Session: Advancing Social Work Research Discourse on Disaster Resilience: Theory, Evidence and Practice (Society for Social Work and Research 23rd Annual Conference - Ending Gender Based, Family and Community Violence)

Worldwide there has been an increase in man-made disasters. Research on man-made disasters are scant, due to associated complexities i.e. continuing violence and physical or chemical dangers for researchers. Given the rise in man-made disasters, resilience concepts have gained extensive use in social work scholarship and practice, yet definitions, measures and uses of resilience in the context of man-made disasters remain complex and multifaceted. Generic resilience has been described as both an outcome (Masten, Best, & Garmezy, 1990) and a process (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000) and has been used to refer to both individuals (Brooks & Goldstein, 2002) and communities (Cutter et al., 2010). Scholars have also critiqued resilience theories and practice models as being difficult to define (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000), too heavily focused on individual psychometric properties (Chandler & Lalonde, 2008) and obscuring structural causes of adversity (Davis, 2014). Given the complexities of man-made disasters and the intersection of disaster resilience, it is imperative that social work scholars and practitioners be at the forefront of critical discourse about disaster resilience theory and practice. Social work academics can offer valuable insight into problems of definition and conceptual measurement as well as the ways in which resilience is interpreted within a cultural context. The proposed symposium offers four papers that present research utilizing resilience concepts within a domain of man-made disasters, with the purpose of critically engaging with and enhancing definitions of theoretical constructs as well as uses of disasters resilience concepts in practice.

In paper 1 Ferreira and Buttell will report the results of a comparative study, comparing risk and protective predictors of resilience among survivors of IPV exposed to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. In paper 2 Leytham Powell and Shin present research that examines the mediating and moderating effect of of self-esteem on post-traumatic stress symptoms and physical health among Syrian refugees in host communities. In paper 3 Hansel et al. investigated female perspectives and experiences of an oil spill impact and how these factors influence mental health and resilience. In paper 4 Saltzman et al. use a series of latent profile mixture models to enhance the understanding of the interplay between individual characteristics, and their effects on individual resilience profiles in disaster prone communities.

These four papers and moderated discussion offer a timely opportunity for social work scholars to engage in a critical consideration of the role of resilience in both research and practice; the complexity of defining resilience concepts in a man-made disaster context; and an expanded understanding of the role of resilience at both micro and macro levels.