More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and it’s true in the boardroom.
Dean Becker, Harvard Business Review, May 2002
Dean Becker, Harvard Business Review, May 2002
Introduction to resilience
Why is
it that some people bounce back after being hit by life’s problems, while
others find it hard to pick themselves up off the floor?
Whether faced with small scale set-backs,
like your favourite football team having a bad season, or extremely threatening
situations like growing up in a dysfunctional family, living in poverty, or
being hit by natural disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes, or flooding, some
people pick themselves up and get on with life. Others don’t; they become
stuck, many opt for ‘victim’ status, others decline into depression or more
serious mental illness.
Over the last 30 or 40 years psychologists
have realised that if we can find and identify the elements of natural
resilience, then ways of helping those with low resilience could be developed.
In a stressful, fast-changing world, boosting resilience in individuals and
communities could help inoculate against depression and other mental illness,
while boosting self-confidence, achievement levels and productivity.
A short history of
resilience
When we
talk about resilience, most of us use the word fairly loosely. Often it’s
intended to mean the same as words like hardy, tough, irrepressible, stamina,
‘stick-ability’ etc.
But
psychologists use the word with much more precision. For example:
“Resilience
is the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaption despite
challenging or threatening circumstances.” (Masten, Best & Garmezy 1990)
“Resilience
is predicated on exposure to significant threat or adversity, and on the
attainment of good outcomes despite this exposure.” (Luthar, Cicchetti, &
Becker 2000).
The
study of resilience started only 40 or 50 years ago. Back in the 1960s and
1970s, psychologists who were studying children growing up high risk
environments realised that a proportion of the youngsters developed well
despite the adversity they faced in life.
Those
who appeared to be thriving psychologically, despite the impact of poverty,
poor parenting, hunger or war, were quickly seen as being ‘resilient’,
‘stress-resistant’, ‘survivors’, or even ‘invulnerable’.
Whatever
the label, some children were clearly able to adapt to, and cope with, their
adverse circumstances. The search was on to find the ingredients that make up
resilience. To develop as human beings, we need to be able to cope with what
life throws at us, adapt to the situation and continue to develop. If we could
bottle resilience, then optimism would increase while depression would decline.
We’d save a lot of money on health and social services, and many more people
would achieve their goals.
As
a result, the study of resilience quickly became an area of psychological
research in its own right and is now considered an important area of research.
Early studies were mainly focused on young people deemed to be living in very
risky social or physical environments, but over the last couple of decades it
has become recognised that the demands of growing up mean that virtually all
young people face stress and pressure. As a result, the study of resilience has
expanded significantly and now encompasses practical applications as well as
theoretical studies.
Interestingly,
many of the pioneers of resilience research rejected the notion that they
should simply be looking for children with ‘problems’ and sought a more
positive line of inquiry.
William
Frankenburg, one of the fathers of resilience research, remarked: “Researchers
and care providers alike have been caught up in a pathological model of looking
at children. We have focused on looking for problems, a negative approach that
may sometimes have the undesirable effect of making us think negatively about
children.”
He
preferred an approach that would build on, and strengthen, resilient
traits. Positive resilience theory rejects the idea that risk is
something to be avoided. Instead, it focuses on those factors that promote
well-being in individuals faced with adversity. Rather than take a defensive
stance against risk, resilience theory takes the view that life, with all of
its ups and downs, is there to embraced – and that coping with risk and
bouncing back from adversity are positively good for us.
The main ingredients of
resilience
Dr Karen
Reivich is co-author of The Optimistic Child, with Professor Martin Seligman,
and co-author of the Resilience Factor.
In 2005
she gave a lecture for the Centre for Confidence and Well-Being which you can
listen to in the audio resources in Optimism. In the lecture she talked about
her work on resilience. She recounted that when she first started to study the
topic she was convinced that people are either born resilient or not. However,
as she and her co-researchers become more involved in the topic they realised
that ‘resilient people have the ability to stay resilient’. From their
research they identified a number of abilities that resilient people are strong
in. One of them is humour. However, as there is no known way to encourage
people to become more humorous, Reivich et al, dropped this characteristic and
focused instead on seven other abilities which she says are ‘changeable,
learnable skills’. While all of them are important, Reivich argues that
Optimism is the most important. She sees it is ‘a motivator’ – it’s what keeps
people going with faith and hope.
