The social worker. An intentional resilience tutor

Background The paper aims to present the progress of a qualitative research about resilience and hidden child survivors of the Holocaust presented in EUSARF conference 2008, focused on protective factors fostering resilience. Adopting the less common perspective of “learning from the Holocaust” and not the more often employed approach of “studying and teaching the Holocaust”, the study of life stories of resilient Holocaust child survivors (aspects of life before and after Holocaust, such as parental style, social networks, peer relationship, community, school, formal-informal help, the wider ecological system) can be a very useful research context to enhance our knowledge of the human development and particularly of the resilience process. Purpose The main aim of the research was to search for protective factors that enabled child survivors to develop and grow, and that can be considered by social care practitioners working with vulnerable children and families, in order to foster similar resilience responses and the best possible development among children currently in out-of home-care. Life trajectories of 21 Holocaust child survivors (particularly Hidden Children who were separated from birth families and then reunified with them or adopted) have been collected by semi-structured interviews and analyzed. Key findings Assuming the theory of The Ecology of Human Development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) referred to resilience (Waller M.A., 2001) key findings will be shown in order to reflect about how social worker can become an "intentional resilience tutor" (Cyrulnik, 2001) for children in care: - working directly with the child; - working directly with his/her family; - working within the community and society; - taking care of building different types of continuity within the child's ecological niche.