Resilience is a process and opportunity, not something children have or don’t have

Professor Ramona Alaggia, University of Toronto

Professor Ramona Alaggia is a trauma and resilience researcher in social work at the University of Toronto. Her focus of study is in child sexual abuse disclosures, children exposed to intimate partner violence and trauma informed practice. She teaches child and family assessment and treatment and multi-level interventions in the area of violence against women and children.

Studying resilience with children and adults exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) has taken me on a journey that has resulted in a fundamental shift in how I do research, teach and counsel clients. This has been significant in my understanding of adversity, trauma and the profound role of resilience.

When I initially encountered the term resilience I approached it with skepticism and questions. Was it a “feel good” term to minimize the fall-out from very big problems in people’s lives? Or a tool used by governments to scale back on service funding using platitudes like kids are resilient; they’ll be fine; they’ll bounce back - which has not been my experience with highly vulnerable children.

Fostering resilience is a concerted effort that needs to be intentionally built into programming.

Is resilience something people simply have or don’t have with very little in between?  Up until recently, the research literature focused largely on individual characteristics for explaining why some people are more resilient than others. These identified characteristics are often related to personality traits - including intelligence, easy temperament, and extroversion for example - traits that appear from birth.

Is resilience a state or a trait? 

This then led me to take a deeper dive into writings on this topic, bringing me to the many debates as to whether resilience is a trait or state. These conceptual debates dominated the literature for a long time and large international conferences have been held to discuss, define and sort out this elusive concept. It became clear to me, though, that these debates were more about inter-disciplinary orientations divided into camps of individual or environmental stances.   

Resilience is a process. Not a singular event or state of being, but an active process of fostering resilience over the life course. 

As a social worker I have landed on an interactive explanation of resilience. The conditions for fostering resilience, from this perspective, requires personal factors and environmental influences to come together, in the right combination.

In my research I interviewed adult survivors exposed to intimate partner violence in their childhoods, and collected data using resilience measures from mothers and children exposed to intimate partner violence. This was conducted alongside longitudinal data on protective factors from a large scale Canadian study: the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY). From this work, I have come to the conclusion that a person-in-environment/ecological  framework best helps to elucidate factors and processes contributing to resilient outcomes.

A person-in-environment/ecological lens is needed for resilience informed practice.

 In Canada we subscribe to an ecological approach for many social issues and troubles. My research with IPV exposed children and youth underscores the need for a person-in-environment/ecological approach. Individual characteristics alone are not enough to carry children through adversity. Inter-personal factors such as secure attachments, safe relationships and cohesive family support, and contextual influences such as safe neighbourhoods, supportive resources and school connectedness are all required to foster resilience - both as preventive measures and also for those children who show vulnerabilities and end up in social services for intervention. As well, socio-political forces promoting child and family friendly policies, pre-and postnatal care, affordable child care, access to high quality education and after school supports and activities, and funding for sports and arts programs are all important parts of the equation.

Kids cannot be resilient on their own. The important people in their lives - their families, cultural supports, their networks of positive peers, and well-resourced neighbourhoods - are all part of the picture of fostering resilience.

Programming needs to be resilience informed. 

Because resilience has only recently come across our radars, as helping professionals providing services children who display vulnerabilities in the face of adversity, we need to take stock and inventory of how resilience informed these services actually are. Are protective factors, strengths and potential sources of resilience identified at intake or through the assessment process?  Are resilience based goals well-articulated in treatment planning? Are these clearly spelled out and measurable? 

For ideas on how to make your program resilience informed please visit www.makeresiliencematter.ca for further research findings and reports, tools, case studies and podcasts to support your practice and programming.

Darkness into Light –Disclosing Child Sexual Abuse

Recent visiting scholar to CRFR, Dr. Ramona Alaggia, Associate Professor from University of Toronto and Factor-Inwentash Chair in Children’s Mental Health contributes this second guest blog on the issue of disclosure in child sexual abuse cases.

