Social work, pastoral care and resilience

This paper briefly examines the growing interest in developing resilience in the social work curricula as it is seen as a crucial quality necessary to cope with the increasing demands of the profession. The recent research into developing resilience is dominated by a psychological model which emphasises personal qualities. It runs the risk of pathologising individuals and locating responsibility to cope exclusively on the students themselves. In this paper, we advocate a model of social resilience which seeks to promote a collective response to the challenges facing social students which is consistent with a commitment to social justice, an inherent feature of social work practice.