Attempting to Expand Resilience to Policies: A Daunting Task and a Good Start [Review of the book Resilience in Children, Families, and Communities: Linking Context to Practice and Policy]

Resilience is a word that is frequently used, but what does it mean, and how does it affect our children, families, and communities? That is precisely the topic of Resilience in Children, Families, and Communities: Linking Context to Practice and Policy (see record 2005-04214-000). This book, which is based on presentations at the 32nd Annual Banff International Conference on Behavioural Science (March 2000, Banff, Alberta, Canada), explores what is known about resilience and how that information can be used to intervene at levels beyond individual children. The reviewer concludes that this book is exciting in that it represents a call to action for those of us in resilience research, prevention and intervention efforts, and public policy to work together to use all of our expertise to make changes in our society, communities, and agencies to support children and their families. The reviewer hopes this book will spark more effective communication and collaboration in supporting resilience in the macro- and mesosystems in which youth live. Perhaps this fresh approach will result in a future volume in which authors may build on this text to elaborate on the effectiveness of empirically based, resilience-oriented community programs