2015/16 Strengthening Personal Resilience in East Sussex (pdf, 4MB)
The 2015/16 Director of Public Health Annual Report Strengthening Personal Resilience in East Sussex, builds on the 2014/15 Director of Public Health Report, Growing Community Resilience in East Sussex, by focussing on the need to develop and strengthen personal resilience to underpin and support growing community resilience.
Growing Community Resilience in East Sussex, focused on how we can build community resilience by growing the assets of wellbeing across East Sussex. It looked at how we can identify, better understand and support development of existing and potential new community assets. It described how individuals can play a significant role in increasing community resilience and how systematic processes can be used to support this work and monitor its impact particularly in developing sustainability.
Based on a review of the evidence, this report recommended further work to enhance community resilience which seeks positively to develop, harness and mobilise the assets, capacities and resources available to individuals and communities to enable them to gain more control over their lives and circumstances and to meet primary prevention, health, wellbeing and social care support needs.
Resilience is the result of individuals being able to interact with their environments and the processes that either promote well-being or protect them against the overwhelming influence of risk factors. Risk factors such as poverty, low socioeconomic status, parental mental health issues are correlated with poor or negative outcomes. Even when these risk factors occur, resilient individuals avoid the negative outcomes usually associated with those risk factors and develop positive outcomes nonetheless.
As individuals live and work within communities, personal and community resilience are closely linked. For example, communities provide the social networks and opportunities to build self-esteem and purposeful lives which are essential components of personal resilience. Likewise, communities are dependent on the contribution of healthy, resilient individuals.
Strengthening Personal Resilience in East Sussex starts by explaining what personal resilience is and how it can be developed and supported and then goes on to outline some of the ways in which we are supporting building personal resilience through programmes and services. The report emphasises that individuals need to take advantage of the opportunities these services and programmes afford to help them build their personal resilience.
Each report chapter deals with a different area, and there are chapters on primary prevention, protecting health and person-centred care and support.
The report makes nine recommendations for strengthening personal resilience in East Sussex.