The social ecology of resilience: A handbook.

New York, NY: Springer.

I am also anticipating the publication of another edited volume titled The Social Ecology of Resilience which will be released by Springer in New York in October. It’s a collection of writing by many of my colleagues internationally, including Michael Rutter, Alan Sroufe, Ingrid Schoon, and dozens of others. It also, I’m proud to say, includes five interviews with amazing people who have lived resilient lives and have a profound depth of awareness to tell us who and what made the difference to their success.

Meanwhile, summer has finally joined us here in Halifax. My tennis game still leaves much to be desired, but at least there are long evenings to bike and lots of shoreline to explore around Nova Scotia. It’s a magical place to live, the kind of place that I love to come home to.

However you get the novel, I’m confident it will make for an interesting, intense read. Everything I’ve been trying to say about resilience and what I’ve learned makes kids survive the worst of homes is reflected in the novel. For that reason, I even sent copies of the novel to social work and child and youth care organizations across Canada asking for them to review the novel, or at the very least, pass their copy along to their members. Finally, we have a book about what we do and the challenges that work brings.

If you already have a copy, I would appreciate it if you would post your review on Amazon.ca, Chapters.ca or other websites. The feedback would be much appreciated. Feel free to email me directly too!

For more information:

please call (902)368-4672

The library can be found at:

145 Richmond St.,

Charlottetown, PEI

Hoping to see you there!

The Social Worker

Halifax, NS: Pottersfield Press

The group we’ve formed with Dallaire is trying to address the problem of child soldiers, and work with individuals who were child soldiers, such as Ishmael Beah, author of The Long Way Home, and recording artists Emmanuel Jal and K’naan. In collaboration with the Family Health Research Centre at the IWK Health Centre, we are trying to understand how children find a safe place to live and grow, and how having a sense of a safe place makes their lives better.

We’re in the process of applying for a very large grant to support a knowledge mobilization initiative which would allow us to bring together the best of what we know that helps children that are going through really dangerous and traumatic experiences. We will gather knowledge from social workers, psychologists, political scientists, development and aid workers all around the world, with the aim of sharing best practices that we can all use in our work.

There are several things that we are curious to explore. We want to find out how it is that kids come to feel engaged in their communities after exposure to violence. We want to explore how children use technology to their advantage (the numbers of kids in refuge camps that have access to a cell phone, which is often their way of accessing the internet and information, is remarkable). We are also very curious about how to prevent the trauma that follows exposure to violence.

There is the potential to bring together what we know about youth in all kinds of situations, such as what we are learning from urban gangs and homeless youth about what helps them become more resilient. Our goal is to see what they have in common, and by working together to share our collective knowledge in a way that people can put into practice.

Along this same theme, this month I’m going to be in Cambodia with an organization called Cambodian Living Arts, which was started by a former child soldier with the Khymer Rouge named Arn Chorn-Pond. Arn went through many traumatic experiences as a child soldier, and almost died escaping across the border into Thailand at age twelve. He was eventually adopted by a missionary and brought to the US, where he grew up to become an advocate for human rights in Cambodia.

Arn started CLA as a place to link the few remaining Cambodian masters of the performing and visual arts with kids that are at risk. The kids then take what they have learned and turn it into entrepreneurial activity, such as putting on performances at hotels for tourists, or reactivating a local theatre, or becoming musicians. The arts become a viable source of income that stops them drifting into street crime or prostitution.

Right now, Arn and his colleagues are starting an evaluation of the program. They want to find out how the work they are doing affects young people’s resilience. CLA will be my first stop on a multi-country trip to help with research and do some presentations related to my work at the Resilience Research Centre.

During the webinar I explored eight strategies I have been using with my students to help them counsel with sensitivity to people’s contexts. I also was able to integrate into the webinar part of one of the videos we made to support my text, Counseling in Challenging Contexts. In that video, a middle-aged white social worker is working with a black elderly woman whose culture and definition of support is quite different from that of the social worker. It’s a good example of the eight strategies in practice.

You can view my webinar, Welcoming the Client’s Context and Culture into Clinical Practice, by clicking here (you’ll see it amongst a list of webinars there). Enjoy.

Traditionally, SOS Children’s Villages has set up family based foster care but their model is changing to embrace the notion of family strengthening. They currently work with about 100,000 children around the world, and their goal is to work with a million, with 900,000 of them still with their families. Rather than providing a place where children are taken to, SOS Children’s Villages is now offering families the support they need before more intrusive help is necessary.

To be as effective as possible, SOS Children’s Villages has been looking to me and the Resilience Research Centre for help to understand better the predictors of stronger families. What exactly do children in high-risk situations do to survive and thrive across cultures? How can their families help them?

In Brussels, there were two agendas for the meeting. The first was to look at internal EU policies that should be more promotive of family strengthening. The second was to help the EU, which is the single largest donor of development aid around the globe, to redirect some of those aid dollars away from orphanages and into more family-based care such as that supported by SOS Children’s Villages.

Among the other speakers at the Parliament were tennis pro Kim Clijsters and her husband Brian Lynch, the basketball player, who were also advocating in support of family strengthening. It was fascinating to see the paparazzi swarming Clijsters.

The meeting was the beginning of a dialogue. I left feeling like something significant had happened. For one, my participation positions the Resilience Research Centre as a credible resource for research within the EU. The hope is to get people connected to our network and share the knowledge that we have collectively among our members in more than 20 countries.

I’ll keep you posted on what develops.

(You can see me in action in the video clip below.)

Counseling in challenging contexts: Working with individuals and families across clinical and community settings.

Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

We generation: Raising socially responsible kids.

Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart.

Researching Resilience.

Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.