SOAD9110 Polly Resilience Matrix Case Study Sample

Complexities In Work With Children And Families

Child development requires the love and care of the family, as the family provides skills, values, social interactions, and protection to the child. The resilience matrixin the case study has been used to study the child'sstrengths, health, and well-being. The resilience matrix helps clinicians to take into account the strengths and challenges found by collecting the information using the four categories of matrix which are resilience, weakness, protective factors, and adversity(Daniel, Wassel& Gilligan, 2010). Resilience-based strategy ties in intending to draw on the strengths of the child’s whole life, and always depends on what the friends, family, society and social services has to provide (Southwick et al., 2106). This would be helpful the clinicians to identify and better appreciate resilience and vulnerability as well as challenges and protective factors by using a blank matrix and 'plotting' that into the spectrum of the strengths and pressures experienced by the child concerning two sets of variables at each point of the cycle.

In addition to the axis of adversity and protective environment, all factors which have environmental strengths, such as the child at school, should be put from the middle of the axis of the protective environment (Daniel et al., 2010). Similarly, all the adversity-causing factors, which could be insufficient resources or an unhealthy environment around the child, must be positioned from the middle of the adversity axis. In the same way, the process is repeated for factors that enhance resilience, and those which make a child more vulnerable.By creating a protective network around them, a focus on the strengthswill likely help improve a child's well-being. At the very same moment, there is a need to be vigilant about how any suffering from poverty jeopardizes the well-being of children and ensures this is taken into consideration. Home is an important part but so is what's going on in the rest of the world of the kid. For example, school and time-spare activities might offer opportunities to develop resilience.

This case study is about Polly a little girl of 8-year-old who is staying with her mother and having a troubled childhood. The story depicted in the video is named Polly, and me. Polly has only one friend that is her doll. The little girl has also kept a similar name for her doll. Polly’s mother is a single parent. Various issues influence her life in Polly 's family. Above all, her mother is asingle parent, drug addict and a sex worker.Her mother carries out jobs at nights and she sleeps in the day. Polly’s mother is and She does not have any time to dedicate to Polly. After viewing the video, it is evident that the child is upset with her mother because of her habits.Polly is a young child and needslove, time, attention, and affection from her mother. The video also displayed the poverty issues of the family as to how it is difficult for them to make the ends meet. Her mother also faces domestic violence by her customers.

The strengths and positives in Polly’s life is that she is self-sufficient and can manage to make her food taking bath and clothing. These strengths of her can build a protective and self-managed network around her. At the same time, there are many adversity of vulnerability in putting Polly's well-being at risk who is staying with her mother and who does not care for her child. This can bring Polly very discontented in expressing her feelings. Along with home, the outside world is crucial for interaction and bonding. Polly has no friends and watches other kids from the window. The parents' emotional relationship with their children is very essential to understand the materialistic and emotional demands of a child. A good bond between child and parent is valuable to their safety and proper development. It is the parents' responsibility to take an interest in their wellbeing activities and to observe how their child experience any event. If the attention is not given by parents the child tends to have low confidence and stay away from social interactions.

There are common and known factors that affect the child but there are factors that are not certain as to how they will affect the child. Children in families and societies with risk factorsare more likely to encounter maltreatment, and these factors can also contribute to violence and neglect of children. The risk factors can be divided into four domains: characteristics of parent personality, family history, needs of children, and influences of the environment (Breiner et al., 2016). Polly’s mother is a sex worker and her personality traits, substance abuse, and domestic violence have a serious impact on a child's mental state.Polly's mother faces domestic violence from her clients, and she is a single mother who suffers financial stress and is unable to care for Polly Polly does not have any friends andis socially withdrawn that affects her confidence. Polly needs her mother to have an emotional bond but since she is not available, Polly connects emotionally with her doll.The emotional state of Polly is deeply affected as she is lonely and disconnected.

She is a child and a close relationship with her mother is an ordinary demand but she is not getting the care and love from her mother. The environmental domain, which adds to risk factors, includes both mother and daughter spending on the misery life (Howe, 2005).Protective factors may help protect families from vulnerabilities and help foster resilience.Family factors, ranging from distal family demographic factors to more proximal care-giving measures and factors that undermine the quality of caregiving, are also significant in predicting child outcomes (Bromfield et al., 2007). Support for positive behavior, or positive parenting high in comfort, sensitivity, and anticipating the needs and reactions of a child to everyday activities, is one of the aspects of parenting that can help a child to developadequately (Vanderbilt-Adriance, & Shaw, 2008). There is also evidence that neighborhood quality variables at the community level lead to various outcomes for children, ranging from school to community (Fallonet al., 2018).

Children whose parents are warm and attentive and are more likely to respond favourably to parental advice and behavioural expectations may predict the types of circumstances that appear to be stressful for them. Polly being lonely is unable to communicate her problems to her mother. There are manyfactors identified where the childrencan be supported and protected against some of the negative effects of incidents happening around them. The resilience matrix is away here the child strengths weaknesses and vulnerability can be studied and the child can be protected from the same.

References for Resilience Matrix

Breiner, H., Ford, M., &Gadsden, V. L.(2016). Parenting Matters: Supporting Parents of Children Ages 0-8. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US). Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK402020/

Bromfield, Leah, Higgins, Daryl & Gillingham, Philip 2007, 'Cumulative harm andchronic child maltreatment', developing practice. The Child Youth and Family WorkJournal, 19,34-42.

Daniel, B., Wassel, S. & Gilligan, R. (2010). Introduction: Framework forunderstanding child development in B. Daniel; R. Gilligan, & S. Wassell (eds)Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London

Daniel, B., Wassell, S., Gilligan, R., & Howe, D. (2010). Child development for childcare and protection workers: Second edition. Retrieved from https://ebookcentralproquest-com.ezproxy.flinders.edu.au

Fallon, B., Filippelli, J., Joh-Carnella, N., Milne, E., & Carradine, J. (2018). Promoting protective factors in environments of risk for young children: An organizing framework for practice, policy, and research. SAGE Journals.https://doi.org/10.1177/2470289718820843

Howe, David. (2005). Child abuse and neglect: Attachment, development and intervention.

Southwick, S. M., Bonanno, G. A., Masten, A. S., Panter-Brick, C., & Yehuda, R. (2014). Resilience definitions, theory, and challenges: Interdisciplinary perspectives. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 5, 10.3402/ejpt.v5.25338. https://doi.org/10.3402/ejpt.v5.25338

Vanderbilt-Adriance, E., & Shaw, D. S. (2008). Protective factors and the development of resilience in the context of neighborhood disadvantage. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 36(6), 887–901. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-008-9220-1

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