Promoting Resilient Development in Children Receiving Care Conference.

• Author: Cornwall, Justine

The Promoting Resilient Development in Children Receiving Care Conference was held at the University of Ottawa on August 16-19 2004 and combined the 6th International Looking After Children Conference and the 5th National Child Welfare Symposium of Canada. The conference was attended by approximately 350 delegates from a range of countries.

I attended this conference because of its relevance to a project being undertaken within the Ministry of Social Development to develop a system of outcome measurement for Care and Protection service providers. (1) The conference provided an opportunity to meet with international experts in outcome measurement in child welfare and to assess the effectiveness of other information measurement systems in providing data on outcomes for children in care.

As the title of the conference suggests, the predominant theme weaving through the presentations was the importance and value of focusing on building up resilience in children receiving care and protection services from state agencies. In the context of this conference, resilience was defined as "good outcomes in spite of serious threats to adaptation or development". Importantly, ideas and concrete strategies emerged from a number of presentations that provided direction to policy makers, care agencies, social workers and foster carers about how resilience in children in care could be strengthened. Examples included a targeted arts programme, encouraging children to participate in structured voluntary activities, and developing hobbies and involvement in clubs. Presenters emphasised that taking a resilience--and strengths-based approach: to child welfare results in both short-term and long-term benefits to children's outcomes.

Intertwined with the focus of building resilience in children was the idea that agencies, social workers and foster carers also need to develop and foster resilience. A number of presenters argued that the key to this process is the establishment of robust case management and information systems that allow in-depth high-quality information to be gathered for each child and family, that can feed into effective programme interventions and review processes. In this regard, the Looked After Children (LAC) system of case management, developed initially in the United Kingdom, was argued by a number of speakers to promote resilience by emphasising the development of competence among young people in care) Specifically, the assessment, intervention planning, review and outcome monitoring processes integral to the LAC approach were argued to provide a robust mechanism for ensuring agencies, social workers and foster carers are well placed to build resilience in children receiving care and protection services.

FOCUSING ON THE OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN

In my view, two of the plenary presentations delivered on the opening day of the conference succeeded in setting a positive and motivational climate for the conference. The first of these speakers was Professor Robbie Gilligan, whose talk focused on the necessity for building up the social networks of children receiving care, by finding connections with someone in their family of origin or identifying key interests of the child and encouraging and facilitating their access to clubs and groups that will allow their social networks to grow. He argued that establishing social networks in a variety of domains assists in building up children's resilience as they progress through the care system, undergo placement change, age out of care or return home to their family. This inspirational talk, delivered with passion and conviction and with a genuine and abiding interest in the outcomes for children in care, infused the conference with enthusiasm for the work of child welfare agencies and focused delegates clearly on the outcomes for children receiving care services.

A reflexive and inclusive atmosphere was also created at the conference by the deliberate inclusion of the voice of young people who either had been or were still in the state care system in Canada. Youth in Care advocate Jordan Alderman provided the youth perspective on the opening day of the conference...