Topic: Resilience to reoffending: What do young men’s narratives tell us? – Claire Stubbs, Integrative Psychotherapist
Resources: You can download Claire’s slides.
Session summary: This research aimed to understand the processes and mechanisms that support young men to turn their lives around after engaging in criminal behaviour. Through narrative enquiry eight young men who had previous involvement in the criminal justice system were recruited from various organisations. The study drew on Hart and Blincow’s Resilient Therapy and Resilience Framework (2007), to categorise the data and support the development of new practice perspectives.
Previous research (including for example, Ungar, 2004) has begun to offer a valuable contribution to our understanding of young people’s resilient pathways through their narrative accounts. However we still do not know enough about how underlying protective processes or mechanisms contribute to positive outcomes for young men who have engaged in antisocial behaviour. This research challenges some common discourses on risk. It also contributes to theory building in relation to understanding protective processes, mechanisms, chain reactions and turning points which support the young men’s pathways to resilience, and resilience to reoffending. In addition the research offers a valuable contribution to existing resilient interventions and offers an application to young men who have been involved in the criminal justice system.
Biography: Claire is in her final year of a clinical doctorate in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy and has six years’ experience working with young people in a psychotherapeutic capacity, supporting young people to work through a range of issues including addictions, self-harming, relationships, loss, bereavement, anxiety and depression. Claire also has extensive experience of managing services that target disadvantaged young people, has managed a health programme within the Youth Development Service, managed the Pulse project, and was the Teenage Pregnancy & Pulse Development Manager in East Sussex. Clinical and personal experience prompted the interest in the resilience research field in an attempt to understand what can be done in practice to nurture young people’s resilience.
Key reading: Hart, A., & Blincow, D., with Thomas, H. (2007). Resilient Therapy with children and families. London: Brunner Routledge.
Ungar, M (2004). Nurturing Hidden Resilience in troubled youth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
This session took place on Monday 18 June 2012.
The Resilience Forum is for ANYBODY (with a pulse!) involved with or interested in resilience research!
