1. University of Portsmouth
MSc Human Resource Management / Development Dissertation
Title: A critical evaluation of the learning and development activity that aims to build
resilience of those working in the adult social care sector in England.
Author: Michelle Spirit
Date of Submission:
Dissertation Supervisor: Kerry Collier
Student Number: 706605

2. i
Portsmouth Business School
MSc Human Resource Development
Title: A critical evaluation of the learning and development activity that aims to build
resilience of those working in the adult social care sector in England.
Author: Michelle Spirit
Dissertation Supervisor: Kerry Collier
Year of Submission: 2014
This research dissertation is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the
degree of MSc Human Resource Development. I. the undersigned, declare that this report
is my own original work. Where I have taken ideas and/or wording from another source,
this is explicitly referred to in the text.
Signed_________________________________________Date__________________
I give permission that this report may be photocopied and made available for inter library
loan for the purpose of the research. This includes an electronic copy being made
available to University students.
Signed_________________________________________Date__________________

3. ii
Abstract
University of Portsmouth Business School
MSc Human Resource Management / Development Dissertation
The purpose of this study was to identify the critical success factors of learning and
development activity that aims to build the resilience of a workforce under severe pressure,
the adult social care sector in England in which 1.75 million are employed. The sector
recognises the need to do this, but there is currently no consensus as to how it is to be
achieved.
To carry out the research it was necessary to reach an understanding about what the word
resilience means. Definitions describe it variously as a process, personality trait and
outcome. The common thread was that resilience is based on internal and external factors.
There was also the need to understand current practice. This was found to include: building
emotional intelligence, social confidence, reflective ability, self-awareness, empathy, mind-state
awareness and thinking skills. It also included a number of learning methods, the most
valuable of which were regarded by respondents as experiential learning and group
discussion.
An interpretivist philosophical framework was used to inform the research along with
inductive reasoning. A multi method approach was adopted which gathered information
using a web enabled questionnaire. The results from the questionnaire informed an action
research approach which included attending a three day resilience building programme for
social care workers, participant observation and use of a pre and post questionnaire in an
attempt to identify critical success factors. These results were triangulated.
Recommendations based on indications of critical success factors include incorporating in
learning ways of building resilience, emotional intelligence (including self-awareness),
mindfulness, dysfunctional teams and understanding resilience. They also include
considering building in an understanding of external factors that contribute to resilience,
providing time for reflection into learning activity, offering opportunity for action planning
and making use of experiential and group discussion learning methods.

4. iii
CONTENTS Page
Title page i
Abstract ii
Contents iii
Appendices iv
List of Tables and Figures v
Glossary v
1. INTRODUCTION, CONTEXT and OBJECTIVES 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Context 3
1.3 Research questions 4
1.4 Chapter summary 5
2. THE LITERATURE REVIEW 7
2.1 Introduction 7
2.2 History of the word “resilience” 7
2.3 Defining resilience 8
2.4 Focus for resilience learning and development 9
2.5 Learning and development methods 10
2.6 Approaches that aim to build resilience 10
2.7 Chapter summary 16
3. THE METHODOLOGY 17
3.1 Philosophical approach 17
3.2 Approaches used 17
3.3 Strategies 18
3.4 Sample Frame 19
3.5 Questions 21
3.6 Choices 21
3.7 Time Horizons 22
3.8 Techniques and procedures 22
3.9 Ethics 23
3.10 Chapter summary 24

5. iv
4. EMPHIRICAL DISCUSSION OF DATA 25
4.1 Web-administered questionnaire 25
4.2 Course evaluation 26
4.3 Duration of training 26
4.4 Rating activities 26
4.5 Learning methods 29
4.6 Learning impact 30
4.7 Topics most like to see included 31
4.8 Training provision 32
4.9 Training event analysis 32
4.10 Reasons for taking part 32
4.11 Topics most valued 34
4.12 Ability to build resilience 36
4.13 Course impact 40
4.14 Most useful thing learnt 42
4.15 Course improvement 43
4.16 Chapter summary 43
5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 47
5.1 Introduction 47
5.2 Research approach and methods 48
5.3 Limitations 49
5.4 Learning and development content 50
5.5 Potential critical success factors 51
5.6 Recommendations 52
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDICES
Web-administered questionnaire
Pre event questionnaire
Post event questionnaire
Questionnaire results

