Quantifying teacher resilience: Context matters

Previous research has identified individual and contextual level factors that may promote resilience in teachers; however, little is known about their relative importance in predicting measures of positive adaptation. Questionnaire data were collected from 226 UK teachers. Relative importance analyses identified a number of significant predictors of job satisfaction, burnout, and wellbeing. The results suggest that contextual influences on teachers' ability to thrive within the profession are just as important as individual factors. Any intervention designed to develop teacher resilience should therefore focus on improving the professional environment as well as looking at ways to enhance teachers’ personal resources

After the fire: an ecological, phenomenological exploration of resilience‐building following the Fuego volcanic eruption in Guatemala

Combining ecological resilience theory with a phenomenological epistemology, we explored experiential, social, and cultural factors mediating resilience-building with participants from a village destroyed by the 2018 Fuego volcanic eruption in Guatemala. The purpose of the study is to find out what strategies displaced families and communities employ for living through the aftermath of a volcano eruption and for building psychological resilience. We conducted semistructured interviews with nine survivors of the Fuego eruption, now relocated and coping with the loss of community and family members killed in the disaster. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to analyze transcripts. The analysis produced four main themes: (i) individual and collective challenges, (ii) social support and protection, (iii) faith and culturally endorsed belief, and (iv) looking to the future. As well as learning more about how a community faced challenges presented by a volcano eruption, the current study has a degree of transferability, with implications for understanding how other communities experience and cope with such events

Reflections from the forgotten frontline: ‘The reality for children and staff in residential care’ during COVID‐19

Currently, 78,150 children are in care in England, with 11% of the most vulnerable living in 2,460 residential homes due to multitype traumas. These children require safe and secure trauma-informed therapeutic care. However, the children’s residential care workforce delivering this vital care is an unrepresented, under-researched and largely unsupported professional group. The workforce undertakes physically and emotionally challenging work in difficult conditions, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Practitioner wellbeing is directly associated with outcomes for children. Therefore, we sought to understand how experiences within the workforce could improve overall working conditions, and thus outcomes for staff and children. Thirty participants took part in a survey, providing feedback on their experiences and the situations they faced during the English lockdown April-June 2020. Two participants also opted to take part in a teleconference interview, rather than survey, although were asked the same questions. Data was analysed through thematic analysis. A stakeholder advisory board supported the project, including frontline staff, care leavers, service managers and policy researchers. The advisory board assisted in reflecting on the data from the survey and interviews to generate a complete analysis. Overall, staff require facilitated safe spaces for peer-support, reflective and emotionally supportive supervision. An organisational awareness that staff wellbeing is intrinsically connected to the wellbeing and therapeutic outcomes of the children they care for is essential. Further, staff require a sense of belongingness to feel safe and competent in their role due to a lack of external recognition and professional representation or validation. Based on the findings of the study and an iterative process with the stakeholder advisory board, we created a Wellbeing Charter for adoption within organisations to promote and protect the wellbeing of this vital workforce. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed professional, financial and environmental inequalities that affect these frontline workers. Implementing organisational, statutory and policy-driven initiatives to prioritise their wellbeing are essential for the vulnerable children they care for. What is known about this topic and what this paper adds? Following a literature search and consultations with national bodies, it was concluded that no national professional body or Wellbeing Charter exists for this workforce. Residential children’s care and the workforce are under-represented in research, policy and practice. Added value of this study • The Wellbeing Charter could be transformative in the sector to protect and promote the wellbeing of this workforce, and thus contribute to improved outcomes for our most vulnerable children and young people. • We found important associations between individual, relational and organisational factors that influence the care that this workforce is able to provide. • Implications for the professional accreditation, representation and protection of this workforce are discussed in terms of policy, research and practice

Influencing Policy. Raising Aspirations. Exploring the impact of the Street Child World Cup on the young people who participate, their communities and the organisations that support them

