developing practice: Summer 2002/2003 2
Our task in helping children who
have suffered abuse, or who are at
risk of abuse, is to help them to
‘escape their apparent destiny’ (Clarke
and Clarke, 2000). We may be able to
help children to ‘escape their destiny’
if we can release the potential for
resilience which may lie
Promoting resilience
in children and young
people
Professor Robbie Gilligan
Robbie Gilligan is
Professor of Social
Work and Social
Policy and Director
of the Children’s
Research Centre
at Trinity College
Dublin. His recent
publications include
Promoting Resilience
– a resource guide on
working with children
in the care system
published by British Agencies
for Adoption and Fostering,
Child Development for Child
Care and Protection Workers
(co- authored with Brigid Daniel
and Sally Wassell) and Issues in
Foster Care co-edited with Greg
Kelly) and both published by
Jessica Kingsley. He has been a
youth worker, social worker and
foster carer and has served as a
board member of various social
service organisations.
waiting to be tapped within them or
within their social context. Resilience
is the capacity to bounce back from, or
transcend, adversity. As Peter Fonagy
puts it ‘resilience is normal (emphasis
in original) development under
diffcult circumstances (1994: 233).
Certain positive
qualities within the
person and certain
favourable conditions
within the social context
may help a child to
show resilience in the
face of adversity
(Gilligan, 2001).
Or more correctly, it
may help a child to be
resilient in one or more
of the domains of their
daily life. A child, with
great home stress, may
still do well in school because of a
supportive climate there and because
of the child’s own social skills and
sense of purpose. Doing well in
school, socially or academically, may
be a signifcant protective factor for a
child vulnerable because of home
circumstances.
We may not be able to influence all of
the factors which constitute or
enhance resilience. Children are born
with a certain temperament for
example which can have a bearing on
their potential for resilience. But social
30 developing practice: Summer 2002/2003
experience plays a part too and it is
that we can try to influence.
What we do matters, but we should
not succumb to the delusion that a
professional at one point in time, or
even a set of professionals active for a
comparatively short period over a
whole childhood, are necessarily
going to be the most influential forces
in a child’s development or recovery.
There are many, many forces at work
in a child’s life.
Children, especially as they grow
older, live their lives in different
domains: home, school, peer group,
neighbourhood, spare time activities,
the world of part – time work and so
on. It is possible that problems in a
child’s life may be confned to one
domain and that opportunities and
support in others may serve to isolate
the problem and its impact. For some
children, one ‘arena of comfort’
(Thiede Call, 1996), a domain which
works well for them, may serve to
buffer them from what would
otherwise be more toxic effects of
abuse. There may be signifcant
experiences in children’s lives which
may emerge as signifcant positive
turning points in their developmental
pathway (Clausen, 1995). A
relationship with a grandparent, or a
teacher or a sports coach may prove to
have an enduring impact for good,
literally changing the course of the
child’s life.
Positive experience of relationships
seem critically important in helping
children to overcome adversity. Such
rewarding relationships may build the
precious qualities of positive self
esteem, self effcacy (or personal
effectiveness) and a sense of having a
secure base in the world (Gilligan,
2000b) . And those relationships
appear not to require necessarily to be
with the primary carer or their
replacement. In the famous Hawaiian
longitudinal study, Werner and Smith
report that children who overcame
adversity found support in
relationships with dependable people,
such as teachers or other interested
adults.
developing practice: Summer 2002/2003 3
‘The life stories of the resilient
youngsters now grown in to
adulthood teach us that competence,
confdence and caring can flourish,
even under adverse circumstances, if
children encounter persons who
provide them with the secure basis
[emphasis added] for the
development of trust, autonomy and
initiative’ (Werner and Smith, 1992,
p.209)
One example of this point comes from
a participant at a recent workshop I
ran. It involves a young boy from a
very troubled home and with a father
who was a heroin addict and involved
with crime. By the age of eleven the
boy – let’s call him Tony – was
neglected and already on the fringes
of crime. But he was involved in the
local boxing club and the coach there
took him under his wing in terms of
boxing – and his general welfare. Tony
is now in his early 20s and a
successful boxer who gets a lot of
media coverage in his region. He says
that his life was changed by the
interest and encouragement of that
coach. And what’s more his younger
siblings have benefted too. Tony has
taken on responsibility for his
younger siblings. Their lives have
been changed too by that turning
point of the coach’s relationship with
Tony.
This simple story reminds us that
positive energy and high – impact
help may lie waiting to be tapped in
places where professionals may often
not think of looking.
We should not forget, too, that
children themselves are active agents
in their own development. This
clearly is not to say that they are
solely responsible for their own
development, but it is to say that they
certainly are not passive bystanders.
What we have to learn to do is to trust
the natural urge for positive
development that lies within each
child. Abuse or emotional trauma
may have blocked or dimmed that
urge. But it is there and in the right
atmosphere the natural drive for
growth and healing can be restored.