Dr Karen
Reivich: The Seven ‘Learnable’ Skills of Resilience
1.
Emotion awareness or regulation.
This is
primarily the ability to identify what you are feelings and, when necessary,
the ability to control your feelings.
2.Impulse
control.
Highly
resilient people are able to tolerate ambiguity so they don’t rush to make
decisions. They sit back and look at things in a thoughtful way before acting.
3.
Optimism
This
means having an optimistic ‘explanatory style’ (see Optimism chapter. However,
it is ‘realistic optimism’ which is important. Not pie-in-the-sky optimsim.
People who are blindly optimistic who, for example, stick their heads in the
sand, do not have a brand of optimism which facilitates problem solving: in
fact it, interferes with it. So for optimism to help resilience, it needs
to be ‘wed to reality’.
4.
Causal analysis
This
means the ability to think comprehensively about the problems you
confront. Folks who score high in resilience are able to look at problems
from many perspectives and consider many factors.
5.Empathy
People
who score high on emotional awareness and understand their own emotions tend
also to score high on empathy - the ability to read and understand the emotions
of others. This is important for resilience for two reasons: first, it helps
build relationships with others and then this gives social support
6.
Self-efficacy
This is
confidence in your ability to solve problems. This is partly about knowing what
your strengths and weaknesses are and relying on your strengths to cope.
Reivich stresses that this is different than self esteem. In other words, it is
not just about feeling good about yourself, it is what she calls 'a skills
based mastery based notion of coping'.
7.
Reaching out
By this
Reivich means being prepared to take appropriate risk. People who score
high on resilience are willing to try things and think failure is a part of
life.
Reivich
stresses that this is not an exhaustive list, and that you don’t need to score
high on each of those seven in order to be given the ‘stamp of resilience’.
Indeed she argues that to increase resiliency people simply need to consider
which of the factors on this list they are strong on, and to play to these
strengths as much as they can.
She also
argues that the importance of empathy in this list is at odds with what people
often think about resilient individuals. Reivich argues: 'Contrary to
some of the myths around resilience, resilient people don’t go it alone, when
bad stuff happens they reach out to the people who care about them and they ask
for help.' Empathy is vital as it ‘is the glue that keeps social relationships
together’.
It is
important to reiterate that Reivich argues that while some individuals are
naturally inclined to such behaviour and attitudes, everything on this list can
be increased by individuals if they put their minds to it and embark on the
necessary training or change programmes.
The
child who possesses resilience is likely to develop faster and be happier than
the child whose ability to bounce back from adversity is low.
Resilience in young people
Research
has shown that overcoming adversity is something that all children will do, to
a greater or lesser extent. Those who are most resilient share similar
characteristics and provide insight into how resilience can be cultivated in
our young people.
The development of resiliency is none
other than the process of healthy human development
Bonnie Benard, 2004.
Even for the best-cared for child, the world can
seem full of adversity. Think back to some of the big challenges in your young
life: your first day at school, establishing friendships, your performance for
the sports team, your role in the Christmas panto, sitting tests, graduation to
secondary school – then it starts all over again. Other major challenges for
young people include coping with introductions to alcohol, drugs, sex and
crime.
We’ve all made mistakes in some or all of these areas, but those who
bounce back, dust themselves off and start all over again are the ones with
resilience. ‘Getting it right’ and appearing ‘cool’ are very important to young
people – and any form of failure can be a major set-back.
Research reveals
that young people who have most resilience often share certain characteristics
such as having:
A support
network in the shape of family, friends, colleagues, teachers etc. Confidence
that they can face up to new and challenging situations. Enjoyed previous
successes on which they can fall back on to remind them that they have overcome
adversity in the past.
