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Marco Ius (Italy)

Simposium – English – Italian

Pictures, drawings and sociodrama: fostering the integration of resilience theory in social work with children and families

The concept of resilience has spread widely over recent decades, and more and more often practitioners use it to refer to situations of children and families in care. However, it is often difficult to understand how social professionals drive resilience theory into practice and integrate it into care plans.
This paper aims at exploring and reflecting on a methodology and specific activity used in training of multidisciplinary groups of social professionals (social worker, psychologist, educator, home-carer/educator, teacher, child neuropsychiatrist) about the use of the culture of resilience (theoretical framework, definitions, different approaches and tools) within their practice with children and families.
The sociodramatic drawing and telling group dynamic was used in 8 one-day training sessions with different size groups (from 20 to 40 members) within different editions of the Italian Program of Intervention for PReventing Institutionalization (P.I.P.P.I.) and other contexts. The conductor used the activity at the beginning or first part of the session in order to warm up the group (emotionally, cognitively, physically and socially) with the topic and to collect the group’s culture on it to be used as a base where to build up the rest of the work and to bridge previous knowledge and skills with the new ones. The activities were audio-recorded and documented by pictures, in order to obtain the transcription and to content analyze it in the future.
This first reflection about the use of a sociodramatic drawing activity in training on resilience shows this method as particularly favorable and coherent. Indeed, professionals’ feedbacks encourage to keep using it. As a conclusion, planning a research project seems particularly worth in order to deepen the use of this method, to evaluate it and its impact on professional practice, and to keep empowering the professional culture on using resilience with vulnerable children and families.