Resilient Therapy: Strategic Therapeutic Engagement with Children in Crisis
Angie Hart & Derek Blincow with Helen Thomas
This article offers an overview of Resilient Therapy (RT) and outlines a case study of how it can be used in practice. RT draws on the resilience research base, and has been designed to meet the needs of children in crisis by providing insights and analytical tools that help carers and practitioners build relationships of trust in the hardest of circumstances. RT emphasises Masten’s notion of ‘‘ordinary magic’’, and the idea of the ‘‘Resilient Therapist’’ has emerged through practice situations with parents, carers and colleagues, and through work with specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. The core competences of the Resilient Therapist are outlined, with a case example providing an illustration of how RT can be applied.
The Boingboing Resilience Framework
The Resilience Framework is a handy table that summarises ‘what works’ when supporting children and young people’s resilience according to the Resilience Research base. The Resilience Framework forms a cornerstone of our research and practice. On this page we have pulled together lots of useful links so you can find out all about the Resilience Framework.
Communication between autistic and non-autistic speakers: Gemma Williams introduces her fellowship research
Gemma is an autistic Early Career Researcher based at the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice, University of Brighton and a Boingboing volunteer. In this blog Gemma talks about her PhD research, and what she plans to do over the coming year of her fellowship under Prof. Angie Hart’s mentorship.
Academic Resilience Approach evaluation
This evaluation project explores ways to build the capacity of school staff and the commitment of school leaders and other key stakeholders to help them identify and implement specific resilience-based actions using the Academic Resilience Approach.
Resilience Revolution – Blackpool HeadStart
The Resilience Revolution is delivering an extensive programme of lasting change with disadvantaged young people in the town of Blackpool, through a successful £10.4 million Big Lottery HeadStart funding bid. Their work is based on research into resilience by Boingboing and the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice.
Nothing about us without us: civic activism as a mental health intervention
Through this research a team of co-researchers from different generations, professions and backgrounds will co-create knowledge regarding the role of innovative ‘glocal’ civic activism as a mechanism to strengthen young people’s mental health.
Secondary schools engagement with parents and carers: Project summary
Co-produced with parents and carers, the purpose of this research is to better understand what parents/carers in Blackpool think about how schools in their area engage with them and if schools can do more to improve this. We want to make sure that we provide the opportunity for parents/carers to voice their views and to help their children’s learning in school and at home.
How do employers best support ex-offenders’ resilience in the workplace: Project summary
Co-produced with a team of ex-offenders this research aims to understand the benefits of employing ex-offenders. We will share our findings with employers who have not yet considered employing ex-offenders as well as creating resources to help them understand what resilient moves they can make when employing ex-offenders.
How can patients, the public and health professionals work better together?
In this blog Debbie Hatfield, postdoctoral fellow with Boingboing and the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice, talks about her research and what she hopes it will achieve. Debbie’s work includes promoting and developing her PhD findings which looked at patient and public engagement and involvement for commissioning health services.
Climate change and mental health: Project summary
Co-produced with young people who are part of the Blackpool Resilience Revolution, this research examines how climate change affects the mental wellbeing of young people as well as co-developing resources that aim to increase resilience during climate change.
Self-funded PhD at the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice
If you want your PhD research to make a real difference then come and join us. The Centre of Resilience for Social Justice tackles disadvantage and brings genuine change to people’s lives around the world.
Our Academic Publications
This page presents an archive of selected published works from the Boingboing, Resilience Revolution and CRSJ community. This includes key academic papers, submissions of evidence and a few books relevant to the Boingboing approach to resilience.
United we stand Film: Youth perspectives on developing resilience to drought in South Africa
United we stand is a policy briefing paper produced by all the team members involved in the co-productive research project led by Professor Angie Hart on Youth perspectives on developing resilience to drought in South Africa.
Resilience among young people in a community affected by drought
The expertise of young South Africans in coping with drought is being harnessed for this co-productive research project. Our team is working with partners to understand what enables young people to withstand, adapt to, resist or challenge these impacts.
Cross-cultural investigation of resilience
This research project will investigate whether the Resilience Framework operates similarly or differently across diverse contexts in a cross-cultural study, and adapt the Resilience Framework for non-Western life orientations in multiple languages.
Co-production in promoting resilience – what does this mean for schools?
Co-production is a value-based approach that views people who use a service as assets with important knowledge and skills. It harnesses this experience, knowledge and skill to promote positive change, and design, produce and deliver better services.
The Imagine Programme
The Imagine Programme brings together different research projects working across universities and their local communities. Using the new knowledge we gather, we are imagining how communities might be different. We are researching, and experimenting with different forms of community-building that ignite imagination about the future and help to build resilience.
Our schools-based resilience projects
Our schools-based resilience research adapts the Resilience Framework for use in schools and helps schools make resilient moves across the whole school community. Many different types of school are working with us on this.
Resilience to re-offending: young men overcoming adversity
This practitioner research combines support work with young people who have experienced challenging times and the Resilience Framework. By examining the mechanisms that promoted resilience amongst young men who were offending, the study took the Resilience Framework and applied it to the data collected on the young men’s experiences.
Building resilience through community arts practice
The research project also involved a series of collaborative arts workshops in Brighton and Hove, with young people with moderate learning disabilities and young people facing mental health challenges. These workshops explored creativity and ideas of self and belonging.
Can kinship carers benefit from learning about resilience?
This is a Collaborative Action Research project using Photo-elicitation to represent kinship carers experiences of trying to use Resilient Therapy and individual interviews with children to find out what helps them through difficult times.