The Street Child World Cup (SCWC) aims to use the power of football and the arts to raise awareness of and tackle the widespread stigma faced by street-connected children globally. Through the tournament, an arts festival and the General Assembly, Street Child United (SCU) use each event to amplify the voices of these children in a bid to change how they are positioned and supported in society. As the fourth SCU event to be held since 2010, the 2018 SCWC provided an opportunity to reflect upon the challenges and opportunities that have arisen in relation to previous events as well as to focus on the event in Moscow as it unfolded. This independent research study, therefore, aimed to understand the impact of participating in a SCWC on the players, their communities and the organisations that support them. Data was generated through questionnaires distributed to Team Leaders before the event in Moscow, face-to-face interviews with Team Leaders, players and Youth Leaders at the event, and face-to-face or WhatsApp interviews with players and Team Leaders in the 18 months after the event. The findings indicate the importance of effective structures to create the foundation for meaningful participation and to ensure that being part of the SCWC is mostly a positive experience for the organisations who register to bring teams to the event and for the teams themselves. In particular, these structures relate to the development of programmes to prepare the teams for travelling to the event and supporting them when they return, as well as for advocacy strategies that lead to sustainable, long-term change. Key Findings Participating in a SCU event can be a confidence-building experience for the players. They are able to feel proud of being selected to represent their country, interact with and learn from children in similar situations to them but from other countries, and become motivated to complete their education and/or think about their future differently. A number of the organisations who register to participate in a SCU event integrate the opportunity into a wider programme focused on developing strong role models - either to provide peer support for other children or as a spokesperson within a larger advocacy programme. As such participating in a SCU event can provide positive benefits to the wider community by raising their aspirations also. Impact was greater, and generally more positive, when effective frameworks of support were in place. For example, the development of comprehensive programmes of preparation that: managed the expectations of players, parents and the wider community; developed integrated programmes of training to help the players to play together as a team; delivered child rights education to prepare them for the Congress; and focused on what was expected of the players (and the challenges they would face) when they returned home. Impact was also greater when these frameworks continued after the event, supporting the players with the emotional upheaval of returning to ‘normal’ life after being the centre of attention for 12 days. Good practice described by the Team Leaders include the provision of counselling, especially from a qualified counsellor, and/or at the very least a space in which the players are able to share their experiences and reconnect with other players who had been at the SCWC. As suggested by such frameworks, getting players to the event involves a great deal of work that can take the staff at the organisations fielding the teams away from their usual day-to-day work. In smaller organisations with less human resource capacity, other programmes of intervention can be affected as staff focus on getting everything in place to travel to the SCWC. The additional work includes, but is not limited to, fundraising to take the team to the event, selecting and training the team, applying for birth certificates, passports and other legal documents to take the children out of the country and the related tasks of finding and negotiating with potentially absent parents during the process. Most Team Leaders reported limited financial benefits to their organisations from their participation in the event but they all reported a degree of success in meeting advocacy goals. In general, larger organisations, or those who had participated for a number of SCU events and had spent years developing their approaches to both supporting the players and integrating the SCWC into their long-term advocacy strategy, were more able to engage with the media and negotiate the inclusion of their particular advocacy messages in the stories presented. In addition, the higher up the tournament leader board a team managed to reach, the greater the media coverage they attracted. This raises important questions about the support structures that could be put in place to both address the impact on workload and leverage greater impact from the event. The Congress, which provides a space in which the players share their stories and develop messages to disseminate on an international stage at the General Assembly, was described positively by most Team Leaders interviewed as the focus on the event. The players develop the confidence to reflect upon the challenges they faced – especially in relation to the problems faced by other teams – and to visualise solutions to these problems and a focus on the future. The messages the players develop for the General Assembly are rooted in the experiences they share and are therefore inextricably part of who they are. When these messages translate into limited tangible impact, which is to be expected given the nature of the event and the timescales over which transformative change takes place in practice, the players can be left disappointed after the hype of speaking in front of ‘the world’. Team Leaders who managed players expectations, by helping them to understand the degree to which delivering their messages leads to change as part of a long-term process that could take ears, reported greater levels of impact and confidence building for the players. These Team Leaders described follow-on programmes of advocacy and support that aimed to build on and develop the sustainability of these messages – involving the players in advocacy strategies and encouraging them to be role models for other street-connected children. Finally, SCU value long-term partnerships with the organisations who register to participate: developing an international network that can offer guidance and support to each other in their work. The networks developed between organisations was discussed positively in terms of providing supportive spaces where Team Leaders and other staff members could learn from each other. However, the ability of this network to deliver a stronger, collaborative, advocacy message was not discussed in positive terms and there were Team Leaders who wanted the network to be developed towards greater impact through a long-term focus on why children are on the street rather than just the event itself

Image and word on the street: a reflexive, phased approach to combining participatory visual methods and qualitative interviews to explore resilience with street connected young people in Guatemala City

We present an argument for reflexively combining participatory visual methods with each other, alongside qualitative ethnographic interviewing, in exploring resilience with street-connected young people who attend two voluntary educational outreach projects in Guatemala City. We present primary research in the form of three case studies selected from a wider, mixed-methods study. The case studies adopt an approach that is rooted in phenomenology, incorporating participatory photography, participatory drawing, and image-elicited interviewing. We discuss the advantages of combining visual methods with qualitative interviewing in ways that respond to the developing phases of research and to the sensory and technological preferences of participants. We also outline the potential benefits of this approach for psychological research into resilience, place, and community, and for benefitting voluntary outreach organisations with whom we collaborated