6. v
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Page number
Table 1: Length of training 25
Table 2: Usefulness of activities 26
Table 3: Learning methods and usefulness 27
Table 4: Learning impact 28
Table 5: Topics most like to see included 29
Figure 1: Reasons for enrolling onto resilience programme 30
Figure 2: Highly rated reasons for enrolling 31
Table 6: Ability to build personal resilience 33
Table 7: Ability to build staff resilience 34
Table 8: Ability to build organisation resilience 35
Figure 3: Impact of Building Resilience course 37
Table 9: Most useful thing learnt 39
Table 10: Approaches to building resilience 45

7. vi
GLOSSARY
ADASS Association of Directors of Adult Social Services
ASYE Assessed and Supported Year in Employment
BASW British Association for Social Work
CPD Continuing Professional Development
CSW College of Social Work
NCPQSW National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work
NMDSSC National Minimum Data Set Social Care
NSASC National Skills Academy for Social Care
NQSW Newly Qualified Social Worker
PCF Professional Capabilities Framework, developed by the SWRB and owned
by the College of Social Work provides a framework for the way social
workers should think about and plan their careers and professional
development. A backdrop to both initial social work education and
Continuing Professional Development after qualification.
Service
User
Individuals eligible to access social work services and those who define
themselves as potential users of social work services.
SfC Skills for Care
SWRB Social Work Reform Board
SWTF Social Work Task Force
UNISON Trade Union for those delivering public services

8. 1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION, CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES
1.1 Introduction
The Social Work Task Force (SWTF 2009) has emphasised the danger that social workers are
not sufficiently resilient to survive their career, and that social work educators need to
develop the curriculum in order to enhance the resilience of trainees. This is emphasised by
the Social Work Reform Board (SWRB, 2010) in their report “Building a Safe and Confident
Future; One Year On”, in which the need for an emotionally resilient workforce is a
recurrent theme, and where roles in the sector are defined as “emotionally demanding”
needing “stamina, emotional resilience and determination” to work with client groups with
complex and changing needs. Laming (2009, p52) also highlighted that those working in the
sector need to “develop the emotional resilience to manage the challenges they will face”,
recommending a full remodelling of social work training including the development of
emotional resilience.
The Social Work Task Force (SWTF) (2012) recently noted:
“Social work calls for a particular mix of analytical skills, insight, common sense,
confidence, resilience, empathy and use of authority. Social workers are unlikely to
develop these skills unless provided with high quality education and training that
continues throughout their careers…”
The rationale for this research is to examine what approaches are being used in the sector
to build resilience, and the critical success factors of those approaches as whilst the sector
itself has recognised this as an important activity, there is no consensus as to how this is
best achieved. Indeed, the work of Morrison (2007) suggested that curriculum of knowledge
for social workers tended to be content- driven, with little focus on emotional management
or building resilience. This is despite knowledge that resilience has been shown to be an
attribute that can be learnt, particularly when good use is made of experiential learning
(Cherniss, C., Goleman, D., Emmerling, R., Cowan, K., & Adler, M. (1998).

9. The need to build the resilience of the social care workforce is highlighted by the work of
Kinman & Grant (2011) who found social workers report higher levels of work-related stress
and burnout. Schaufeli, Maslach, & Marek, (1993, p. 14) state that “a syndrome of
emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment occurs
among individuals who do people work of some kind, more that many other occupational
groups, the effects of which include absenteeism, turnover, low morale and personal
dysfunction, such as physical exhaustion, increased use of alcohol ”. Mike Bush (2011) found
social workers to be as vulnerable as those using services to mental health problems, and
Collins, S., Coffey, M and Morris, L. (2010), identified social work practitioners to be
experiencing high levels of stress. High vacancy (5-16%) and turnover rates (7-30%)
contribute to staff shortages, excessive workloads and reliance on temporary staff in the
sector, making social work practice increasingly difficult (Eborall & Garmeson, 2001). In a
study of 240 trainee social workers, 43 per cent had scores of psychological distress higher
enough to warrant psychological intervention (Kinman & Grant, 2010). Reasons for these
findings are suggested below. Addressing the need to build the resilience of the workforce
as highlighted by the literature review could:
a) Counter the risk of poor psychological, physical and behavioural responses which will
impact negatively on performance (Palmer & Cooper, 2010), as those that are less
resilient find it difficult to make rational, logical decisions which has important
implications as the ability to make good judgments, so crucial to the successful
performance of those working in social care, is reduced (Rately, 2001).
b) Reduce the high levels of turnover as social workers on average remain in the profession
for less time than those working in professions similar to social work such as nurses
(Curtis et al., 2009), with the most common reason given for leaving being the stressful
nature of the job. NMDS-SC show a turnover rate of adult social care workers in 2013 of
22.2% (Skills for Care, 2014), against a national figure of 11.9% (CIPD, 2013).
c) Reduce the risk of presenteeism, with 28% of employers in 2012 reporting that they had
seen an increase in the number of people coming to work ill (CIPD, 2012), particularly
where there are concerns over job security and the threat of redundancy. The recent
2

