"Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" Dorothy

So back into the thick of it. I know this work sucks. I'd even go to say that by the end of it you'll (I'll) just have a bigger hate for children and development, can't hate psychology.

Research on Risk and Resilience

Some general statements:

• Western research tends to focus on general risk factors that relate to healthy functioning
• Research also tends not to consider other definitions of resilience by other populations
• Not very cross-culturally valid (findings here don't always relate to research abroad)
• Research is put into a naturalistic setting due to ethical guidelines (aka: can't really take the kids from their homes into labs to study because the research wouldn't be analysing the kids untouched or affected by the psychologists
• Ethical boundaries can have an effect on the experiments especially as they are analysing children. What do you do if your watching a child being bullied?

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Thanks to google scholar a pdf of Werner's (1993) longitudinal study identifies how important environmental factors are on the cognitive development of children.

The study looks at 698 kids born in 1955 on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and follows their development at 1, 2, 8, 10, and 32 years old. Those high in risk factors and lacking resilience protectors developed poorly, compared to those who had fewer risks, and more protective factors.

•  About 1/3 coped and continued their life sufficiently because they had good communication skills, a supportive neighbourhood, and strong friendships with peers
• The other 2/3 however developed many serious problems by 18 years old from lacking effective resilience.

Werner, E. E. (1993). Risk, resilience, and recovery: Perspectives from the Kauai Longitudinal Study. Development and Psychopathology, 5(4), 503-515. doi:10.1017/S095457940000612X

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Those children who are disadvantaged by either their parental support, peer support, economic status etc may result in lower academic achievements and thus lower opportunities after school and in society. i.e. one risk can lead/cause/co-exist with another.
I can see a kind of circle happening here... the less protective factors you have, the less likely you may be to build some more, second thoughts this obviously can't be consistently true. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Home office (2008) report suggests that anti-social behaviour is not necessarily caused by kids who have loads of risk factors releasing their 'anger'. Instead they found that the majority of kids who had risk factors weren't involved in anti-social behaviour. This suggests that the majority of kids that have risk factors also have good protective factors. The analysed sample consisted of 6553 kids, of which 88% had high-risk resilience, who hadn't offended at all or had only offended once since they were 8.5 years old.
They identified that resilient children appeared to have some of the following:

• Less peer problems
• Higher IQ
• Higher self-esteem
• Greater school enjoyment
• Lower levels of family adversity
• As well as mother who had better parenting skills

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The existence of protective factors were shown in research by Ferguusson and Lynskey (1996) who's study looked at 1200 children, born in 1977, who were followed till they were 21. This is because they found that some kids who were experiencing risks (parental ill health, substance abuse, placement in custody, chronic family conflict) overcame their 'stress', showing that they developed or had their protective factors of resilience.

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Hosin (2001) showed how parents can build resilience of children, by looking at the 2 children and parents of a refugee family. Parents were reported (religious affiliation to Arab Middle Eastern region), experienced near death experiences, physical assaults, and have psychological and political repression.
Father has Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, rage, depression and survival guilt. Importantly the parents told their experiences to their children.
The children were exposed to father's rage, and violence to other adults (risks), BUT were helped to cope by their mother's resilience (schooling, domestic work, completed course and got a payed job) which helped build their resilience.
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The Koluchova twins are an example of what the effects malnourishment and little resilience can have on young children, and that the effects are NOT irreversible.

• Mother died during birth
• Step-mother was cruel
• Suffered from malnutrition
• Not schooled
• Locked in house

At 7 years old the children looked 3 years old (crental!), they were then put into a special treatment program, which helped the twins achieve a similar state of development as other kids the same age (14 years old).

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RISKY behaviour.. hello ;)
Crockett et al (2006) - Substance abuse
Rose et al (2006) - Challenges of adolescents
Gardner and Steinberg (2005) - Capacity of reasoning (group risk taking)
Verkooijen et al (2007) - Subgroups and affiliations
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Newman et al. (2004) proposed that to increase resilience in children, we must:

• Reduce their exposure to risk (risks in schools)
• Stop the chain between the reactions of negative events (co-occuring factors, stopped)
• Enhance the potential strength of possible protective factors 

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Anthony et al. (2009) designed a plan to intervene in the decrease of risk and increase the protective factors. He proposed that Risk factors can be divided between environmental, interpersonal & social, as well as individual factors. And that these are effected by the bonding, academic & technical skills, pro-social values, expanded personal horizons, and continuity of each child. And that mentoring, reading/technical training, leadership training, enrichment opportunities, and full summer programs can help increase their: competence, confidence, character and connections. Which all help to increase resilience factors.

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The poorest families in the UK tend to get caught in a ‘cycle of disadvantage’, which can be helped by identifying these 'at risk' families early, so that resources can be used to help families their risk problems before they become too intense, and help promote the intervention schemes for children most at risk. 

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Children from Romania adopted into UK have shown that age has a significant effect on predicting thie cognitive and physical 'catch up'. The younger they are adopted the more likely the children will 'catch up' on their development to a child their own age.