Early life risk factors for adolescent mental health difficulties for individuals at risk of developmental language disorder

Young people with developmental language disorder (DLD) often have poorer mental health compared to those without DLD. However, not all young people with DLD experience such difficulties. Two hundred and eighty-one young people at risk of DLD (45% Female; 53% White British) were identified from a UK based population-cohort. Main caregivers completed questionnaires about their early life (<5 years) and their mental health (at 14 years). Parent–child conflict was revealed to be an early risk factor for all mental health outcomes, at age 14. Additionally, harsh discipline and second-hand smoke predicted worse externalising problems, and gender differences predicted worse internalising problems. Further findings demonstrated that, as the number of risk factors increased, so did the severity of mental health difficulties

Using a situative perspective to gain a deeper understanding of how children’s strengths are related to social context

Over the last twenty-five years, there has been an increase in the availability of published checklists and schedules which allow practitioners to identify the strengths of children and young people, including those with special educational needs. While helpful, these assessments are unable to tell us about the nature of contextual factors which support the expression of particular strengths. In this study, we took a situative perspective to explore how specific classroom practices facilitated strengths. A multiple case study design was used to analyse practices nominated by three children/young people with special educational needs. Qualitative analysis revealed how aspects of practice afforded the opportunity for each child to participate in ways which they equated with their strengths. This style of strength-based assessment led to a more sustained examination of supportive practice features than would have been achieved through interview alone

Evaluating a universal emotional-centred intervention to improve children's emotional well-being over primary-secondary school transition

The transition from primary to secondary school is a critical period for children, which, for most children involves stress and anxiety (Jindal-Snape et al., 2020). If negotiated poorly, this transition can have a significant negative impact on children’s short- and long-term well-being and mental health (White, 2020). Despite this, efforts to improve children’s emotional experiences of primary-secondary school transition are minimal in research and face challenges in practice. Very few interventions focus on supporting children’s emotional well-being and these are limited in number, sustainability, and reach. Talking about School Transition (TaST) is a universal, emotional-centred teacher-led support intervention, which was developed to fill this gap in the literature. The evaluation of TaST consisted of a longitudinal questionnaire-based design investigating the efficacy of TaST in improving 143 Year 6 (aged 10 and 11 year old) children’s coping efficacy and adjustment. It was assessed using the outcome variables: Emotional Symptoms, Peer Problems, Coping Efficacy and Transition Worries, in addition to a qualitative process evaluation. Results suggest that TaST had immediate positive implications for participating children who showed a significantly greater reduction in Transition Worries once at secondary school, compared to control group children. TaST has implications for educational practice and policy in elucidating the importance of supporting children’s emotional well-being over this period and demonstrating the viability and success of implementing emotional-centred support intervention in practice

Cumulative Risk Effects in the Bullying of Children and Young People with Autism Spectrum Conditions

Students with autism are more likely to be bullied than their typically developing peers. However, several studies have shown that their likelihood of being bullied increases in the context of exposure to certain risk factors (e.g. behaviour difficulties, poor peer relationships). This study explores vulnerability to bullying from a cumulative risk perspective, where the number of risks rather than their nature is considered. 722 teachers and 119 parents of young people with ASC participated in the study. Established risk factors were summed to form a cumulative risk score in teacher and parent models. There was evidence of a cumulative risk effect in both models, suggesting that as the number of risks increased, so did exposure to bullying. A quadratic effect was found in the teacher model, indicating that there was a disproportionate increase in the likelihood of being bullied in relation to the number of risk factors to which a young person was exposed. In light of these findings, it is proposed that more attention needs to be given to the number of risks to which children and young people with ASC are exposed when planning interventions and providing a suitable educational environment

Cumulative risk effects for the development of behaviour difficulties in children with special educational needs and disabilities

Research has identified multiple risk factors for the development of behaviour difficulties. What have been less explored are the cumulative effects of exposure to multiple risks on behavioural outcomes, with no study specifically investigating these effects within a population of young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Furthermore, it is unclear whether a threshold or linear risk model better fits the data for this population. The sample included 2660 children and 1628 adolescents with SEND. Risk factors associated with increases in behaviour difficulties over an 18-month period were summed to create a cumulative risk score, with this explanatory variable being added into a multi-level model. A quadratic term was then added to test the threshold model. There was evidence of a cumulative risk effect, suggesting that exposure to higher numbers of risk factors, regardless of their exact nature, resulted in increased behaviour difficulties. The relationship between risk and behaviour difficulties was non-linear, with exposure to increasing risk having a disproportionate and detrimental impact on behaviour difficulties in child and adolescent models. Interventions aimed at reducing behaviour difficulties need to consider the impact of multiple risk variables. Tailoring interventions towards those exposed to large numbers of risks would be advantageous