10. cuts in adult social care budgets are likely to have increased the risk of presenteeism in
adult social care.
d) Help combat absenteeism. Of the 151 cases allocated to the British Association for Social
Work advice and representation team, three in five involved social workers who were
absent from work due to work-related stress (Community Care, 2011b). An average of
6.2 days were taken between June 2013 and July 2014 (Skills for Care, 2014).
e) Lift morale. When levels of resilience are high it is more likely that that moral will stay
high, and that employees will be able to stay focused and positive and continue to
deliver high quality services even when under strain (Robertson and Cooper, 2013).
1.2 Context
Those working in the adult social care workforce are responsible for some of the most
vulnerable members of society, demanding high emotional and cognitive labour. Agency
pressures, large case loads, increased complexity of cases, poor organisational culture and
ever changing social policies all serve to contribute to an adverse working environment
(Adamson et al., 2012). There also appears to be a culture of working long hours, Liquid
Personnel (2012) finding that social workers work an average of eight hours overtime each
week.
Furthermore, adult social care workers have to deal with complex dynamics that include a
range of personal, organisational and professional factors including physical and verbal
threats and violence from service users, the uncertainty involved with working with
involuntary clients in unknown neighbourhoods, the pressure that is experienced by those
working in a sector under intense public scrutiny and mistrust combined with the very
nature of social work practice. Additionally adult care social workers often experience
limited support from their managers, competing demands between the client and agency,
culture of blame, work overload, high staff turnover and shortages of a skilled workforce
(Coffey et al., 2004). These factors indicate resilience to be a key attribute needed by thos e
working in the sector (Ellett, et al., 2007).
3
Contextual factors increasing the need for a resilient workforce include:

11. a) the need to save £800 million in the 12 months to April 2014, £104m of this to be
4
achieved through direct withdrawal of services (ADASS, 2013)
b) greater numbers of people seeking social care support, many with complex needs
(State of the Social Care Workforce, 2010)
c) the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which will result in uncertainty and change due
to integrated health and social care commissioning.
Helga Pile, UNISON National Officer for Social Workers, emphasises the current challenges
(Pile, 2011);
Workloads have spiralled out of control… The clear message from our members in
social work is that stress rates are high and climbing… When social workers are
forced to take time off for stress-related illness they are often thrown straight back
in when they return.
…and it is a significant sector, with 1.75 million paid jobs alone in the adult social care sector
(State of the Social Care Workforce, 2010). Finding ways of building the resilience of just a
small percentage could bring real return on investment.
The question is, have organisations found learning and development approaches that can
help achieve this? If so, what are the critical success factors of such approaches?
1.3 Research Questions
The research questions posed by this study, have been constructed based on the knowledge
that building resilience would bring benefit to the sector, that learning and development
could help play a role in achieving this and that there are currently gaps in knowledge
regarding what approaches are being used, with whom and their effectiveness. For these
reasons, the research questions for this study are as follows:
1) What are the main learning and development approaches to building worker
resilience in the adult social care sector?
2) What are the learning and development critical success factors?
The research objectives are then to gain an understanding of the main learning and
development approaches that are being used to build the resilience of those working in the