Bonnie
Benard, of the University of Minnesota’s National Resilience Resource Center, is
a resilience expert who focussed on how substance abuse can be prevented or
reduced among young people. Her positive attitude, her strategies for improving
the lives of young people, and her conviction that adults have a duty to do
more for our children, have made her a popular figure among professionals and
volunteers who are working to reduce substance abuse in the USA.
She
believes that there is a ‘critical need for the prevention and education fields
to change the framework from which they often view youth, to see children and
youth, not as problems which need to be fixed but as resources who can
contribute to their families, schools and communities’. (Benard 1990)
According
to Bernard, resilient children display the following characteristics:
Social
competence
They are
more responsive than non-resilient children; they can elicit more
positive responses from others; they are more active and adaptable than other
children, even in infancy. Other attributes include a sense of humour
(including the ability to laugh at themselves), empathy, caring, communication
skills etc. As a result, they find it easier to form friendships. Studies on
young people who face problems with drugs, alcohol, crime etc reveal that they
often lack social competence.
Problem
solving skills
The capacity
for abstract thought, reflection, flexibility and a willingness to attempt
alternative solutions are all signs of resilience. Research into some of the
most disadvantaged youngsters in the world – street children – reveals strong
planning skills if they are to survive the daily dangers, hassles and setbacks
that life throws at them.
Autonomy
This
about the ability to have a sense of your own identity, the capacity to act
independently, and to exert some control over your environment. This is especially
important for children living in dysfunctional families where drug addiction,
alcohol abuse, mental illness etc make life very tough. The ability to separate
themselves psychologically from their dysfunctional family, to see themselves
as separate from their parents illnesses or addictions, or behaviours, gives
such children a buffer that can allow them to continue their own development.
Psychologists call this ‘adaptive distancing.’
A sense
of purpose and future
Ambitions,
goals, a desire for achievement, motivation, a desire for educational success,
a belief that things will be better in the future, all of these are part of the
make-up of the resilient child. Children with a strong ambition – such as
achieving sporting excellence – are more able to resist peer pressure to
experiment with drugs and alcohol etc.
Werner
& Smith, who carried out a 35-year study into resilience in children,
summed up their findings by saying: 'The central component of effective coping
with the multiplicity of inevitable life stresses appears to be a sense of
coherence, a feeling of confidence that one's internal and external environment
is predictable and that things will probably work out as well as can be
reasonably expected.' (1982).
And they
point out that the above attributes are the direct opposite of the ‘learned
helplessness’ so often found in people suffering from mental illness or social
problems. Other factors linked to resilience include being healthy and being
female, since girls generally are more likely to show resilience than boys.
Our
resilience level can be significantly enhanced, or depressed, by the attitudes
of the people around us. As a result, research has been seeking ‘protective’
factors’ that can build resilience in young people – ways of helping them to
face up to, and even thrive in, times of adversity, including when coping with
peer pressure.
According
to Bonnie Benard, “The challenge is the implementation of prevention
strategies that strengthen protective factors in our families, schools and
communities.”
At a
policy-making level, resilience in individuals and communities can be
strengthened via factors such as:
affordable
housing
good nutrition
preventive
healthcare
freedom from
persecution or bigotry
equal
opportunity for economic success
clean air
In her
1991 book ‘Fostering Resilience in Kids: Protective Factors in the
Family, School, and Communities’, Benard reviewed existing research and
outlined strategies for developing resilience in young people. She argued that
the protective factors can be fostered in three vital ways, by:
giving young
people caring and support
setting high
expectations for them
creating
opportunities for them to participate
Protective
factors within the family
Children
can be helped to manage stress points in their lives within the family if they
are offered:
Care and
support
Having a
relationship with at least one adult. This need not necessarily be a parent
(especially in a dysfunctional family), but could be a supportive teacher,
neighbour, grandparent, aunt, uncle, sports coach etc.
High
expectations
When
children are growing up in poverty but still succeeding at school, the key
factor is usually parental expectations. When high standards of moral behaviour
are expected by parents, children tend to develop resilience and an
understanding that we all fall short of best behaviour, but can pick ourselves
and try harder next time.
