Research Abstracts: Resilience in Young People

Author: Newman, Tony
Title: Promoting resilience: a review of effective strategies for child care services
Publisher: London: Barnardo’s, 2002. 88p.,bibliog.

Abstract: The purpose of this report is to review strategies, interventions and approaches that can help promote resilience in children and young people. The report addresses the following questions: what is resilience and why is it important to child welfare services why do some children and young people resist and overcome stressful episodes while others suffer long term damage how can child welfare services promote resilience and why is the subject of resilience important to children and to child welfare services?

Author: Voice for the Child in Care
Title: Start with the child, stay with the child: a blueprint for a child-centred approach to children and young people in public care
Publisher: London: Voice for the Child in Care. Blueprint Project, 2004. 75p.

Abstract: This Blueprint report mentions the need to pay more attention to friends, including friendships established before admission to care, and helping young people to keep up these friendships. Good relationships with professionals are squandered . The authors then go on to demand that we look at how young people who wanted to could keep a relationship going with a care worker even when they move placement, or the worker moves on to work elsewhere. They argue that we have gone too far with the view that maintaining relationships is unprofessional and lacks boundaries. They recognise that a fresh approach would require a lot of thought but that: Carers have to find an open and explicit way of allowing good relationships to flourish which is accounted for within staff time, even when they move from one authority to another. The report focuses consistently on relationships of all kinds with family, friends and professionals and the need for the care system to do better at providing continuity in all these areas.

Author: Stein, Mike
Title: Resilience and young people leaving care: overcoming the odds
Publisher: York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2005. 31p., bibliog.

Abstract: As young people leave care they face a variety of challenges. Some meet and overcome these challenges, yet others struggle. This review found a gap in the literature on resilience among young people leaving care. It therefore draws upon research studies completed in the last twenty years which have captured the experiences, views and reflections of the young people themselves. In reviewing the research evidence, the report captures the different stages or contexts of young peoples’ experiences