12. adult social care sector, and to gather information in order that the critical success factors of
approaches used can be identified. This information can then be used to inform the
development of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) content, delivery and
assessment methods appropriate to social workers working in the adult social care sector,
and the content and assessment of the Social Work degree, and Assessed and Support Year
in Employment (ASYE) which comprises the first year in employment in a social care setting
following the social work degree. It could also be used to embed training and development
approaches into business and human resources strategies, and thus play a valuable role in
mitigating against a number of the factors associated with low resilience.
To identify the critical success factors individuals that have taken part in resilience learning
and development will be approached through use of web administered questionnaires,
action research and participant observation of a three day resilience building learning and
development programme to examine participant views regarding:
5
 duration of learning
 reasons for enrolling
 topics found to be of most value
 usefulness of learning methods
 how the learning impacted on ability to build resilience
 topics respondents would most like to see included in resilience learning
 who delivers the learning and development
 ideas for improvement
1.4 Chapter Summary
In this chapter the rationale and context for the research has been considered, including the
sector’s own recognition of the need and benefits of enhancing the resilience of a workforce
of 1.75 million, the psychological distress some in the sector experience and the impact this
is having. There currently appears to be a lack of consensus as to how this is to be achieved.
Contextual factors that impact on resilience, and which could continue to do so in the
future, include reduced budgets, increased demand for services and an environment which
experiences continued uncertainty and change. Understanding more of the critical success

13. factors of learning and development activity could inform human resource development
approaches that will boost the resilience of the workforce.
6

14. 7
CHAPTER 2
THE LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Introduction
This literature review aims to establish context, to define what resilience is along with its
meaning in the adult social care sector, and to distinguish and synthesize what has already
been discovered about the learning and development critical success factors associated with
building resilience. It highlights the various ways in which resilience can be defined which
include a focus on personality traits, outcomes or process. The literature review also
identifies attributes that learning and development activity could focus upon to build
resilience. As a common frame of reference this research uses the basic conceptualisation of
resilience as an individual’s ability to adapt and bounce back despite adversity which
recognises the different aspects of resilience and the understanding that both individual and
external factors interact.
2.2 History of the word “resilience”
The word resilience was first used in the context of developmental studies of children who
were believed to be functioning well despite less than healthy family backgrounds. An early
example includes the work carried out by Emmy Werner (1982). Werner was one of the first
people to use the term resilience to describe children that despite growing up in a poor area
of Hawaii with parents who were often out of work, alcoholic or suffering from a mental
health problem, did not display destructive behaviours. Werner noted that this smaller
group of children had resilient traits.
Later research built on this work, for example, that undertaken by Luther, S and Cicchetti.
(2000) who identified those traits and the factors which were believed to “buffer”
individuals from the effects of traumatic situations, which included external factors, for
example, social and structural, that build resilience, developing concepts such as hardiness,
learned resourcefulness, local of control and stamina (Luther, S and Cicchetti, D. 2000).

15. 8
2.3 Defining resilience
Many definitions used to define resilience consistently use the theme of recovery and
bouncing back in the face of challenges and adversity. Examples include “The positive
psychological capacity to rebound. To bounce back from uncertainty, conflict, failure or
even positive change, progress or increased responsibility.” (Luthans, F. 2002). Other
definitions highlight that resilience can also be focused on dealing positively with the
adversity, for example “being able to face up to reality, improvise in the face of unfamiliar
challenges, and at the same time find a source of ‘meaning’ in the challenges that
encourages long-term thinking while affirming a sustaining sense of purpose” (Coutu, 2002).
Most conceptualisations are consistent in identifying resilience as a dynamic process that
involves a personal negotiation through life that fluctuates across time, life stage and
context (Tusaie and Dyer, 2004).
The focus of this research project is the development of resilience in adult social care.
Research into the definitions used by the social care sector itself found frequent difficulty in
conceptualising and articulating the construct of resilience, with most definitions referring
to it as a personality trait that enables an individual to cope with most life events
(McMurray et al., 2008), thus countering research which describes it as an attribute that can
be developed rather than a static personality factor (Cherniss et al., 1998).
The Sector Skills Council, Skills for Care, that leads national learning and skills development
strategy in adult social care offers the following definition: “The general capacity for flexible
and resourceful adaptation to external and internal stressors” (Klohen, 1996) recognising
that resilience is dependent upon personal perception of events, and the events
themselves. Kinman and Grant (2011) who have undertaken research focused on resilience
in the social care sector describe resilience as a protective factor that enhances an
individual’s ability to manage stress; as a positive construct which “…enables one to
overcome stressors or withstand negative life events and, not only recover from such
experiences, but also find personal meaning in them” (Grant and Kinman, 2012, p.1).
Resilience could also be described as a process rather than a personal attribute, for example
“demonstrating resilient adaptation in the face of adversities of traumas.” (Luthar and
Ciccchetti, 2000), or an outcome; not a process nor a personality trait but a “manifested

