Best Practices for Promoting Resilience Among Children Residing in Institutional Care

Abstract

Despite popular intents and plans to eradicate child-care institutions from the national scenario, institutional care remains the dominant model of alternative care for children among countries in the global South. Moreover, complete eradication of these residential institutions has multiple practical constraints. Given these limitations, building resilience among institutionalised children and youth has been considered a worthier goal for intervention. There is, an urgent need to appreciate the notion of resilience amid these settings from an ecological perspective rather than as an individual attribute. This study outlines certain best practices regarding how multiple stakeholders within resident children’s immediate ecological context might facilitate healthy adjustment in an atmosphere of trust and support.