Child Psychology and Psychiatry

IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE
The models outlined above indicate the impor-
tance of supporting the agentive, help-seeking,
mastery-oriented capacities of young people as
they negotiate the support needed from those
around them. Several challenges face practitioners
if these models are to be successfully applied.
Practitioners need to foster adolescents’ capac-
ities for: mobilizing adaptive support systems;
negotiating access to resources for healthy growth
and development; and participating in social
convoys characterized by reciprocal supportive
relationships. They need also to foster resilience
in situations when adolescent support systems
may be damaged, unsupportive or unavailable,
as is often the case with the families of ‘hard
to reach’ adolescents. Finally, they need to shift
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Fostering resilience in adolescents
Box 14.1
Promoting resilience — a participatory action research (PAR) project.
PAR project
phases
Description
Fostering resilience
Phase 1:
Defining