Resilience and Family Placement: A Lifespan Perspective

Abstract

Many children who have suffered adverse childhoods of abuse, neglect and loss go on to thrive in family placements. Gillian Schofield argues that this process needs to be documented and understood with the help of developmental theory. She also suggests that there ought to be a lifespan perspective, given that children need a family for life and stable adulthood is inevitably a goal of family placement. In this paper, the concept of resilience is explored and then applied to selected cases from a qualitative study of 40 adults aged 18–30 who grew up in foster care. Connections are also made to attachment theory, since in family placement the role of relationships is an important factor in understanding outcomes. Implications for practice are then discussed.