Resilience in young people: Feeling Good!

The Foyer Federation has just published my report based on focus groups and interviews with their young residents. This was a great and really enjoyable project. These really interesting young people who have had disruptions that I never had to negotiate at such an early age told me about how they could become and remain resilient, not just to survive but to overcome their problems and disadvantages and to do well and to contribute to society.  Good communication was vitally important for them to be able to assess their situations and to put realistic plans in place to manage them. This included countering the stigma and prejudice which they felt from other people. Despite their disadvantages, all of the young people I met described what made them feel good about themselves and hopeful about the future and gave suggestions about how the Foyers could support that. The lessons are transferrable to other settings. For me, it was really striking that after feeling safe and secure, the most important thing in helping them to do well was the informal communication they experienced with other people, “How are you?”, “Did you do what you were  telling me about last week?”, “Your hair looks nice today”, “Can I help?”.  Not difficult really. The report is available here: http://www.foyer.net/pdf/Feeling_Good.pdf

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