"The recent exposure of several high profile cases involving historic sexual abuse continues to bring to light the prevalence of sexual violence against children, a longstanding phenomenon which has been minimized, obscured and even covered up . This is evidenced by recent revelations in the UK of Jimmy Saville’s sexual offending against children (BBC, October 2012); the criminal conviction of football coach Jerry Sandusky in the US, and sanctions levied at Penn State University for head coach Joseph Paterno’s role in concealing these sexual crimes ; and in Canada the conviction of Graham James, a minor hockey league coach, in sexually abusing young players for decades. These and other emerging cases represent long term institutional abuse but a concerning number of children are also abused within families, and in their communities by trusted people in family-like roles (Finkelhor, Hammer & Sedlak, 2008). The sad fact is that most victims of child sexual abuse – scientific studies consistently cite up to 80% - do not disclose until they are adults if ever (McElvaney, Greene & Hogan, 2012; Schaeffer, Leventhal & Asnes, 2011).

Sound research tells us that there are many reasons for children not being able to disclose. Fear of their family falling apart. Fear of being blamed and not believed. Fear of the perpetrator. Not knowing how to tell or who to tell (McElvaney, Greene & Hogan, 2012). Certain family dynamics inhibit disclosure. A rigid patriarchal family structure; the presence of domestic violence; and dysfunctional communication have all been noted as creating difficult conditions under which to tell (Alaggia & Kirshenbaum, 2005). Environmental factors also contribute to lack of disclosure. The linking of aggression and violence in media, and advertising that sexualizes children cause confusion for children about healthy sexual behaviour. Not seeing children as persons in their own right with human rights. Minimizing that boys can also be victims of sexual violence (Alaggia & Millington, 2008). On the other hand facilitators of disclosure include open, clear communication in families, children being asked about sexual abuse, prevention and early sexual education programs to increase children’s abilities to know how to tell and who to tell (McElvaney, Greene & Hogan, 2012; Scheffer, Leventhal & Asnes, 2011). Though it’s difficult to determine who children tell it is becoming clearer that they more often disclose to peers, an adult they feel close to, and more increasingly school personnel.

Yet current prevention programs focus almost solely on the child. Adults and professionals who are in close contact with children need to equally be the target of awareness and response programs. Adults should be the target of universal sexual abuse prevention and detection programs with training on how they could respond appropriately and sensitively to disclosures –keeping in mind disclosure of sexual abuse is complex, non-linear, tenuous, sometimes non-verbal and often indirect depending on the child’s developmental stage and proximity to the perpetrator (Alaggia, 2004; Alaggia, 2010). Finally contextual considerations should be addressed to promote positive, healthy sexual messages and images."

References:
Finkelhor, D., Hammer, H., & Sedlak, A. (2008). Sexually assaulted children: National estimates and characteristics. Office of Justice Programs, U.S Department of Justice; Washington, USA.

McElvaney R., Greene S., & Hogan D. (2012): Containing the secret of child sexual abuse. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, (6):1155-75.

Schaeffer, P., Leventhal, J., & Asnes, A.J. (2011).Children’s disclosures of sexual abuse: Learning from direct inquiry. Child Abuse & Neglect, 35:343–352.

McElvaney R., Greene S., & Hogan D. (2012): Containing the secret of child sexual abuse. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, (6):1155-75.

Alaggia, R. & Kirshenbaum, S. (2005). Speaking the unspeakable: Exploring the impact of family dynamics on child sexual abuse disclosures. Families in Society, 86(2), 227-234.

Alaggia, R. & Millington, G. (2008). Male Child Sexual Abuse: A Phenomenology of Betrayal. Clinical Journal of Social Work, 36(3), 265-275.

McElvaney R., Greene S., & Hogan D. (2012): Containing the secret of child sexual abuse. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, (6):1155-75.

Schaeffer, P., Leventhal, J., & Asnes, A.J. (2011).Children’s disclosures of sexual abuse: Learning from direct inquiry. Child Abuse & Neglect, 35:343–352.

Alaggia, R. (2004). Many ways of telling: Expanding conceptualization of child sexual abuse disclosure. Child Abuse & Neglect: An International Journal, 28(11), 1213-1227.

Alaggia, R. (2010). An Ecological Analysis of Child Sexual Abuse Disclosure: Considerations for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, (19)1, 32-39.