10 minutes
Protective factors and resilience Learn what protective factors are, what resilience actually means, and how to tell either from a demand that the person cope.
What you’ll be able to do Define protective factors and resilience as the research uses them, and distinguish them from an expectation that the person cope with what the system does. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What is the most useful observation? Document a next step for Protective factors and resilience: For one person, list the protective factors currently in their life and the one your service could add or protect. Things people have, not things they are The same research that documented the effects of early adversity also documented what reduces them. A stable relationship with at least one caring adult. Safe and stable housing. A sense of belonging to a community, a culture, a faith. Skills for managing stress. Access to help when needed. These are protective factors, and their defining feature is that they are conditions in a person's life, not qualities of the person. They can be provided, protected, and removed.
Resilience is what protective factors produce. When a person with a difficult history does well, the research points to the factors that were present, not to an inner quality of toughness. This matters for services because services routinely praise resilience while removing its causes: moving people between providers, changing staff, disrupting routine, ending relationships. A service that does this and then calls the person resilient is asking them to cope with the service.
Protective factor, risk factor, or demand to cope? A support worker the person has known for six years.
Choose a category Protective factor Risk factor Demand to cope A third change of provider in twelve months.
Choose a category Protective factor Risk factor Demand to cope A note commending the person for adjusting well to the third change.
Choose a category Protective factor Risk factor Demand to cope A faith community the person has attended since childhood.
Choose a category Protective factor Risk factor Demand to cope Housing that may end at the next review.
Choose a category Protective factor Risk factor Demand to cope A referral to a stress-management class instead of stabilizing the housing.
Choose a category Protective factor Risk factor Demand to cope Check matches Reset The protective factors services touch A stable, caring relationship
The single most protective factor in the research. Services touch it every time they change a worker, a provider, or a housemate.
Safe, stable housing
Protective in itself and the base for everything else. Services touch it through placement decisions, funding reviews and eviction responses.
Belonging
Membership in a community, a culture, a faith, a group. Services touch it by supporting or failing to support access, and by moving people away from it.
Predictability
Routine, warning before change, knowing what happens next. Services touch it constantly and rarely count it.
Access to help
Knowing whom to call and being answered. Services are this factor, when they work.
Count the protective factors the service controls What you can change You control whether a decision to move, change or end something is made with the protective factor it removes in view. Naming it is what puts it in view.
What to watch for Do not describe a person as resilient in a review of a decision that removed something protective. It converts a cost the service imposed into a credit to the person.
Your next step Before the next change to a person's worker, provider or housing, write down the protective factor it affects.
Carry this forward Protective factors are conditions — a stable relationship with a caring adult, safe housing, a sense of belonging, skills for managing stress — that reduce the effect of adversity. They are things people have, not things they are.
Resilience is the observable outcome of protective factors operating; it is not a personal trait to be praised or a capacity to be demanded.
A service that talks about resilience while removing protective factors is asking the person to cope with the service.
A sort separating protective factors from risk factors and from demands, a flashcard set, a scenario decision and a knowledge check.
For one person, list the protective factors currently in their life and the one your service could add or protect.
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