Wed, 12 Feb 2025
14:00 – 15:00 GMT
Online

Nurturing resilience: nine ways families, schools, and communities can help children thrive

In this fast-paced, story-filled presentation, Dr. Ungar will show that our children’s resilience is much more than their individual ability to overcome adversity. It is just as much the result of how well their families, schools and communities work together to help vulnerable young people navigate their way to the resources they need for wellbeing, and whether those resources are made available to children in ways children experience as meaningful. In addition to exploring what resilience means to children from many different backgrounds, Dr Ungar will also provide nine practical strategies parents, caregivers and educators can use to help children heal, no matter a child’s emotional, psychological or behavioural problems.

Specific learning objectives for this presentation are:

1. To understand how children and families with complex needs use “problem” behaviours to enhance their resilience and wellbeing when more socially acceptable solutions are not available;

2. To become familiar with how to assess resilience;

3. To learn about nine resilience-promoting resources necessary for positive child development;

4. To develop strategies for working without resistance with hard-to-reach, culturally diverse children, adolescents, and their families;

5. To discuss ways services can be structured for children and families that make resilience more likely to occur.

About the speaker:

Michael Ungar, Ph.D., is a Family Therapist and Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience. His research on resilience around the world and across cultures has made him the number one ranked Social Work scholar in the world, with numerous educational institutions, government agencies, not-for-profits and businesses relying on his research and clinical work to guide their approaches to nurturing child, family, organizational and community wellbeing under stress.

About the Wolfson Centre for Young People’s Mental Health

We are a dedicated interdisciplinary research centre focusing on reducing anxiety and depression in young people. Our research centre brings together experts from Cardiff University and Swansea University and is made possible by generous funding by the Wolfson Foundation.

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