The Concept of Resilience in Children’s Health and Social Care Policy

The inclusion of resilience as an intended and desirable outcome of policy has evolved in the United Kingdom as a consequence of changing attitudes to children’s disability, and in response to being consistently at the bottom of the UNICEF children’s wellbeing league of rich countries. Resilience is now recognised as having potential influence on the health, well-being and quality of life of children (especially disabled children) and their families and on how they respond to challenges as they grow up. Most recently economic recession and refocussing of Government policy has driven economic imperatives that are conceptualised as requiring a higher degree of self-reliance and self-care, and therefore a more self-efficacious and resilient population, to reduce costs to the State. It has yet to be seen if policies achieve their outcomes as most are not accompanied by implementation strategies and the health and social care workforce has received varying levels and types of training. It is also uncommon for measures of resilience to be used in routine practice outside of a research context, so governments may have to rely on future UNICEF reports of child well-being as a proxy for judging the success of policies to build resilient populations of children and families who are better able to cope with adversity.