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3rd Right every Wrong Conclave
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Brisbane Institute Strengths Strategies Strengths Approach, Human Resource Development, Social change, Transition societies, Role of youth, Entrepreneurship development, Governance and people strengthening practices, Volunteers development Asset Based Community Development Micro credits and finance
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Impacts
of addiction are complex and pervasive on
affected families. How do families cope,
living with a family member with a drug,
alcohol or behaviour addictions? What
characterises a resilient family? How can
helping and counselling services contribute
to enhance family resilience? An exploratory
study, was conducted to address these
questions, the findings of which suggest
that addictions, regardless of the
underlying problem being alcohol-, drug-, or
behaviour-related, lead to widespread and
ongoing problems for non-addicted family
members. Common barriers were societal
stigma and lack of access to helping
services that deterred the affected family
members as well as the addicted family
member. Four common coping strategies used
by non-addicted family members were
minimizing, making allowances, turning away
and carrying on, all appear to short term
solutions to adversity but did not imply or
foster family resilience, were identified.
The need for increasing the understanding of
resilience among the families and the role
of helping and counselling services as
collaborators in identifying family
strengths and resources are discussed. 
The
primary objective of this study was to
explore the prevalence of psychiatric
disorders among the elderly in India and to
find the mediating and moderating role of
different coping strategies in dealing with
them. 390 subjects with an age ranging from
50-90 years (M = 64.85, SD = 9.63)
participated in this study. Results
indicated that the main effect of resilience
and religiosity was significant, but the
interaction effect did not turn out to be
significant. Resilient elderly people used
proactive coping technique in order to
achieve anticipatory preparedness. By using
preventive and strategic coping techniques t
heywere able to handle anxiety, depression,
psychoticism, fear of aging, somatization,
paranoia and cognitive competence whereas
those using reflective coping technique were
able to handle depression, psychoticism and
fear of aging only. The findings have
implication for intervention programme. Of
all the factors, resilience and proactive
coping strategy seems more important
variables for mitigating the psychiatric/
psychological issues. Resilience and
proactive coping may be construed amenable
to training, and hence have significance for
intervention. Besides, religiosity seemed to
enhance the effect of resilience in dealing
with the mental health issues.
The
strengths of people arriving in Australia
with and without a refugee background have
been underestimated. This paper will focus
on the strategies that selected cultural
groups use prior and following migration as
identified by a study and the implementation
of community engagement and education
activities. In addition, it will focus on
the key components of three versions of a
group program designed to build resilience
in culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD)
children, adolescents and adults to learn to
cope with acculturation stress. The findings
of different programs implemented by the
Promotion, Prevention and Early Intervention
Program of the Qld Transcultural Mental
Health Centre will also demonstrate how
existing CALD community strengths have been
enhanced by evidence-based programs.
Examples of programs are: the Building
Resilience in Transcultural Australians (BRiTA
Futures), the Depression and Chronic Disease
Self-Management and the Multicultural Mental
Health Literacy programs that use bilingual
and bicultural community mental health
promoters for effective community engagement
and program implementation. 
People
with an intellectual disability have been
disenfranchised of grief and bereavement due
to perceptions that they do not have the
capacity to grieve, understand the concept
of death and form attachments in
relationships with family, friends and the
wider community. Research has dispelled
these myths and there is increasing
professional and social recognition of the
value of supporting people through the
normal expressions of grief, participation
in bereavement rituals and cultural customs,
and providing therapeutic intervention
following indications of complex grief
impacting on the person's behaviour and
psychological and spiritual well-being.
An
interprofessional approach to practice in
the human service professions is needed in
order to effectively intervene with the
challenges that social problems present to
us. Human resilience promotion and hope
building are better understood and applied
from an interdisciplinary perspective.
This
paper presents “empowering alternatives” in
a cohort of marginalized individuals who are
usually considered to be silent, silenced
and powerless: The gay men who have chosen
to stay and live their lives in rural areas.
It cites a largely unreported aptitude and
adeptness by men to live contented lives in
areas well away from urban cosmopolitan
milieu. It argues that their resilience
allows them to deploy a multiplicity of
actions and reflective processes that,
despite their apparent subordinate position
in the rural communities, continues to give
them, determination to live their lives as
and where they choose.
Family
members of long-term missing people struggle
to cope with the consequences of “missingness”,
sometimes for decades. Many demonstrate
resilience in difficult circumstances
despite finding little support accessible to
them, as too little is understood about the
issues they face. The voices of people
affected by 'missingness' are beginning to
be heard and their stories of resilience to
be told. From qualitative research with
siblings of long term missing people, a
trajectory of loss is proposed that explains
common themes in efforts to negotiate loss.
Notions of ambiguous loss and
disenfranchised grief for people 'left
behind' are discussed. 
Research
demonstrates that meditation, deep
relaxation, mindfulness, self hypnosis etc,
increase a person's coping ability,
resilience and hope building, physiological
healing and health. People appear to access:
innate wisdom, strength, confidence, hope
and reasonableness, and they begin doing
things in their life that are so much more
healthy and constructive without being
directly coached to do so. New fields of
applied behavioural neuroscience,
psychophysiology and neurotechnologies such
as brainwave biofeedback and brainwave
entrainment are enabling people to gain the
benefits of meditation with these safe,
natural and easy to use tools without having
to learn a technique.
This
paper is based on field practice. It
presents community work experiences and
reflections about how rural communities can
be engaged in the process of addressing
issues of mental health and specially in
challenging the myths of stigma attached to
mental health. The paper describes the
methods used in developing community net
works and partnerships in rural South
Australia and analyses how these methods
have supported in creating positive
environment in the local communities to
promote mental health. It also outlines some
of the challenges and issues faced in the
field. 
Federal
government policy strategies to address
childhood and family disadvantage have
encouraged self-reliance and
self-responsibility over the past few years
with a focus on making family and child
friendly communities sustainable. There is
the expectation that even the most
disadvantaged families and communities will
be able to overcome the circumstances of
structural disadvantage, poverty and other
deficits such as poor health and become
fully functioning citizens. Such initiatives
presuppose that there exist strengths and
resilience within communities and families
without necessarily enacting practices
within the strategies to enhance people's
capacities. Action Research (AR) was an
original component of the Communities for
Children (C4C) Initiative and was designed
to address childhood disadvantage with a
focus on developing capacities in families
and communities in select rural and urban
regions across Australia. Although AR was
not continued as a policy priority, we argue
that its processes and practices can
contribute to long term effectiveness, with
sustainable outcomes, towards greater social
justice, inclusion and overall greater
standards of living for disadvantaged
communities. Examples of Western Australian
C4C sites, demonstrate this potential and
offer suggestions for future policy
direction.