Bouncing Back

Students, academics from the Universities of Brighton and Sussex, practitioners from both the voluntary and statutory sectors and parents developed innovative ways of building resilience to help children 'bounce back' when life is particularly tough.

Awarded funds by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) South East Coastal Communities (SECC) university-wide bid, the Bouncing Back Community of Practice brought together a group of 21 academics, students, voluntary and statutory sector practitioners and parents over two years, to innovate ways of building resilience.

The aims of the research project were to:

> build on ideas of resilient therapy (RT) to develop and apply new ways of working with disadvantaged children
> create an inter-disciplinary, inter-agency group of individuals and organisations to collaborate for mutual benefit and transfer knowledge between sectors
> explore how the 'resilience' research base and RT might link to existing work and experiment with applying RT in different settings.

Resilient therapy offers a coherent framework for finding new ways of helping children and families build up their resilience to very difficult circumstances.

Eager to improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people having tough times, the Bouncing Back Community of Practice met every month to critique and develop RT further. Members explored how the ‘resilience’ research base and RT might link with their existing work and experimented with different ways of applying RT in their own settings.

Here is a small sample of the projects members worked on:

Courses for parents
> Ready Steady Secondary – building up resilient capital for parents and young people worried about the move to secondary school
> Managing bullying resiliently
>Insiders Guide Parent Support Course - incorporating resilient ideas

Direct work with young people
> Using inclusive arts work to build resilience with Learning Disabled Young People
> Incorporating the RT framework into group work with LGBT young people
> Protective behaviours for under-fives and their carers

Work with adults
>Weaving RT into strategic planning and organisational development
> Kinship Carers Research Project
>Resilience building approaches to work with women refugees.

Resilience learning resources
> Musical Resilience – the chance to dance and sing out resilient moves
> RT badges – prompts to remind us of those simple resilient ideas worth holding in mind each day
> Having fun – an exercise to highlight how leisure activities can contribute to building resilience for parents and disabled teens.