Encouraging
children’s participation
Giving
children responsibility sends a signal that they are worthy and capable of
contributing positively to the family, school, youth club, community etc.
Children who are assigned regular chores, or asked to look after younger
siblings, or who do part-time work to support the family, develop strength and
resilience, especially when these are associated with strong family ties.
Protective
factors within the school
Care and
support
Just as
a caring atmosphere at home is a powerful predictor for a positive development
in a young person, so is the level of caring and support within the school.
Werner maintains,
“For the
resilient youngster a special teacher was not just an instructor for academic
skills, but also a confidant and positive model for personal identification.'
(Werner 1990)
A
40-year follow-up study into a group of children who survived the Nazi
concentration camps, and who were sent to a therapeutic nursery school in
England, discovered that the resilient survivors considered one teacher to be
‘among the most potent influences in their lives’. This teacher taught them
warmth and caring – and compassion for others.
‘Peer
programmes’ that encourage children to work together and cooperate in their
learning is the single most effective strategy a school can use to reduce
alcohol and drug use among pupils. Schools that provide opportunities for
pupils to develop caring relationships with each other, and with teachers, are
filling a vital gap for those pupils who don’t get these things at home.
High
Expectations
Again,
what works in the family, also works at school. Schools that establish high
expectations for all of their pupils – and give them support to achieve their
goals – have very high levels of academic success. Offering failing pupils a
challenging, accelerated curriculum works better than watering down their
expectations. High expectations of parents, teachers and the pupils themselves
are enough to guarantee success for many disadvantaged youngsters, particularly
if other forms of support are available, such as counselling.
Participation
and involvement
Giving
youngsters responsible roles within the school heightens resilience and
achievement, while reducing delinquency. Channeling the energy and potential of
youngsters into positive activity gives them the feeling that they are
accepted, that they are contributing of the community. Small interventions can
make a big difference in the lives of young people. ‘Shifting the balance or
tripping the scales from vulnerability to resilience may happen as a result of
one person or one opportunity,’ says Benard.
In his
book Fifteen Thousand Hours, UK psychiatrist Michael Rutter (acknowledged as
being the person who developed the concept of ‘school ethos’) studied
inner-city schools in London, looking at their impact on pupils in terms of
achievement, attendance, behaviour and delinquency. Rutter concluded that the
factors that indicate a positive school ethos, are often quite small but
require a commitment at every level. They include:
the quantity of
student artwork on display
the number of
active roles and responsibilities given to pupils
pupils and
teachers engaging together in extra-curricular activities
energetic
lessons where time-wasting is minimized and where high performance is expected
from the outset regular and consistent homework high grading standards (but
grades shouldn’t be used for disciplinary purposes) students receiving
immediate and positive reactions to performance
The use
of punishment, especially corporal punishment, was associated with poor
behaviour and attendance. Rutter also argued that pupils perform better when
the headteacher shows both firm leadership and teacher involvement, rather than
either one or the other. ‘Involving teachers’ meant ensuring that the teaching
staff felt represented and that their views were being taken into account.
Strong heads of department, working effectively as middle management, are
another vital ingredient in the creation of an effective school, he concluded.
Rutter
recommended four 'protective processes' to foster resilience in youngsters.
(American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, July 1987):
Reduce negative
outcomes by altering the risk, or the child's exposure to the risk
Reduce the
negative chain reaction following risk exposure
Establish and
maintain self-esteem and self-efficacy
Open up
opportunities for youngsters.
The concept
of resilience allows schools to move beyond simply labeling certain children as
being ‘at risk’. Going beyond crisis management involves identifying the
protective factors and processes that reduce risk and foster resilience.
Putting these processes into action, and constantly reinforcing them, can help
schools and their communities to become supportive environments where
resilience is fostered.
Protective factors within
the community
Society
has a responsibility to provide opportunities for young people to become
involved in their communities, to feel valued, to be engaged and to be cared
and supported.
Caring
and support
Communities
and neighbourhoods with high levels of social cohesion, lots of social networks
(including those involving different age groups) have lower rates of crime,
delinquency and child abuse. Similarly, social support from people like
neighbours, friends, other helpers, community health workers etc all help
develop resilience and a reduction in social problems.