We need to be concerned with what is
happening now for each child so as to
improve not only their immediate
circumstances but also their long term
prospects. Threats to positive
development come in many forms.
They do not lie only in experiences of
abuse. Parents broken by poverty, run
down schools, dispirited
communities, marginalised local
economies, a neglected physical
environment, a climate of violence at
home or on the street, experiences of
racism, the pervasive effect of parental
substance abuse, all these and more
corrode a child’s progress, and yet
these issues may not receive the same
degree of attention as experiences
attracting the magic label of ‘abuse’.
We have to be concerned with the
child’s longer term development and
factors which may threaten that
development. We must not be
blinkered so as only to see what fts
our administrative defnitions of
abuse in a given system, at a given
time.
There may be many therapeutic
opportunities in everyday living. Just
as people recovering from injury or an
operation may beneft from the
physiotherapy which everyday living
offers, so may children recovering
from emotional trauma beneft from
the opportunities of the
psychotherapy which every day
living may throw up. Such ‘therapy
32 developing practice: Summer 2002/2003
on the hoof’ has many plusses. There
may be no waiting list, no problems of
engagement and retention in
treatment, no stigma, no negative self
– labelling and no client resistance.
Thus, the task of professional systems
and services for children at risk may
be said to be to help release the inner
strengths, resilience and healing
powers of the child in need and of the
informal and formal caring systems
which surround the child. The
opportunities for releasing this
healing energy may lie in the
everyday world of the child, and often
in unexpected places.
While social workers will have to
supplement innate or indigenous
healing powers, they and other
professionals – must be careful to
avoid blocking or undermining the
child’s, or the carers’ natural capacity
for, or rhythm of, healing and help –
seeking. People in need may often be
more likely to turn frst to people in
their culture and community for help,
rather than to professionals. They may
turn to family members, church
workers and friends (Bachay and
Cingal 1999; Werner and Smith, 1992).
Thus, the task for child welfare and
mental health professionals may be
more properly seen as being a
resource and support to any potential
indigenous supporters in the child’s
natural and informal systems of
community and culture. Family group
conferences and kinship care
represent two examples of how
relevant this indigenous support may
be to work with children in need.
How can we tap into youngsters’
strengths to help them to resist and
recover from abuse? Two domains for
doing this may be found I would
suggest are the school and the area of
spare time activities. I shall look at
these in turn.
School is a landscape rich with
potential developmental experiences
and resources (Gilligan, 1998). Now
we may all have our horror stories
about particular situations which
were poorly handled within schools,
but there is no denying school is
important socially and emotionally
for children, quite apart from its value
academically. In school, youngsters
may make friends for life. They may
acquire interests and skills which they
carry into adulthood. They may
discover talents they didn’t know they
had. They may beneft from the
encouragement and support of
teachers who take a special interest in
them. They may experience precious
success or recognition in some sphere
of school life – possibly far removed
from the heights of academic
achievement.
One example illustrates how contact
with a teacher can be a positive
developing practice: Summer 2002/2003 33
turning point in a young person’s life.
The story comes from a social worker
and concerns a teenage girl from a
very run down housing estate and a
very deprived home. She had a drug
addicted mother and a father who
was a fairly seasoned criminal. She
was, to put it mildly, not deeply
engaged by school, which was
probably not surprising in the
circumstances. She appeared to be
heading out of school and into a lot of
diffculty. However, against the odds
and out of the blue , a new young
teacher, who taught her English,
connected with her and reawakened
her confdence and her urge to learn.
This girl was now on track to do law
at university.
But I am not relying only on random
if heart warming anecdotes to support
my case about the protective value of
school. The protective value of school
experience is further corroborated by
fndings from a major New Zealand
study which followed up adult
women who had experienced ‘heavy
end’ sexual abuse in childhood. Of
these victims of childhood sexual
abuse, those women who had enjoyed
secondary school ‘were less likely to
show psychiatric disorder in adult
life’ (Romans et al. 1995, p.138). This
overall enjoyment of school was
linked to doing well in any one of
academic work, social activity, or
sport .
The researchers suggests that school
may be an alternative resource for
helping recovery from trauma,
especially where home remains
stressful. In line with this point,
Rutter (1991) argues encouragingly
that the positive effects of school
experience seem most evident or
potent among students who are
vulnerable and have few other
supports.
Turning to spare time activities, I want
to suggest that they offer many
protective opportunities. These
opportunities may lie in sport,
cultural activities, the care of animals,
volunteering, or part time work
(Gilligan, 2000b). Participation in
challenging and valued leisure
activities may build confdence,
morale and social support (Iso-Ahola,
1997, p. 141). As Quinton and Rutter
(1988, 197) observe ‘the experience of
some form of success,
accomplishment, or even just pleasure
in activities may enhance
confdence and competence to deal
with the hazards and dilemmas of
life’. In my own research I have found
countless examples of how sports and
interests as diverse as badminton,
horse-riding, athletics, performing
dance, music, synchronised
swimming, tropical fsh and many
more have had a big positive impact
on vulnerable children’s longer term
progress and development.
