Papers by kasi viswanathen
Children's vulnerability to adverse social and economic cir-cumstances is well established. Socio... more Children's vulnerability to adverse social and economic cir-cumstances is well established. Socio-economic background isone of the main predictors of cognitive development thatprovides the underpinnings of educational achievement which much success in later life depends. But all children are not vulnerable tobackground factors in the same way; nor are the responses to interventions to reverse theadverse effects uniform. Individual and social factors interact in the dynamics of childdevelopment and the outcomes are never entirely predictable. Consequently, the idea ofrisk with probabilistic connotations and its counterpart protection, have been favouredterms in describing young children's development (Evans, 1995, 2000). The response of theindividual child is further conceptualised in terms of the other key attributes discussedparticularly by developmental psychologists, vulnerability and resilience (Brambring andothers, 1989; Rolf and others, 1990; Guralnick, 1997). How a child responds to risk is afunction of personal attributes, part socially determined and part biologically based.Medical vulnerability refers to lack of resistance to particular illnesses; in childdevelopment, resilience involves access to and use of biological and social resources(LoÈsel and others, 1989). These are fundamental in determining the course the individualchild's life takes.Although the medical model of risk and vulnerability has limited applicability in the socialpolicy arena, it has stimulated major theoretical and policy developments, particularly inthe ®eld of criminology. Catalano and Hawkins (1996) produced what amounts almost toa paradigm shift in promoting a `social development' model of crime in which theinteraction of risk and protective factors in a child's life were seen as fundamental tothe shaping of the criminal career. As Farrington (2000) points out the appeal of conceivingthe development of criminality as governed by the counter-play of risk and protectionis that it offers direct prescriptions for remedial policy at a number of levels: child, familyand community. We need to reduce propensity to risk and strengthen protective resourcesat the levels where policy intervention is most likely to be effective.
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Papers by kasi viswanathen