Engagement
by young single mothers with other young families in informal networks,
supporting each other and their children, prevents social isolation and is the
critical factor in determining a beneficial or adverse outcome for the
mother-child relationship, including the child’s future propensity to alcohol
or drug abuse.
The
provision of social services, such as healthcare, childcare,
housing, education, job training, employment,
recreation facilities etc are clear demonstrations of care and support at
the community level. These are also vital for healthy human
development.
Other
protective factors include:
High
expectations
Where
young people are valued as members of the community and are seen as resources,
rather than as problems, involvement in anti-social behaviour is lower. Adult
attitudes, whether negative or positive, impact on how young people view their
own communities.
Adult
attitudes to the use and abuse of alcohol also has a major impact on young
people. Countries where drunkenness is socially acceptable tend to have higher
rates of alcohol abuse. If substance and alcohol abuse among young people are
to be reduced, then adults need to reflect on their own consumption.
Opportunities
for participation
When we
see young people as resources, rather than as problems, the natural outcome is
that opportunities are created for them to participate in the community. When
young people are given responsibility for socially-useful tasks they develop
self-esteem, can maintain complicated social relationships, their moral
development is enhanced and they will tend to be more participative in
politics.
When
social participation is barred to them, research reveals that the results
can be dire:
“…lack
of participation is associated with rigid
and simplistic relational strategies,
psychological dependence on external sources for
personal validation, and the expression of
self-destructive and antisocial behaviors including
drug abuse, depression, promiscuity, premature
parenthood, suicide, and delinquency.”( Kurth-Schai ,1988).
Traditional
societies usually have clearly-defined roles for young people in terms of
social or economic duties. As they get older they are expected to take on more
responsibility within their community. We in the west have largely lost this
means of gradually increasing the contribution of young people. Our
challenge is to find ways of helping them play a bigger role in our
communities, allowing them to serve, rather than treating them as potential
social problems.
In her
most recent book, ‘Resilience: What We Have Learned (2004)’, Benard gathers an
enormous amount of research carried out by herself and others since her 1991
book. This work builds on her previous work, while retaining her emphasis on the
importance of caring and support, setting high expectations, and creating
opportunities for participation at home, at school and in the community. She
concludes that it is essential that adults believe in the natural resilience of
youth and their right to be viewed as valued members of the community.
It’s a
view shared by many researchers in resilience, including youth development
expert Karen Pittman who advocates: “A conceptual shift from thinking that
youth problems are the principal barrier to youth development, to thinking that
youth development is the most effective strategy for the prevention of youth
problems.”
When is the most important
time to foster resilience?
Interventions
that foster resilience are useful at any time in an individuals life, but are
most advantageous in the first five years when high quality care-giving and
early education can have a major impact.
Adolescence
is another key period, as is the transition into adulthood, which for many
young people nowadays involves entry to university.
Building resilience in young
people
Edith H
Grotberg has created a method for spotting depression in young people. From her
research she has developed a model for building childhood resilience.
The
International Resiliency Project
Directed
by Edith H Grotberg, the project investigated the factors used by parents,
teachers, carers (and children themselves) to develop resilience in young
people. Some 15 adverse scenarios were devised, then the reactions to them by
children and carers from 14 countries were analysed. The major findings
included:
resilience-promoting
behavior is consistent with the familiarity of a situation
younger
children have a lower frequency of resilience-promoting responses than do older
children or adults
reports of a personal
experience correlated with a higher percentage of resilience responses
more than half
the responses showed no or only partial use of resilience factors.
Spotting
depression in young people
Young
people are faced with many challenges with which they are not emotionally
equipped to deal. Moving home, parental divorce, losing a friend, changing
schools, failing exams, suffering abuse, rejection, bullying, or humiliation.
For those who lack resilience, any of these can cause mild depression, with a
gradual downward spiral into mental illness. Catching this early can make a big
difference in achieving a positive outcome for a young person.
