Promoting child and youth resilience by strengthening home and school environments: A literature review

ABSTRACT

A multisystemic model of resilience suggests that the capacity of one system to cope with atypical stress improves the capacity of co-occurring systems. In this paper, we review research demonstrating this relationship, where the more resilient caregivers are, the more likely children are to experience the promotive and protective factors they require for optimal growth and development in both home and school settings. We examine research from the last two decades on school- or family-based resilience promoting interventions, and advocate for a new perspective which adopts a multisystemic view of resilience in order to redirect the focus of the international research agenda, which places emphasis on children rather than systems. The implications of this multisystemic approach to resilience are discussed in relation to the design of programs that promote the well-being of parents and teachers in ways that contribute to more supportive and stable home and school environments for children.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• children
• caregivers
• school
• education
• multisystemic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [IP2- 150708].

Notes on contributors

Akwasi Twum-Antwi

Akwasi Twum-Antwi is the Project Manager for the Resilience Youth in Stressed Environments (RYSE) Project and Operations Manager for the Resilience Research Center at Dalhousie University. Eric has a Neuroscience Specialist Degree from the University of Toronto and holds a Master of Medicine, specializing in Public Health with Health Economics, from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Philip Jefferies

Philip Jefferies is a research fellow with the Resilience Research Center, and a Charted Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

Phil works with young people in Canada and around the world, often from challenging backgrounds, to investigate and foreground factors beneficial to their mental health and well-being. He specializes in statistical modeling on platforms such as R, MPlus, RUMM2030, and SPSS, and uses Grounded Theory and phenomenology.

Michael Ungar

Michael Ungar is Canada Research Chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience, Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University, and founder and Director of the Resilience Research Center. He is among the best-known writers and researchers on the topic of resilience in the world. His work has changed the way resilience is understood, shifting the focus from individual traits to the interactions between people and their families, schools, workplaces, and communities. He is the author of 15 books that have been translated into five languages as well as more than 180 scientific papers and has coordinated over ten million dollars in research in more than a dozen countries.