Promote resilience

Promote resilience

It is important to identify and build on areas of strength or resilience in order to promote 'push factors' towards school.

It can be useful to support children and young people by:

• Considering their ambition, aspirations and motivations and providing safe opportunities which enable them to develop these;
• Ensuring that the child or young person has access to positive experiences where they are able to feel a sense of achievement;
• Providing activities and opportunities which focus on developing confidence and self-esteem;
• Using approaches that promote feelings of safety, security and a sense of belonging;
• Providing opportunities to develop positive relationships with adults and their peers;
• Ensuring that they feel listened to and understood by all adults;
• Promoting their emotional literacy, for example, their understanding of emotions and the relationship between thoughts, feelings, physiological sensations and behaviour.        

"Allow yourself to accept that you have a problem. Because even if you have a fantastic support network around you, the big issue comes when you don't want to accept that you have a problem. An awful lot of young people do that and I think it's so heartbreaking because it's so self destructive, it causes more of a problem. Once you admit that there is something that isn't right, then you can get the help that you need, and you will get the support you need eventually" (young person).

"[The importance of] emphasising the possibility of change for that person... to be able to have something different in the future” (multiagency professional).

"Let's concentrate on the things that you love" (parent).