16. competence in the context of significant challenges to adaptation or development” (Masten
and Coatsworth, 1998, p. 206).
9
2.4 Focus for resilience learning and development
When considering the critical success factors of learning and development interventions it
can be useful to examine the qualities and attributes that those working in the sector
believe indicate resilience. Grant (Community Care 2012), identified these as:
 self esteem
 enthusiasm
 optimism and hope
 openness to experience
 strong sense of identity
 a high degree of autonomy
 self awareness and emotional literacy
 critical thinking skills
 the ability to set limits
 well developed social skills and social confidence to develop effective relationships
 flexibility and adaptability
 ability to use a range of coping strategies
 creative problem solving skills
 ability to draw on external and internal resources
 adaptation to change
 persistence in the face of challenges, setbacks and adversity
 sense of purpose
 ability to derive meaning from difficulties, learn from experience
 an orientation towards the future
 sense of humour

17. 10
2.5 Learning and development methods
Different methods of learning and development have been used to build resilience. These
are determined by the extent to which the support is directed at:
(1) Internal factors that build personal resilience (Kelley, T.M. 2005) which includes: a sense
of control over one’s life, perseverance, emotional management and awareness, optimism,
perspective, sense of humour, a belief in one’s own capabilities and the ability to problem
solve.
(2) External factors such as social networks, workplace supervision, mentoring, work place
practice (Mocke et al., 2002).
(3) A combination of approaches which build internal capacity and shape external factors in
order to build resilience such as individual dispositional attributes, family support and
cohesion, and external support systems (Richardson, G. 2002).
2.6 Approaches that aim to build resilience
There is considerable literature and research focused on resilience in children and young
people, yet far less about the resilience of adults, or social workers (Rutter, 1987) . The
sector has recognised the importance of resilience, the College of Social Work, Professional
Capabilities (2010), mapped against the Social Work Professional Capabilities Framework
(PCF), presents statements of competence for new and experienced workers to those with
extensive experience. These statements include “able to describe the importance of
emotional resilience in social work, show awareness of…emotional resilience…with support,
take steps to manage and promote own…emotional resilience”. However, whilst the sector
is clear that there is a need, how this is to be achieved is less clear.
A framework developed by Beddoe et al., (2011) identifies factors that build social worker
resilience, including individual factors, organisational factors and social worker education
and training. This framework includes the need to build optimism, coping strategies,
problem-solving skills and self-care.
Research undertaken by Kinman and Grant (2012) found that social work students that
scored as having more emotional intelligence, social confidence and better reflective ability

18. were more resilient suggesting that developing these abilities in adult social care worker
training would foster resilience. Building emotional intelligence, social confidence and
reflective ability into learning programmes could then be a critical success factor of learning
programmes aiming to build resilience.
This is further reinforced by comments made by Kinman who took part in a Community Care
web chat (Community Care 2012), in which she stated that
“…resilience is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon, and we have found that it
is underpinned by several competencies, including emotional intelligence,
appropriate empathy, social competence and reflective ability. Interventions should
aim to enhance these competencies which, in turn, will enhance resilience and
wellbeing.”
Other research suggests that learning and development approaches to build resilience in the
sector should:
a) help students to learn to recognise when adversity has become too great and they
11
are experiencing the early signs of stress and burnout (Collins et al., 2010)
b) teach the skill of learning empathy: the ability to take perspective and demonstrate
warmth (Grant and Kinman, 2012)
c) teach reflective qualities which include “how self-awareness has been constituted
through direct experience” (Kondrat, 1999, p.451)
d) develop the skill of mindfulness (Lynn, 2009)
e) create effective supervision which allows feelings and emotions to be worked
through along with the provision of valuable space for reflection (Rajan-Rankin,
2013).
Kinman and Grant (2012) provide specific suggestions of competencies social workers need
to develop in order to build resilience. These include
a) emotional intelligence: the awareness of one’s own and others’ emotions and ability to
regulate these

