A resilience practice framework by the Benevolent Society

The Benevolent Society, in partnership with the Parenting Research Centre, recently released a Resilience Practice Framework that will form the basis for their work with children and families from disadvantaged communities. It’s a great resource that many family and community workers will find useful.

It is built on five outcomes they want to help promote in the children and families they work with:

1. Secure and stable relationships
2. Increasing self-efficacy
3. Increasing safety
4. Improving empathy
5. Improving coping skills

For each of these outcomes they have identified are a number of “evidence informed practices” (47 in all) and a range of practices elements that can help achieve the resilience outcomes. For example, the outcome “Secure and stable relationships” has 8 evidence informed practices and 20 practice elements:

Evidence informed practice	Practice elements
Teachable moments	Use of everyday activities and routines to extend a child’s knowledge and skills. Sharing books and stories.
Following your child’s lead	Allow child independence over activity choice. Comment on child’s activity. Praise child’s ideas and creativity.
Attending to your child	Using eye contact and open body language to let the child know that the parent is paying attention. Refrain from asking questions.
Listening, talking and playing more	Describe activities and introduce new words. Reflective and elaboration statements. Simplify language. Pause regularly.
Engaging an infant	Provide education: Explanation that early interactions with their infant plays a part in the connecting and attachment processes. Have the parent smile at the infant and wait, watch for response. Extend the interaction exercise with other expression.
Descriptive praise	Explain the role of attention in maintaining behaviour. Identify behaviour parent wishes to increase. Practice providing descriptive praise, e.g. practice difference between ‘good boy/girl’ and clear, descriptive praise. Provide strategies to enhance praise, e.g. parent’s positive body language, ensure timing of praise is immediate.
Family time and family routines	Family time, e.g. bedtime stories, sharing hobbies, ‘special time’. Family routines. Guidelines to assist parents to create new routines to decrease stress.

Their overview of the framework includes:

• The main principles underpinning a resilience-led approach
• An overview of the 47 evidence-informed practices
• A guide to working in a culturally sensitive way
• Key factors associated with resilience
• An overview of six resilience domains
• How each outcome links to domains and practices
• Frameworks and theories which are congruent with a resilience-led approach
• Critiques of a resilience led approach and the framework.

The framework is supported by  eight guides helping practitioners to implement the framework:

1. Practitioner Skills
2. Secure and Stable Relationships
3. Increasing Self Efficacy
4. Increasing safety
5. Improving Empathy
6. Increasing Coping / Self Regulation
7. Cumulative harm
8. Infants at risk of abuse and neglect

It’s well worth a look.

If you liked this post you might want to follow my blog (top right-hand corner of the blog), and you might like to look at:

1. Playgroups as a foundation for working with hard to reach families
2. “I try and make it feel more like a home” – families living in caravan parks
3. Domestic violence, family, friends and neighbours
4. Parenting for a better world
5. A great 1 minute video of fathers and their kids