Edith
Grotberg argues that listening to their conversation can give us clues as to
whether young people are depressed. She says that whenever we hear a young
person make any (or many) of the following statements, we should be aware that
depression is possible:
I feel that
life is an endless series of problems with no solutions in sight.
Sometimes I
feel like I'm being pushed around in life.
I feel like I
have little control over the things that happen to me.
I feel like I
can't really change whatever is going on in my life.
I feel
emotionally empty most of the time.
I feel sad a
lot of the time.
My stomach
hurts a lot of the time, for no reason. (Zwaigenbaum. Szatmari, Boyle, &
Oford. 1999)
I feel angry
with the world and with myself.
I feel like
there is no hope.
I sometimes
feel like I would rather die than go on living.
Yet not
all young people are overwhelmed by adversity. Many of them face up to life’s
challenges and continue their development, despite setbacks.
“Whether
young people develop depression or resilience depends largely upon their
feelings of powerlessness or capability. For youth to become resilient, they
must feel that they have the ability to do something about their situations –
to meet their challenges. When they have doubt about their ability to find a
successful solution, feelings of depression are in the making,” says Grotberg.
A model
for building childhood resilience
The good
news is that young people can be taught to meet adversity with resilience,
rather than with depression, by learning five basic building blocks of
resilience. The blocks are: trust, autonomy, initiative, industry and identity.
These contribute to young people’s ability to face, overcome, be strengthened
by, or even be transformed by experiences of adversity. The building blocks
equip young people to deal with the adversities of life that tend to bring on
depression.
Based on
the building blocks, Grotberg has devised a model for developing resilience.
The model has three components:
‘I have’
– supports around me that promote resilience. This makes use of the ‘trust’
building block
‘I am’
encourages the development of inner strengths such as confidence, self-esteem,
and responsibility. This makes use of the ‘autonomy’ and ‘identity’ building
blocks
‘I can’
is about the acquisition of interpersonal and problem solving skills. This
makes use of the ‘initiative’ and ‘industry’ building blocks.
In terms
of the above model, a young person who has developed resilience would be able
to say:
I have:
People around
me I trust and who love me, no matter what
People who set
limits for me, so I know when to stop before there is danger or trouble
People who show
me, by the way they do things, how to do things right
People who want
me to learn to do things on my own
People who help
me when I am sick, in danger or need to learn
I am:
A person people
can like and love
Glad to do nice
things for others and show my concern
Respectful of
myself and others
Willing to be
responsible for what I do
Sure things
will be all right
I Can:
Talk to others
about things that frighten me or bother me
Find ways to
solve problems that I face
Control myself
when I feel like doing something not right or dangerous
Figure out when
it is a good time to talk to someone or to take action
Find someone to
help me when I need
“While
there is no guaranteed antidote to feelings of powerlessness and depression,
the five building blocks have proven effective in fostering and strengthening
resilience. As such, they are teammates in facing, overcoming, and being
strengthened or even transformed by experiences of adversity. They work,”
concludes Grotberg.
Resilience and vulnerable
children
Our
natural outrage about child abuse drives us to develop ways of protecting
children against abuse and neglect.
But
a Professor of Social Work at the University of Dundee, Bridgit Daniel, argues
that our sense of outrage gets in the way of providing the best means of
helping children develop strategies for avoiding being abused, or to cope when
abuse happens. She says that we become “preoccupied with vulnerability, and
that fails to honour and build on human qualities for survival.”
Her
point is that, thanks to research into resilience and other areas of positive
psychology, we now know what children need if they are to thrive, as well as
the kind of nurturing of nurturing environments that promote healthy
development.
In a
lecture for the Centre for Confidence and Well-being, which you can listen to
by going to the audio section, she argued that we should also focus on a
child’s inner strengths and on the support factors they can obtain from their
environment, rather than concentrating totally on protection and vulnerability.
She
proposed a simple grid (see power-point slides accompanying audio) in which the
first axis comprised extrinsic issues in a child’s life, ranging from
‘protective factors’ to ‘adversity’. The second axis comprised intrinsic
factors that affect a child’s outcome, these range from ‘vulnerability’ to
‘adversity’.
