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

"To study resilience one should adopt a fundamental humility about oneself and one′s culture and society and simultaneously a respect for the human strength of others. The chapters in this book take these three cautions seriously, and offer a convincing demonstration that resilience is indeed a many-splendored thing." --James Garbarino, Cornell University    

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.   

Key Features

• Cross-cultural.  Illustrates the rich variety of culturally embedded pathways by which children navigate toward health and well-being
• Multidisciplinary.  Draws upon international experts utilizing both quantitative and qualitative studies from psychology, social work, psychiatry, nursing, education, criminology, child and youth care, community health, and family therapy 
• Comprehensive.  Provides broad developmental perspectives on resilience, from theory and research methods to interventions with individuals, families, and communities 
• Connects theory to practice.  Clarifies the construct of resilience from the viewpoint of resilience researchers and practitioners in health-related disciplines from different methodological paradigms within the social sciences and human services

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.  

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.