This Chapter explores “the global child” and current practice with children or adults who, during their childhood, have lived through situations of adversity. This can involve war, displacement or traumatic migration journeys. The overall goal of the Chapter is to provide social workers with reflections, ideas, and tools that can enable integration of resilience knowledge and trauma-informed knowledge within service provider organisations. Qualitative research on resilience and on children who survived the Shoah while facing one or more traumatic experiences (separation from birth family, living in a hiding family, and parents’ deportation) is discussed. Using a narrative approach, 22 life trajectories were collected through 19 semi-structured interviews and 3 published biographies (Ius & Milani, 2010). These were then analysed to understand and explore developmental factors that enabled child survivors to develop and grow across their life journey. After presenting the main results, stories of three children are briefly described as examples of how resilience was promoted across their life course. The voices of interviewees are utilised to underline common key aspects, such as difficult adaptation after the war, turning points in life, the search for one’s identity, community and religious belonging, personal commitment and altruism. Within the research each life trajectory was analysed following a timeline; the timeline or life story is discussed as a concept and as a tool within the social work context. Conclusions suggest that professionals should integrate trauma-informed and resilience knowledge in their work with children,. They are encouraged to focus on three main perspectives: being mindful of identity development, avoiding deterministic approaches to human development, and promoting resilience. They should try to work simultaneously on an individual level and on contextual, social, and political levels to address inequalities and social disadvantage.
Building resilience following major trauma: Learnings from children of the Shoah
Marco Ius
Writing – Original Draft Preparation
In corso di stampa
Abstract
This Chapter explores “the global child” and current practice with children or adults who, during their childhood, have lived through situations of adversity. This can involve war, displacement or traumatic migration journeys. The overall goal of the Chapter is to provide social workers with reflections, ideas, and tools that can enable integration of resilience knowledge and trauma-informed knowledge within service provider organisations. Qualitative research on resilience and on children who survived the Shoah while facing one or more traumatic experiences (separation from birth family, living in a hiding family, and parents’ deportation) is discussed. Using a narrative approach, 22 life trajectories were collected through 19 semi-structured interviews and 3 published biographies (Ius & Milani, 2010). These were then analysed to understand and explore developmental factors that enabled child survivors to develop and grow across their life journey. After presenting the main results, stories of three children are briefly described as examples of how resilience was promoted across their life course. The voices of interviewees are utilised to underline common key aspects, such as difficult adaptation after the war, turning points in life, the search for one’s identity, community and religious belonging, personal commitment and altruism. Within the research each life trajectory was analysed following a timeline; the timeline or life story is discussed as a concept and as a tool within the social work context. Conclusions suggest that professionals should integrate trauma-informed and resilience knowledge in their work with children,. They are encouraged to focus on three main perspectives: being mindful of identity development, avoiding deterministic approaches to human development, and promoting resilience. They should try to work simultaneously on an individual level and on contextual, social, and political levels to address inequalities and social disadvantage.Pubblicazioni consigliate
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