Prevention Should Emphasize Protective Factors
by Bonnie Benard

The field of prevention, both research and practice, came a long way in the 1980s: from short-term, even one-shot, individual-focused interventions in the classroom to a growing awareness and beginning implementation of long-term, comprehensive, environmental-focused interventions expanding beyond the school to include the community. Furthermore, in the mid-1980s we finally started to hear preventionists talking about prevention strategies and programs based on research identifying the underlying risk factors for problems like alcohol and other drug abuse, teen pregnancy, delinquency, gangs, and dropping out.

While certainly a giant step in the right direction, the identification of risks does not necessarily provide us with a clear sense of just what strategies we need to implement to reduce the risks. More recently, we are hearing preventionists talk about concepts like "protective factors," about building "resiliency" in youth, about basing our strategies on what research has told us about the environmental factors that facilitate the development of youth who do not get involved in the life-compromising problems of school failure, drugs, and so on.

What clearly becomes the challenge for the l990s is the implementation of prevention strategies that strengthen protective factors in our families, schools, and communities. If we can determine the personal and environmental sources of social competence and wellness, we can better plan preventive interventions focused on creating and enhancing the personal and environmental attributes that serve as the key to healthy development. In their 1983 book Stress, Coping and Development in Children, Norman Garmezy and Michael Rutter write: "Ultimately, the potential for prevention surely lies in increasing our knowledge and understanding of reasons why some children are not damaged by deprivation."

A phrase occurring often in the literature sums up the resilient child as one who "works well, plays well, loves well, and expects well." Since this is a little too abstract for most researchers, the following more specific attributes have been consistently identified as describing the resilient child:

· Social Competence. This commonly identified attribute of resilient children usually includes the qualities of responsiveness, flexibility, empathy and caring, communication skills, a sense of humor, and any other pro-social behavior.

· Problem-Solving Skills. These skills include the ability to think abstractly, reflectively, and flexibly and to attempt alternate solutions for both cognitive and social problems.

· Autonomy. Different researchers have used different terms to refer to autonomy, including a "strong sense of independence," an "internal locus of control," a "sense of power," "self-esteem," "self-efficacy," "self-discipline," and "impulse control." Essentially, what researchers are talking about is a sense of one's own identity and an ability to act independently and exert some control over one's environment. Several researchers have also identified the ability to separate oneself from a dysfunctional family environment--"to stand away psychologically from the sick parent"--as the major characteristic of resilient children growing up in families with alcoholism and mental illness.

· Sense of Purpose/Future. Within this category fall several related attributes invariably identified in the protective-factor literature: healthy expectancies, goal-directedness, success orientation, achievement motivation, educational aspirations, persistence, hopefulness, hardiness, belief in a bright future, a sense of anticipation, a sense of a compelling future, and a sense of coherence.

While research also ascribes a few other characteristics, such as good health and being female, to resilient children, the attributes of social competence, problem-solving skills, autonomy, and sense of purpose appear to be the common threads running through the personalities of resilient children--those who "work well, play well, love well, and expect well"--no matter their health or sex status.

Now, looking beyond the children themselves to their environments- -their families, schools, and communities--the protective characteristics that appear to facilitate the development of resiliency in youth fall into three categories: (1) caring and support, (2) high expectations, and (3) opportunities for children to participate. Research has shown that shifting the balance or tipping the scales from vulnerability to resilience may happen as a result of one person or one opportunity. Individuals who have succeeded in spite of adverse environmental conditions in their families, schools, and/or communities often have done so because of the presence of environmental support in the form of one family member, one teacher, one school, or one community person who encouraged their success and welcomed their participation.

While tipping the scales toward resiliency through individual, serendipitous relationships or events is certainly important, the increasing number of children and families that are experiencing risks in their lives due to environmental deprivation necessitates that we preventionists take a systems perspective and intervene with planned environmental strategies to build protection into the lives of all children and families. From this perspective, a major underlying cause of the development of social problems can be traced to the gradual destruction of naturally occurring social networks in the community. The social, economic, and technological changes since the late 1940's have created a fragmentation of community life, resulting in breaks in the networks and linkages between individuals, families, schools, and other social systems within a community that traditionally have provided the protection--the "social capital"--necessary for healthy human development. What has become clear, not only from the failure of alcohol and drug abuse programs and other prevention programs that do not address this root cause but from the positive findings of protective factor research into why some kids succeed, is the need for prevention efforts to build these networks and intersystem linkages. We must work within our families, schools, and community environments to build social bonds by providing all individuals with caring and support, relating to them with high expectations, and giving them opportunities to be active participants in their family, school, and community life. While volumes can be written (and have!) on just how to go about this, the strategies are fairly simple and reflect not a need for behavioral interventions as much as for an attitude change--a willingness to share power within a system, to create a system based on reciprocity and sharing rather than on control.

We also must work to build linkages between families and schools and between schools and communities. It is only at this intersystem level--and only through intersystem collaboration within our communities--that we can build a broad enough, intense enough network of protection for all children and all families.

[From Western Center News, September 1991, Vol.4,No.4]