engleski

Resilient processes from the perspective of adolescents in children's homes in Croatia

Existing scientific knowledge on developmental outcomes of children and youth in children's homes (in Croatia) is primarily quantitative in nature, focused on negative outcomes, and based on „adultocentric" values of good behavioural outcomes. According to these data, majority (75%) of children that are removed from their homes and placed in children's homes have some kind of behavioral problems. It still not known how, why and under impact of which factors, some of them (at least one fourth of them) are functioning well concerning behavioral problems, and what is their perspective on criteria of good developmental outcome for children in children's home. The aim of this paper is to explain how adolescents from the chiildren's homes in Croatia navigated their way from risk to resilience. Resilience is defined as a process of effectively negotiating, adapting to, or managing significant sources of stress or trauma. Assets and resources within the individual, their life and environment (protective mechanisms) facilitate this capacity for adaptation and 'bouncing back' (good outcome) in the face of adversity (Wiendle, 2011). Research questions are: 1. How do adolescents in children's home define good developmental outcomes of adolescents (in children's homes)? 2. What were the key protective mechanisms and how did they contribute to good outcomes for these adolescents? 3. What were the processes that occurred from the initial risk to the achievement of good outcome? The process of data collecting has just finished. They were collected using in-depth interviews with a 24 participants (13 females, 11 males), age between 14 and 21, that were assessed by their caregivers as resilient. They are placed in 13 Children's homes in Croatia. Data will be analysed based on social constructivist as a philosophical approach and using qualitative methodology.

resilient processes; adolescent perspective; children's homes

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