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Social Work vocabulary · Practice Approaches

Resilience

Meaning in social work, with examples

/rɪˈzɪliəns/nounCommon term

In social work, resilience means: The ability to cope with difficulties and recover from them, supported both by personal qualities and by the relationships and resources around a person.

In Turkish: psikolojik sağlamlık, dayanıklılık, yılmazlık

How it is used

Used about children, families, communities and staff. Social workers look for factors that build resilience, such as a trusted adult, success at school or a hobby. Critics warn that talk of resilience should not hide the need to change difficult conditions.

Example sentences

  1. Her close bond with her grandmother was a major source of resilience.

  2. The programme aims to build resilience in young people leaving care.

Common collocations

  • build resilience
  • promote resilience
  • resilience factors
  • community resilience
  • strengths-based approachA way of working that starts from what people can do, their skills, relationships and resources, rather than only from their problems.
  • trauma-informedBased on an understanding of how traumatic experiences can affect people's behaviour, trust and health, and organised to avoid causing further harm.
  • burnoutA state of physical and emotional exhaustion caused by long-term work stress, often with feelings of detachment and reduced effectiveness.
  • care leaverA young person who has spent time in care, for example in foster or residential care, and has moved on to adult life, usually between the ages of 16 and 18.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Practice Approaches

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