Threads across the world: sewing resilience into the fabric of children’s lives

ABSTRACT

Strengthening the ecological resilience factors in the lives of children that have been abused can help them to navigate the healing process. It is through group work that children can share their “resilience wisdom” with one another as a healing community. There is a dearth of research on cross-cultural resilience programs for children who have been abused. This article explores a group work program that was conducted for one year in Bolivia and Australia. The results from each group reveal the similarities and the differences in outcomes between children from different cultural backgrounds that participated in a resilience group work program.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• group work
• cross-cultural healing
• children
• children’s voice

Acknowledgments

Mary Jo would like to acknowledge the gifts of love from her ancestral Celtic Irish wisdom that WIA was born from. She would like to honor the unique beauty of all children and young who have been part of this wonderful experience and thank all the staff at Cara House for their incredible hard work and dedication. Symon would like to acknowledge the inspiring girls from Cochabamba, Bolivia who shared their stories of resilience. Mary Jo and Symon would like to thank the reviewers and Andrew Malekoff for their incredible support in writing this article.

Notes

^1. Cara House is a therapy center in Sydney (Australia) for children and young people who have experienced abuse and neglect.

^2. Attunement strategy use as a vital part of the WIA process.