The
resulting grid enables practitioners to locate the different factors that may
be affecting a child, then aim to identify and support any protective extrinsic
resources – while nurturing the child’s inner capacity to make use of
resources. She lists three protective factors and three key resilience factors.
The
three key protective factors (extrinsic) are:
at least one
secure attachment relationship
access to wider
support, such as extended family and friends
positive
experiences at nursery school or in the community
The
three key resilience factors (intrinsic) are:
a sense of
security, whereby the child feels a sense of belonging and of being loved
good
self-esteem – an internal sense of worth and competence, along with a sense of the worth of others.
self-efficacy –
a sense of mastering control, along with an accurate understanding of personal
strengths and limitations.
She has
also drawn up a list of six areas of children’s lives where social workers,
teachers, medics and others with an interest in nurturing a child’s resilience
can intervene, or offer encouragement, to foster resilience in the child.
The six
areas comprise:
Secure base –
where the focus is on secure attachment relationships
Education –
where school is a place, teachers are seen as people and learning is seen as a
process
Friendship –
where the ability to get on with peers is supported
Talents and
interests – where opportunities to boost self esteem are nurtured
Positive values
– where kindness to others is encouraged
Social
competencies – where the ability to behave appropriately is developed.
In her
lecture Professor Daniel maintains: “We’ve been exploring the use of this
framework with practitioners in local authorities and voluntary organisations,
and with carers who are supporting children who have very difficult
experiences. We’ve found that practitioners appreciate the positive
approach the concept of resilience offers. They work in very challenging
situations and can sometimes lose sight of the positive things that they can do
to help children thrive. The approach also provides the theoretical basis
to underpin the creative work they’re already doing. Working to increase children’s
resilience offers workers hope for these children’s futures.”
The ‘resilience factor’
Studies
reveal that building resilience reduces crime. Persistent offenders in the
falkirk area of Scotland are benefitting from resillience training.
Resilience
reduces crime
A study
carried out for the Prince’s Trust by Dr Gwyneth Boswell in the 1990s
discovered that of 200 children and young people jailed for ‘serious and grave
crimes, more than 90% had suffered significantly from grief, loss or abuse.
A subsequent
study by the Youth Justice Trust into children committing street crime in
Manchester in 2002 revealed that a significantly high proportion of young
offenders had undergone major life crises, yet little account was taken of this
when it came to addressing their offending behaviour.
When
young offenders in greater Manchester were compared with those of Kirklees, in
West Yorkshire, a very similar pattern was found. A total of 147 cases were
selected at random and assessed for:
Death of a
parent or significant adult
Family
separation where at least one parent is no longer in contact
Outright
rejection of the child by parents, including neglect
Continual
change of residence
Loss of parent
due to serious mental or physical illness
It was
found that 46% of young offenders aged 10 to 17 had at least two of these
factors present in their lives, while 92% had suffered one or more forms of
rejection.
A
resilience-building project
The
Freagarroch Project (freagarroch is a Celtic word meaning ‘answering need’)
works exclusively with persistent offenders in the Falkirk area of Scotland. An
evaluation of the project by the University of Lancaster discovered that, once
again, more than 90% of the young offenders had experienced loss or rejection
within their family. The factors taken into account by the researchers
included:
Death of a
parent or carer
Rejection by
one or both parents, or carer, including neglect
Divorce or
sepatation of parents
Significant
loss of status in family due to step-family arrangements
Continual
change of residence
Loss of parent
due to serious mental or physical illness
The
disruption, adversity and unhappiness overshadowing their family relationships
had had an impact on their values, attitudes, personalities and social skills.
They also had a tendency towards high dependency on drugs and alcohol.
Aggression and an inability to express their emotions were common. Project
workers saw their main task as being: to help the young person come to terms
with the reality of a chronically dysfunctional family experience and with the
feelings of sorrow, regret and loss this entailed.
