The purpose of this reading is to show how children become resilient and the factors that contribute to their resiliency. He wants to show that resiliency is dependent on the family’s ability to access resources. The article suggests the biggest way therapists can contribute to families living in challenging situations is to help their families and they become capable to navigate to access resources and negotiate to the proper people for sources of support.
Also the article shows how the social environment of resilience depends on the family having access to resources and which resources they define as culturally important.The author uses clinical evidence and research that focuses on promoting the necessities for different resources necessary to encourage resilience including the family and individual progress. Main points:In order to get a better understanding of the article there has to be an understanding of the word and definition of resilience and who is applying it. Ungar claims that the typical definition of resilience could be a problem because it does not adequately account for cultural and contextual differences in how people in other systems express resilience.
Ungar (2008) concludes that resilience should be defined as follows: “In the context of exposure to significant adversity, resilience is both the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to the psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that sustain their well-being, and their capacity individually and collectively to negotiate for these resources to be provided and experienced in culturally meaningful ways. One of the many main points the author shows is that cultural and circumstantial issues apply a great deal of influence on the factors that affect resiliency in a population.”Research has been done to form a social ecological interpretation of resilience where the different studies show different mechanisms associated with resiliency as well. The social ecological understanding of resilience is consistent with general methods to therapy that stress the need to change social relations, environmental structures, and the availability of health resources (like access to health care, safety, education, and social support) rather than just changing individuals to adapt to the threats posed to them.The better individuals and families are at navigating to what they need (and therapists at satisfying these needs), the more likely people are to experience themselves as coping well in stressful environments (Ungar 2010).
The sensitive culturally and contextually definition of resilience shows how the clients require help navigating to the resources they require to manifest their capacities in stressful environments. Their ability to navigate depends on the availability and accessibility of those resources but also put the therapist as an advocate.Therapists who seek to nurture resilience among their clients may reasonably expect to provide both psychological supports and advocacy as case managers. The therapists need to make interventions meaningful and adjust the methods of intervention. Clients also require help negotiating for the resources that are meaningful. Even psychological resources like self-esteem, empowerment, and efficacy are culturally and contextually dependent, with each being more or less valued and expressed in different settings (Robinson, 2007).
Beyond direct clinical practice, a family therapist’s role may also be to actively participate in the social discourse that defines which resources are provided (valued) by his or her community, and which are culturally and contextually relevant to bolstering the personal and collective development of clients coping in threatening environments (Aldarondo, 2007). Theories:The structural functionalism theory relates to this article, it’s a part of the sociological theory that tries to explain why society functions the way it does by focusing on the relationships between the various social institutions that makes up society.According to (Robbins 2012) this particular theory is not used too much in social work but it is suggested that is a useful theory base for working with cultural minorities suffering from sociocultural dislocation. In the case of Richard, he shows his anger stems from nothing being done by the school officials when he was called the n-word.
The way he coped with that was resort to violence and using drugs to secure the respect of others, money, and the integrity of his possessions.I think The ecological perspective relates more to the article because it uses biological theories to explain how organisms adapt to their environments. In social work practice applying the ecological perspective looks at the whole make up of life like the individual, communities, family, policies, and culture. It can be best understood as looking at the individuals, families, cultures, communities, and policies and to recognize the strengths and weaknesses between these systems.
The social work discipline has expanded this perspective to explain that an individual is "constantly creating, restructuring, and adapting to the environment as the environment is affecting them" (Ungar, 2002). The systems are broken down to four implications for social work starting with the Microsystem, who is Richard, and his characteristics and anger issues are affecting his family in a negative way. The family lives in a middle class neighborhood with a son that is acting out at school and doing drugs while they have done everything right.Looking deeper into it The Mesosystemic group is the more generalized system referring to his family and the interaction they have a parent and child interaction. For example, even at the mesosystemic level of a family’s interpersonal interactions, a child’s individual characteristics are only important in so far as they seed parent-child relationships that facilitate the child’s healthy development (Wachs, 2006).
In this case Macro system consists of the most generalized forces, affecting individuals and family functioning so it is the community.The community Richard lives in is derogatory and racist in his eyes but in his father’s eyes it gives him ample amounts of opportunity to succeed but it has an effect of them in a negative way because Richard is acting out. Summary:Ungar wants to prove that the family can navigate and negotiate to get certain resources that are necessary to be able to function normally in society. During the study on the African-Canadian youth the social worker points out ways to do that.We learned The word resilient can be defined in numerous ways but how people actually become resilient depends on their social circumstances and the difficulties they may face in life.
In order to encourage the young African-Canadian youth to become resilient they adapted his environment to him and his requests instead of adapting him and signing him up for anger management. Even though some would say he is still being encouraged to do wrong by smoking weed he is receiving his allowance which helps him stay focused and strive to do better.The strength of this article is all the data and research that supports the author’s perspective that anyone can navigate and negotiate the client needs they must be taught. The various research studies in the article all point out the different issues that affect the community but let it be known that the therapist or social worker can speak on their behalf. Unfortunately there are not a lot of diverse studies to support that living in decent neighborhoods like Richard with both parents still have an impact on the child if something is out of the norm for them.
The article did not show enough of both sides to really have a choice of being persuaded to more than one. For example, most studies showed that resiliency was created due to lack of something but it didn’t focus on everything in the environment that affected the study. In order to compare something to Richard I think there needed to be one more study that had similar situations to his. The closest research that sounds like it would have a better chance at showing why Richard coped the way he did was the context done by Santisteban and Mena regarding the Hispanic population.Strength is the fact that it includes the theory/research areas of the family field but it is so well written and researched even those who might disagree with its underlying principles will benefit from the reading.
This article is very informative and definitely sheds light on how to handle scenarios and cases differently which is very important because every answer may not be in the book. The best way to learn is through experience and stepping out of the box maybe if more therapists tried to use this style to build resiliency then it would help clients try hard to turn around their situation for the better.
