You can find out more about our some of the resilience Communities of Practice (CoPs) we have run over the years.
Bouncing Back CoP
Awarded funds by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) South East Coastal Communities (SECC) university-wide bid, the Bouncing Back CoP was interested in building resilience with disadvantaged children and young people. It brought together a group of 21 academics, students, voluntary and statutory sector practitioners, and parents, who met monthly over two years, to innovate ways of building resilience. The bouncing Back CoP was completed in December 2010.
- A vibrant, inter-disciplinary and inter-agency group of individuals and organizations willing to collaborate for mutual benefit and the transfer of knowledge between sectors.
- Eager to improve the health and well being of children and young people having tough times, the Bouncing Back Community of Practice met every month, to critique and develop Resilient Therapy further.
- Members explored how the ‘resilience’ research base and Resilient Therapy might link with their existing work and experimented with different ways of applying Resilient Therapy in their own settings. Here’s a small sample of the sort of 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; incorporating resilient ideas into the Insiders Guide Parent Support Course.
Direct work with young people: Using inclusive arts work to build resilience with Learning Disabled Young People; Incorporating the Resilience Framework into group work with LGBT young people; Protective Behaviours for Under 5s and their carers.
Work with Adults: Weaving Resilient Therapy 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; Resilient Therapy 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.
East Sussex Resilient Therapy CoP
The East Sussex CoP was commissioned by Hastings and Rother Primary Care Trust and East Sussex County Council Children’s Services. A University of Brighton research project, it brought together an exciting group of individuals interested in developing their own areas of work with the addition of an Resilient Therapy approach, with a focus on building resilience with young people aged 13 years and over.
A group of 15 members came from a range of settings including for example: Connexions, Leaving Care, Young Men’s Health, Caseworkers, Children’s Centres, Family Nursing, Counselling, Fostering, Crime Reduction Initiatives, Intensive Family Support and Behaviour Support. The group met once a month in a supportive facilitated group to take part in a series of training sessions, test resilience and Resilient Therapy ideas in their own settings, share the experience with each other, reflect on their leaning and participate in the evaluation.
Here’s a sample of work completed:
- Making a magic box with drawers of resilience ideas to be used with young people to chart their progress
- Designing a board game to assist young people to identify their own resilient qualities and consider whose around in their lives to help them.
- Building coping skills with young people through individual casework
- Applying Resilient Therapy to casework and recording impact
- Revamping a Pathway Plan which resilience in mind
- Constructing a Jenga-style Resilient Therapy game to provide tangible focus on resilient ideas, for use with young men (which can be ordered from Boingboing)
- Incorporating Resilient Therapy into the ‘Moving On’ support course for parents of disabled children
- Incorporate young peoples views to chart progress and measure resilient outcomes
Download the executive summary or email us for the full report.
Targeted Youth Service CoP
Funded by East Sussex Council, the Targeted Youth Service project involved establishing a Community of Practice (CoP) of individuals eager to explore how the ‘resilience’ research base and resilient therapy linked with their existing work.
It brought together a group of 21 experienced and ‘reflective’ practitioners, parents and academics, who met monthly during 2012. They shared an interest in working with disadvantaged children and young people in the hope of providing a common ground and the potential for a shared language and framework to tackle entrenched inequalities.
By establishing a partnership of mutual support and learning through the mechanism of a CoP, we aimed to create a relationship that respected the different expertise individuals bring to the table and encouraged members to be open to change by reflecting on what worked well and not so well.
You can read Kuljinder Dhanjal’s dissertation about the experience of being a participant in a resilience Community of Practice.