In
working with these young people, the keys to success were seen by workers as:
Improving
family relationships – involving the family wherever possible and providing
families with support and reassurance about how to care and set boundaries
Providing a
‘micro-community of care’
Engagement –
helping the young person define the agenda and work within it
The style of
the worker was crucial – acceptance, empathy and non-possessive warmth were
important aspects of successful change
Refusal to give
up was seen as the magic ingredient that made the project distinctive
Creating an
environment of safety, comfort and nurture – the young people stressed the
importance of food and comfort
Resilience at work
Why is
it that some people thrive in the face of challenge and adversity at work,
while others panic and withdraw into themselves? And why is it these same
people who appear to get ahead while others tread water, or slowly drown in
turbulent waters of life?
Most
people think that a combination of intelligence, long working hours and lots of
experience allows people to thrive in potentially hostile working environments.
In fact, it is those with resilience who cope best with challenges like
constant organisational change and upheaval, impending staff cutbacks, looming
deadlines, argumentative meetings and incessant competition from business
rivals.
The good
news is that although some people seem to be born with more resilience than
others, those whose resilience is lower can learn how to boost their ability to
cope, thrive and flourish when the going gets tough.
Management
consultants Salvatore Maddi and Deborah Khoshaba conducted a 12-year study into
staff who were undergoing constant organizational change at Illinois Bell
Telephone (IBT) company.
Every
year for 12 years some 450 IBT supervisors, managers and executives were
interviewed, given psychological tests, put through performance reviews and
given medical examinations. During that period the company underwent seismic
change as the telecommunications industry in the USA was de-regulated. IBT, and
its people, had to switch from operating as monopoly suppliers into facing up
to competition in a tough market.
During
those 12 years almost 50% of those sampled lost their jobs, while two out of
three suffered serious stress-related events in their lives such as divorce,
heart attacks, depression, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse. Yet, despite the
enormous upheaval in their working lives, roughly one in three staff not only
survived the stress and constant change, they actually appeared to thrive.
According
to the researchers, 'If these individuals stayed at IBT, they rose to the top
of the heap. If they left, they either started companies of their own or took
strategically important employment in other companies."
Why did
some people not only cope, but actually flourish in those hostile conditions? The
researchers concluded that those with the resilience to bounce back from
adversity shared three attitudes: commitment, control, and challenge.
In their
book, Resilience at Work, the authors say: Hardiness is a particular
pattern of attitudes and skills that helps you be resilient, to survive and
thrive under stress. Simply put, these attitudes are commitment, control, and
challenge. As times get tough, if you hold these attitudes, you'll believe that
it is best to stay involved with the people and events around you (commitment)
rather than to pull out, to keep trying to influence the outcomes in which you
are involved (control) rather than to give up, and to try to discover how you
can grow through the stress (challenge) rather than to bemoan your fate.
In
short, their commitment allowed them to engage more fully on the job in hand,
which helped them to understand and interpret the events that were having an
impact on them.
Their
sense of control empowered them, allowing them to work out ways in which they
could have an influence on the changes that were affecting them. They had the
ability to reflect on the impact of change on themselves, their workmates and
on the company as a whole – and were able to weigh up ways in which they might
have an influence on those changes. Their less resilient colleagues tended to
panic and withdraw, believing there was little they could do to ameliorate or
the shape the changes that were happening all around them.
Those
who saw the changes as a challenge tended to look for the potential
opportunities that change would throw up, taking the view that change is an
unavoidable part of life. Although they might not enjoy the stress, they were
able to cope because their positive outlook meant they were prepared to keep an
eye open for new opportunities.
When
combined, these attitudes gave them what the researchers call transformational
coping and social support. They were able to:
Approach change
as a meaningful challenge, rather than detaching and giving up.
Map out sound
problem-solving strategies.
Resolve ongoing
conflicts, and build an environment of assistance and encouragement among
co-workers
Increase
positive attitudes like commitment, control, and challenge, while decreasing
those of isolation, powerlessness, and threat.
"People
who are high in hardiness enjoy ongoing changes and difficulties. They find
themselves more involved in their work when it gets tougher and more
complicated. They tend to think of stress as a normal part of life, rather than
as something that's unfair,'' says Dr Maddi, a professor of psychology at
the University of California.
