Systemic Resilience

In our April 2022 Academic Insights?paper, Dr Alex Chard summarises the concept of Systemic Resilience which brings together systemic thinking and resilience theory. Moving beyond an individualised view that locates resilience as a requirement of the child, it recognises the importance of strengthening the protective factors around the child including within their family, their community, and in the services that are available. Seeing resilience as systemic facilitates a clear link between practice with individual children and strategic responses/frameworks to prevent crime/offending and address structural factors such as poverty and social exclusion. Implications for youth justice include: (i) developing services that place a meaningful empathetic relationship with the child and their family at the heart of service provision; (ii) understanding that risk is multi-dimensional and needs to be understood within the overall context of a child’s life; (iii) promoting positive relationships for the child in their families, schools and communities; and (iv) enabling engagement with community resources.

"Risk assessment should not simply be based upon immediately identifiable risk factors but should be located within the history of the family and the experiences of the child, as well as within structural issues related to poverty, educational and social exclusion, and the availability and ability to access services."

The paper can be accessed via the link below.