Fostering Resilience in Adolescents

Many adolescents who come to the attention of the mental health system have experienced multiple adversities in their lives, such as poverty, chaotic parenting, residential care, foster care or school expulsion. This chapter outlines new theoretical resilience frameworks and links them to a participatory action research project with ‘hard to reach’ adolescents in an exploration of how resilience can be fostered in practice and community settings. Cultural context influences resilience, and there is increasing attention to cultural meanings, risk and protective processes. A further useful analysis of how social relationships foster resilience is provided in the Social Convoy model. The chapter outlines a participatory action research (PAR) social integration project with nine girls, half of whom had received formal cautions from the police, and who had also been referred to an intensive support service for young people in crisis.