How can we make young people more resilient?

Negative and profound experiences can have a major impact on how children develop and on their well-being. It is therefore important that they are sufficiently resilient to be able to cope with such occurrences. For that reason, TNO is helping develop scientific intervention programmes designed to make children more resilient.

Resilience is about being able to cope with the demands of society, to make independent choices, and to deal with setbacks. During the course of their lives, almost everyone, young and old, will face situations that will require some measure of resilience.

Examples that come to mind in the case of young people include poverty in their family, parents separating, bullying at school, or the illness of a close family member. Such situations often have a negative effect on the well-being of children and their ability to function. Moreover, these effects can continue to be felt a long way into adulthood.

Strengthening their resilience can therefore prevent many problems later in life as well. In order to do this effectively, TNO is jointly working on developing intervention programmes for strengthening resilience among children – programmes that are substantiated and proven to work.

Three important aspects

The white paper 'Bring it on! Strengthen children’s resilience for a safe, healthy and promising future' sets out the aspects that are crucial in successfully developing and implementing effective interventions. We also show a number of tools and projects that we are working on. 

Research has shown that the following three aspects are important in this connection:

• Using techniques and elements that are proven to be effective
• Developing programmes that meet the needs and wishes of ‘intermediate users’ – that is, the professionals in the field
• Tailoring the programmes to the needs and opportunities of the ‘end-users’ – that is, the young people and parents themselves

Do you wish to take part?

Would you like to join us in helping strengthen young people’s resilience? Then please read the white paper or contact Symone Detmar.