19. b) reflective ability, finding in their research that trainee social workers who are better able
to reflect on their thoughts, feelings and beliefs and more able to consider the position of
other people and who can use their reflective abilities to communicate effective with others
tended to be more resilient to stress and to be more psychologically healthy
c) empathy , emphasising the need for a holistic understanding and recognition of the need
to avoid over-empathising with service users and the importance of clear emotional
boundaries
d) social competencies including communication skills, self-confidence and the ability to be
assertive.
‘Wellbeing days’ have been created by the University of Bedfordshire for social work
trainees based on these suggestions, the content including:
a) Mindfulness workshops which teach individuals the skills and practices of focussing non-judgementally
on the moment and which has recently been found to alter brain and
12
immune system functioning (Davidson, R. & Kabat-Zinn, J. 2003),
b) peer coaching to provide space for reflection
c) reflective supervision workshops
d) thinking skills which include cognitive behavioural therapy principles
e) self-awareness and action planning workshops to help individuals to reflect on their own
responses to stress and how to use this awareness to build an individual resilience building
action plan.
Anderson, D. (2000) examined how Social Workers coped with pressure. The findings
showed that neither the use of active or avoidant coping strategies saved these workers
from burnout and that the problem solving strategies that were taught and used most did
not help deal with the emotional content of their work, suggesting the use of coping
strategies to prevent and help individuals recover from burnout does not help as
significantly as might have been assumed.

20. The work of Rajan-Rankin (2013) found that whilst emotionality expressed by service users
was viewed as legitimate, expression of one's own emotions e.g. staff, was perceived as
unprofessional.
To add to this the work of Adamson (2000) highlights the debate that coping that focuses
primarily on managing feelings of emotional distress may be more useful in the context of
supporting resilience than coping that emphasises problem solving, which focuses only on
the source of the stress. This is further reinforced by the work of Graham and Shier (2010)
and Rajan-Rankin (2013) who note that managing personal and professional boundaries
and work–life balance promote subjective well-being and longevity in social care.
The National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work based at the University of Bournemouth
have a Masters Level, three day full time equivalent part time programme Self Leadership –
Building Personal Resilience and Relationships that Work with Health & Social Care. This
provides qualified social workers along with health care workers an opportunity to increase
self-leadership capability and capacity to better manage self and others under the multiple
pressures of the work environment. The development focus of this unit is the quality of the
leaders thinking, creativity, and deeper self-awareness in the moment. Self-awareness and
mind state awareness and management are core elements of the programme.
The University of Birmingham (Paris, 2012) has also developed a programme for social
workers that aims to build resilience through reflection.
Community Care commissioned Kinman and Grant to produce an e guide to help those in
social care develop their resilience (Community Care 2012). This offers ten top tips (Annex
2). These include:
13
1. building a community of support
2. time management
3. developing achievable goals
4. keeping an emotion diary to develop greater awareness of emotions
5. preparation for supervision
6. prioritising work-life balances
7. building in time to relax

21. 14
8. learning from experience
9. remaining hopeful and optimistic
10. being kind to oneself.
Anghel et al., 2010, developed an educational programme using experiential learning,
critical reflection, and creative media (drama, painting, sand tray, movement) to enhance
student learning for BA Social Work students. The programme aimed to offer personal
development through self-awareness which included:
a) experiential learning which recognised the need to develop learning styles which
balance experiencing and conceptualising in order to help individuals respond
flexibly in adapting to situations and learn analytic and interpersonal skills
b) reflection, specifically insight into how personal background affects learning and
practice; the unavoidable impact of the emotional content of the interactions
between social worker and client
c) the use of creative mediums in order to develop creativity; enhance confidence;
value diversity; enable trust; facilitate the use of inner intelligence and imagination
which are seen as core problem-solving and coping skills. Sessions included five
three-hour workshops. The content included:
i) creative mediums sessions exploring the strengths that brought them to
social work: visualisation; symbolic painting; small group drama
ii) a drama session exploring their own past responses to fear, risk and
uncertainty and what helped them cope: using a classic story and costume
role play
iii) a movement session exploring empathy and self-awareness: individual,
pair and group exercises using movement and music
iv) a sand-tray session exploring their personal journey and examples when
they proved resilient: using sand and symbolic objects. Each session included
warm-up, creative exercises, group discussion and individual reflection using
the personal diary.
Ryan et al., (2004) recognises the link between optimism and resilience, and pointed out
that optimism was associated with workers having a belief in their own ability, their self -

