[email protected] 
Today we’ve got Ivana Maurovic from the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Zagreb giving a talk. She’s over here working with us on our mutual resilience research. Challenges in conceptualisation and operationalisation of family resilience is the catchy title of her talk.
Family Resilience is a concept that has wide and deep roots, ranging from the development of the concept of individual resilience to the postulates of General and Family Systems Theory.
Phil started the session by acknowledging the range of experience and expertise in the room. He shared his desire to learn alongside the group and not just impart knowledge, and said that systems theory, an abstract meta-theory, can be difficult to understand and apply to practice. Collective sigh of relief from those who had attempted prior reading that they were not alone in their struggle!
Co-production is a value-based approach that views people who use a service as assets with important knowledge and skills. It harnesses this experience, knowledge and skill to promote positive change, and design, produce and deliver better services.
Phil talked about how systems theory can help us understand how situating resilience-building activities within an understanding of complex dynamic systems can help to identify “leverage points” in aspects such as the rules, goals and power distributions.
Boingboing Blackpool is a really exciting new development funded by the Big Lottery HeadStart programme. The Big Lottery wanted to equip young people to cope better with difficult circumstances, preventing them from experiencing common mental health problems.
Many of our previous Resilience Forums have slides you can download and blogs you can read, some even have films you can watch.
Smart Moves helps students develop resilience to address common anxieties when transitioning from Year 6 to 7. It equips teachers to facilitate evidence-based sessions around building resilience and good mental health.
The Big Lottery-funded HeadStart programme gave local authorities money to support young people to cope with difficult circumstances. Boingboing receives funding to support HeadStart Blackpool to implement their resilience programme to support the children and young people of Blackpool.
I am writing in response to your article in the TES 25th March 2016 ‘Has the resilience ship sailed?’. Yes, I am totally in agreement with you that ‘resilience’ is a term bandied about the educational world all the time at the moment, and that there seems to be a lack of clarity and consistency about what it actually means.