Such positive examples may risk
being dismissed as incidental trivia.
But the chance connections these
young people made to sporting or
other activity have the potential to
help shape lives. Romans and
colleagues (1995) argue the potential
therapeutic value of sport in helping
the recovery of female victims of child
sexual abuse. Participation in sport,
for such young women, may help
their bodies ‘hitherto a vehicle for
distress to become a source of self
esteem and pride’ (p.139). Sport may
also help alter negative cognitions
about ‘their body’s shape and
function’.
Bifulco and Moran (1998) have
studied the adult lives of women who
3 developing practice: Summer 2002/2003
experienced abuse in childhood. In
reflecting on their overall fndings on
what helped some women escape
their legacy or destiny of risk
following childhood abuse, they
identify three sets of factors,
important equally at the stages of
childhood, adolescence and
adulthood:
 good support,
 good coping, and
 meaningful roles.
If we can provide and stimulate
good support, if we can promote and
sustain good coping, and if we can
nurture and encourage engagement in
meaningful roles, then we may have
gone a long way in fostering qualities
of resilience in young people facing
adversity from abuse and neglect.
Everyday life, I would suggest,
provides us with the raw material
from which to fashion opportunities
to promote support, good coping and
meaningful roles.
If we are to tap into the resilience
enhancing potential of everyday
life – and the constructive part that
serendipity can sometimes play – we
must learn to trust the potential
value and goodness of such ordinary
experience. There seems to me a real
danger that excessive exposure to the
pathology of human behaviour may
erase our capacity to trust and believe
in the goodness of many of our fellow
human beings.
Do we see lurking in our fellow
human beings a potential abuser
about to prey on unfortunate
children? Or do we a see a person
with energy and compassion to offer
given the right conditions? Do we see,
frst, risk – or opportunity – in young
people’s every day experiences of
work and spare time activity. It may
sound naive but I think it is slightly
a case of whether we see the glass as
half empty or half full.
Rather than being principled
pessimists, we should strive to be
pragmatic optimists. We should,
I suggest, be willing to take
constructive risks for the greater good
of the child and their development.
developing practice: Summer 2002/2003 3
We should recognise that while not
every adult is trustworthy, this does
not mean we should behave as if no
adult is trustworthy.
The most important way of protecting
children is to make them strong
and confdent and articulate. It is to
give them experiences which build
their confdence and social skills. It
is opportunities and relationships,
not procedures and systems, which
ultimately protect children.
Implications for Policy and Practice
Reviewing what I have been saying,
there are a number of messages:
 Abuse is clearly to be avoided
but as New Zealand researchers
Mullen et al (1994) put it ‘abuse is
not destiny’. Things may happen, or
people may do things, which reduce
the developmental impact of abuse.
 In assessing the child’s needs and
circumstances, we must not be
pre-occupied solely with risk and
defcit. As the researchers on the
longitudinal study in Hawaii put
it, we must focus not only on the
risk factors in the lives of these
[vulnerable] children but also
on the protective factors. These
include competencies and sources
of informal support that already
exist in the extended family, the
neighbourhood, and the community
at large and that can be utilised
to enlarge a child’s repertoire of
problem solving skills and self
esteem and self effcacy (Werner
and Smith 1992: 208)
 There may be many potential
sources of help and healing for the
emotional pain of the child exposed
to abuse (Gilligan, 1999). These
sources may include but extend
beyond the contribution of social
work and related professions.
 We should not assume that change
and development flows only from
formal, professional or clinical
services.
 Relationships with, and attention
from committed adults, are what
seem to really make a difference for
individual children.
 To understand and respond
to a child’s needs we need a
developmental perspective (Daniel,
Wassell and Gilligan, 1999). We
need to think of the child as
growing up along a pathway
shaped by good and bad things,
which happen along the way.
 There is apparently a training
slogan in the business world which
goes ‘retail is in the detail’. Care
is in the detail too in terms of the
sometimes seemingly small things
that can make a big difference in
children’s lives.
 In this regard, we should be
concerned at various trends which
may block the availability of quality
social work time for children in
need (Gilligan 2000a).
 We should be wary of over
simplistic or over-proceduralised
responses to problems and needs.
We should recognise that solutions
often have hidden costs. Being
rescued from home only to be
placed in care may carry long term
costs for a child.
 We must take a holistic view of the
child’s needs and make a holistic
response. Child protection is a part,
but only a part, of that response.
 Education, housing, health care,
economic and social development,
community services are all vital
parts in any ‘big picture’ strategy
for helping children overcome
adversity 
3 developing practice: Summer 2002/2003
This article is based on a paper presented
at the 8th Australasian Conference
on Child Abuse and Negelct held in
Melbourne in November 2001 and is
reproduced with permission of the author.
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