22. efficacy, based on good experience from previous situations, from perceiving situations as
opportunities and challenge and the importance of developing knowledge and
understanding of optimism during learning programmes, and the need for social work
organisations to continue to develop expertise and belief in optimism as a part of
supervision and on-going professional development.
In addition to the work underway in the adult social care sector there are a number of
organisations that deliver resilience building activities across a number of sectors as
described in “Developing resilience – an evidence-based guide for practitioners produced by
the CIPD”. Each offer a range of approaches. All offer half to whole day training events.
These include:
a) Psychological First Aid and London Resilience both of whom deliver training to those
15
responding to emergency situations
b) Integration Training with a focus on relaxation, mindfulness, CBT techniques,
problem-solving approaches, social support and empathy, optimism, gratitude,
mood management and emotional intelligence
c) Smithfield Performance that explore thinking, behaviour, internal motivation and
lifestyle factors that impact on resilience, situation interpretation and lifestyle
choices
d) Robertson Cooper who examine the nature of stress and how it interacts with
people differently along with coping mechanisms and tools
e) COPE OHS with a focus on CBT techniques
f) The Mayo Clinic with a focus on integrating resilience education and training with
medical care, mindfulness, cognitive (attention, memory, judgement and problem-solving),
physical, emotional and spiritual (forgiveness, acceptance, compassion, true
meaning and purpose
g) Trauma Resilience Training that focus on the development of pre-trauma skills to aid
conscious control of responses and thoughts, relaxation techniques
h) In Equilibrium who examine the extent that life experiences are within or out of
control of the individual, optimism and negative thinking, emotion regulation

23. 16
i) Organisational Health Psychologists who have four principles of personal
effectiveness: control, aligning actions to values, antidotes to negativity and
psychology of stress prevention.
2.7 Chapter summary
This is a sector under severe pressure, with evidence that many in the workforce struggle to
cope resulting in high absenteeism and increased risk of presenteeism. In response to
recognition that support is needed to build a more resilient workforce ways being used to
achieve this include building the competencies that underpin resilience such as emotional
intelligence, social confidence and reflective ability into programmes. Self-awareness,
working through emotions, developing empathy, mind state awareness and thinking skills
are other elements of approaches being used. There is an argument that it would be more
effective to help practitioners manage the feelings of emotional distress rather than
problem solve. Training varies insomuch as some focuses on building internal capacity, some
the management of external factors and others a combination of the two.
The literature review found some confusion about what resilience really means within the
sector, although the concepts of adversity and positive adaptation are embedded into most
definitions.
The issues that will be considered when collecting organisational data will be the nature of
the learning and development activity already underway in the adult social care sector, and
how those taking part in such activity perceive this, including those topics found to be of
particular value, training methods used and their usefulness, reasons for enrolling,
differences in perception at the outset of learning and development compared to those
realised on conclusion, impact of learning and ideas for improvement.

24. 17
CHAPTER 3
THE METHODOLOGY
This chapter describes (1) the philosophical approach, (2) approaches used (3) strategies (4)
choice of method (5) time horizons and (6) techniques and procedures (Saunders, Lewis, &
Thornhill, 2007). This includes justification of the selected methods of data collection, the
sample frame and an explanation of the questions.
3.1 Philosophical approach
The philosophical framework does not reside within one philosophical domain as the
research will include a mix of interpretivist and positivist philosophy (Saunders et al, 2007)
(Anderson, 2009). Interpretivist chosen as the most appropriate and relevant to the
research in recognition of: (1) the need to understand the differences between adult social
care workers in their role as social actors (2) the need to adopt an empathetic stance,
entering the social world of the adult social care workers and understanding their
perception and world from their point of view (3) views regarding resilience are based on
interactions between people and are thus not always predictable, and (4) as the research
will examine the meanings and experiences of different people in different situations.
Positivist chosen as most relevant to the research as there is the need to break current
approaches to building resilience into component facts and to gather and study the
relationship between these facts.
3.2 Approaches used
An inductive reasoning approach will be used as the research will commence with an
exploratory phase get a feel for the subject, develop a better understanding of the nature of
the problem and through interpreting the data gathered, developing theory. This was
chosen as there is currently no hypothesis at to what the critical success factors are, and for
this reason a deductive approach rejected. The inductive approach was felt more
appropriate to the research as it was considered important to understand the context
within which development activities that aim to build resilience in the sector take place and
that to recognise, in line with an inductive approach, that research subjects are humans and

