Review of Handbook for Working with Children and Youth: Pathways to Resilience across Cultures and Contexts.

Abstract

MICHAEL UNGAR (Ed.) Handbook for Working with Children and Youth: Pathways to Resilience across Cultures and Contexts Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005, 552 pages (ISBN 1-4129-0405-6, US$130 Hardcover) Reviewed by ROBERT J. FLYNN This book, comprising 550 large-format, double-columned pages, presents the contributions of 56 authors, 50% of whom are affiliated primarily with social work, 21% with psychology or counselling, and 5% with medicine, with the remaining 24% coming from a wide range of other fields, including child and youth care, sociology, anthropology, child and family studies, and journalism. The approach used is mainly descriptive, qualitative, and even anecdotal, with only a few chapters presenting any quantitative data. Overall, the putative bias of most contributors ... towards some type of mixed-method approach to resilience research (p. xxx) is not, in my view, much in evidence. In his lengthy and discursive introductory chapter, the editor provides neither a well-defined statement of purpose for the nor a systematic survey of how resilience theory, research, policy, and practice have evolved since the 1970s. Such an overview, including a brief mention of landmark studies, would have been enlightening for most readers and essential for the reader new to resilience. In searching for the main purpose of the book, I concluded that the editor intended it, at least in part, as a first report on his International Resilience Project, the origins and development of which he describes well in Chapter 13. I also concluded that the following excerpt (especially the second sentence) captures the general intent (and the engage tone) of the volume: At a time when we are increasingly open to critical engagement between those marginalized and the elites who hold power over them, there is a need when studying resilience to understand the multiple that children, their caregivers, and travel toward health. This is intended to our of how children, youth, and the adults who care for them sustain resilience in diverse cultures and contexts. (p. xvii) Broadening our understanding reflects more accurately (and modestly) what the is actually about than does its tide. For the is not a handbook, in the usual dictionary sense of a book of directions or guidebook to a particular field (here, working with children or youth). Nor does the actually describe many pathways to resilience, in the sense of trajectories that lead to clearly positive outcomes among young people facing serious threats to their development. Overall, the is considerably stronger in presenting descriptions of youths exposed to a range of challenging situations or (nonvalidated) intervention programs than in furnishing compelling evidence - qualitative or quantitative - that the young people have, in fact, experienced positive benefits. This may stem, in part, from the editor's pessimistic belief that it is no longer possible to speak of evidence-based practice when we move interventions into ethnically diverse communities (p. xxxiii), an assertion that flies in the face of considerable empirical evidence that the effectiveness of well-validated programs can be preserved when they are adapted judiciously to a range of contexts. Part I (Theoretical Perspectives) consists of eight chapters that describe risk or resilience (variously defined) in a wide range of populations: young people in developing countries; indigenous families, especially in the Hawaiian islands; poor African-American girls; male and female perpetrators of interpersonal violence; street children; people with disabilities; Aboriginal children; and children exposed to the natural world. Taken separately, many of these chapters are interesting and do broaden our understanding, because of their descriptive power. …