teddy Bear Clinic; and Hailey Fudu, Secretary of Religions for Peace and the KZN Inter-religious Council, and a Social Justice Lecturer at UKZN. Facilitator Merrishia Singh-Naicker guided the conversation, drawing out both the theology and the practice behind family restoration.

Selina opened by challenging the word ‘restoration’ itself. She prefers ‘family reconstruction’, a term that asks faith communities to rebuild, not simply return to, old models of family life. Many of those old models, she noted, are hierarchical by default: fathers are owed respect, children are expected to obey, and dignity flows in one direction only. Selina’s alternative is what she calls “the democracy of the family” – a vision where dignity and respect are mutual, and where every member, regardless of age or role, is free and equal. The task facing faith communities, she argued, is to disrupt the assumption that patriarchal family structures are

For Shaheda, restoration is a clinical and therapeutic process, not a formality. It means safely returning a child to family care only once the conditions that put them at risk in the first place have genuinely changed. Crucially, she cautioned against restoration driven by parental requests, court timelines, or policy pressure alone because sometimes the biological family is exactly where the danger lives. Her approach centres on strengthening families rather than blaming them: building parental capacity, improving support systems, and keeping the child’s best interests – not convenience or paperwork – as the deciding factor.

Hailey extended this into the emotional terrain of restoration. Parents, she pointed out, have often been traumatised themselves – as children, and later as adults. Real restoration means treating the whole family as a team working toward healing together, not just processing the child’s return. While a child is in a place of safety, that time should also be used to help the family do its own healing work, so that reunification happens between two parties who have both had room to grow. She cited a Baha’i teaching that captures this spirit: “release thyself from the prison of self.”

Asked what good parenting looks like day to day, Shaheda was direct: punitive approaches don’t work, and cause long-term harm. Instead, she described a home built on protection from physical, emotional, sexual and online harm; consistent warmth and affection; validation of children’s feelings; and the stability of predictable routines and boundaries. A safe home, she said, is one where children feel valued, secure, and grounded – not one that simply exists on paper.

The conversation turned to one of the most contested issues in faith-based parenting: violent discipline. Selina explained why faith actors carry a particular responsibility here. Across religions, verses have historically been used – or misused – to justify physical punishment, sometimes framing it as not just permissible but spiritually necessary. Undoing that requires faith leaders to reinterpret and disconnect those texts from violence, and to reimagine discipline as a space for learning and emotional modelling rather than punishment. Selina was candid about the risk of inaction: “If faith leaders themselves aren’t educated and haven’t made their own journey to rethink their theologies, their sacred texts, and their traditions, they can continue to do more harm than good.” She added a sobering detail from her work – many survivors of violent discipline believed, at the time, that it was what God wanted. Disconnecting faith from violence, she said, is a responsibility faith leaders cannot outsource.

Hailey shared how her youth programmes build children’s sense of dignity and purpose by focusing on values like service, truthfulness and kindness – helping children see themselves as agents of change, which in turn reduces their vulnerability to abuse. Selina connected this to a broader point about participation. Faith communities, she noted, are among the few spaces outside the home where children regularly gather, which makes them a vital training ground for finding and using one’s voice. If children aren’t given everyday opportunities to speak up and be believed, they won’t have the confidence to do so when it matters most. She was equally honest about the harm religious and cultural norms have caused in the past, often silencing children under the guise of obedience. And stressed the need for faith communities to actively disrupt that pattern while reclaiming their positive traditions of ritual and participation for children.

The panel closed with three short but weighty statements:

Shaheda: “Children deserve more than a home. They deserve a safe home. A biological family is not automatically a safe family.”

Hailey: “All healing and restoration is possible with a humble posture of learning and collaboration.”

Selina: “Families should be reimagined as safe spaces where everyone can thrive – spaces that disrupt old hierarchies of power and function instead as democracies where all members flourish.”

Taken together, the conversation offered a clear challenge to faith communities: restoration is not a return to the way things were. It’s a deliberate, often difficult rebuilding – of theology, of practice, and of the family itself – toward something safer and more equal for every person in it.