Handbook for Working with Children and Youth: Pathways to Resilience Across Cultures and Contexts / Edition 1

by Michael Ungar

Overview

The Handbook for Working With Children and Youth: Pathways to Resilience Across Cultures and Contexts examines lives lived well despite adversity. Calling upon some of the most progressive thinkers in the field, it presents a groundbreaking collection of original writing on the theories, methods of study, and interventions that promote resilience. Unlike other works that have left largely unquestioned their own culture-bound interpretations of the ways children and youth survive and thrive, this volume explores the multiple paths children follow to health and well-being in diverse national and international settings. It demonstrates the connection between social and political health resources and addresses the more immediate concerns of how those who care for children create the physical, emotional, and spiritual environments in which resilience is nurtured.

Academics, graduate students, and professionals studying or working in human service fields such as human development and family studies, education, social work, child and youth care work, developmental psychology/applied developmental science, child psychiatry, nursing, and family therapy will benefit from this Handbook. In essence, anyone who works with youth or is interested in the developmental issues related to children and youth in clinical, residential, or community settings will find Ungar's Handbook to be of great value.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2901412904055
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	05/11/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	552
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

Michael Ungar received a Ph.D. in Social Work from Wilfred Laurier University in 1995. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Maritime School of Social Work at Dalhousie University, Canada. He has published articles in such journals as Adolescence, Youth & Society, Qualitative Social Work, Social Service Review, the Journal of Systemic Therapies, and Child & Youth Care Forum. Dr. Ungar has been researching, writing, and teaching about resilience among youth for ten years in Canada, the U.S., Hong Kong, and Columbia. He oversees a federally funded international research project involving collaboration among researchers in eleven sites on five continents exploring similarities and differences in how resilience is understood, studied, and nurtured. As part of this, he will soon embark on a tour of Israel, England, Russia, and Tanzania. He recently presented two papers detailing his work at an international qualitative methods conference hosted by Sage and the International Institute for Qualitative Methods. He has a well-established international network of colleagues in this field across many disciplines, and many will be contributors to this volume.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Foreword	xi
	Introduction: Resilience Across Cultures and Contexts	xv
Part 1	Theoretical Perspectives	1
1	Children's Risk, Resilience, and Coping in Extreme Situations	3
2	Culture and Ethnic Identity in Family Resilience: Dynamic Processes in Trauma and Transformation of Indigenous People	27
3	Lessons Learned From Poor African American Youth: Resilient Strengths in Coping With Adverse Environments	45
4	Gendered Adaptations, Resilience, and the Perpetration of Violence	57
5	The Theory of Resilience and Its application to Street Children in the Minority and Majority World	71
6	Beyond Resilience: Blending Wellness and Liberation in the Helping Professions	89
7	Community-Based Child Welfare for Aboriginal Children: Supporting Resilience Through Structural Change	105
8	Beetles, Bullfrogs, and Butterflies: Contributions of Natural Environment to Childhood Development and Resilience	121
Part 2	Methodological Challenges in Resilience Research	133
9	Methodological Challenges in the Study of Resilience	135
10	Qualitative Resilience Research: Contributions and Risks	149
11	Psychosocial Health in Youth: An International Perspective	165
12	Resilience and Well-Being in Developing Countries	189
13	The International Resilience Project: A Mixed-Methods Approach to the Study of Resilience Across Cultures	211
Part 3	Intervening Across Cultures and Contexts	227
14	Israeli Youth Cope With Terror: Vulnerability and Resilience	229
15	Overcoming Adversity With Children Affected by HIV/AIDS in the Indigenous South African Cultural Context	247
16	Bent But Not Broken: Exploring Queer Youth Resilience	263
17	Psychosocial Functioning of Children From Monogamous and Polygamous Families: Implications for Practice	279
18	Strengthening Families and Communities: System Building for Resilience	295
19	Professional Discourse of Social Workers Working With At-Risk Young People in Hong Kong: Risk or Resilience?	313
20	Resilient Youth in North East India: The Role of Faith-Based Organizations in Communities Affected by Violence	329
21	Alternative Approaches to Promoting the Health and Well-Being of Children: Accessing Community Resources to Support Resilience	343
22	Respecting Aboriginal Families: Pathways to Resilience in Custom Adoption and Family Group Conferencing	357
23	Social and Cultural Roots of Russian Youth Resilience: Interventions by the State, Society, and the Family	371
24	Intercepts of Resilience and Systems of Care	387
25	Youth Civic Engagement: Promise and Peril	405
26	Resilience in the Palestinian Occupied Territories	417
27	Resiliency and Young African Canadian Males	433
28	Violence Prevention Programming in Colombia: Challenges in Project Design and Fidelity	455
	Author Index	473
	Subject Index	491
	About the Contributors	501

Editorial Reviews

"This well-written handbook explores the empirical and theoretical work on resilience or 'human strength,' that many children and youth possess despite experiencing traumatic events or negative-abusive environments. . . . What makes this handbook both unique and cutting-edge is its focus on cross-cultural and multicultural issues regarding resilience. . . . Highly recommended."

CHOICE - G.C. Gamst

"This well-written handbook explores the empirical and theoretical work on resilience or 'human strength,' that many children and youth possess despite experiencing traumatic events or negative-abusive environments. . . . What makes this handbook both unique and cutting-edge is its focus on cross-cultural and multicultural issues regarding resilience. . . . Highly recommended. "— G.C. Gamst

Choice Magazine