25. as such their feelings and thoughts regarding the efficacy of learning and development
activities derived as a consequence of their perceptions.
18
3.3 Strategies
A action research was selected to gain an understanding of the context and processes being
enacted (Morris and Wood, 1991) enabling the “what,” and “how?” answers regarding the
critical success factors of training and development activity to be identified, for example to
understand more about the training and development identified by the literature review is
being delivered, including:
What?
The literature review identified three approaches to building resilience: understanding and
managing internal factors, external factors or a combination of both, along with a variety of
methods used to deliver learning. The research will distinguish between the substance of
the programme being delivered for example how to increase resilience in those working in
adult social care, and the processes being used, such as how the learning and development
is being delivered (Yin, 2003). This will include the extent to which the following are
included:
(1) Self-awareness
(2) Time management
(3) Emotions awareness and management
(4) Work life balance
(5) Relaxation techniques
(6) Optimism and combatting negativity
(7) Self-care (being kind to oneself)
(8) Development of support networks
(9) Psychology of stress prevention
How?
(1) Formal training delivery

26. 19
(2) Experiential learning
(3) Reflection
(4) Use of creative mediums
(5) Use of accredited / non accredited learning
(6) E-learning
Using this approach will provide an understanding of the learning and development taking
place, an holistic understanding of the subject of the research and the interrelationships
between numerous factors (Fisher, 2007) which includes participants, training, approaches
and theories underpinning training and development activity, individual needs. A limitation
of this approach will be a lack of representativeness, but action research was chosen as this
will allow for (1) insight to be achieved (2) the opportunity to expand and draw conclusions
that could apply to future programmes. One of the criticisms of the action research
approach is that it does not allow for the identification of generalizable conclusions,
however, whilst this is true, it is believed that conclusions will still be of value to the sector
as these can “always be tried out by other persons in their own practice, to see if they work
for them” (Hamilton, 1981), (3) the chance of identifying the attributes of a successful
programme. The chosen methods were therefore selected in order to gather information to
understand issues, provide the flexibility needed to allow the emphasis of the research to
change as the process unfolds and ultimately to identify possible critical success factors .
3.4 Sample frame
Non-probablity, self-selection sampling (Saunders & Lewis, 2012) will be used as few
individuals have taken part in learning and development that builds resilience and it will
therefore be necessary to use contacts and the literature review which identified
organisations delivering resilience building activity, to identify gatekeepers who can then
invite individuals to complete a questionnaire. The individuals can then choose whether to
take part. The aim is to engage 30 respondents. This number is based on the suggestion
that “a sample size of 30 will usually result in the sampling distribution for the mean that is
very close to a normal distribution” (Saunders and Lewis, 2012: 266). Respondents will be
asked to state who delivered the learning and checks made to ensure a range of training
provision is included in the sample. Whilst a census approach would afford more reliability,

27. validity and credibility, this would be an impractical approach due to budget and time
constraints. The purpose of using questionnaires in the first stage will be to get a feel for the
research topic and those areas that could comprise critical success factors, and therefore
not essential to ensure an illustrative and representative sample is achieved.
Information will then inform the creation of pre and post questionnaires that will be used to
investigate potential critical success factors of a three day resilience building training event.
It is recognised whilst not statistically representative, that adopting self-selection sampling
will help provide information that will allow potential critical success to be identified.
20

28. 21
3.5 Questions
The questionnaire is included in the annex.
The literature review found the need to have a resilient workforce to be a focus of the
sector, and a range content and learning methods used to achieve this. Little was found that
evaluated the perceived or actual success of training. The research aims to seek out
information that can help address this gap by identifying the success factors of learning
activity. For the three day training event, themes will include:
1. What motivated sign up?
2. What topics were of most value and why?
3. What methods were of most benefit and why?
4. What are your thoughts about the topics and efficacy of the learning methods used?
5. How would you evaluate the success of the activity?
6. Is there anything you feel would have improved the activity?
7. Has the activity made an impact on you? The organisation?
8. What factors do you believe made the most impact?
3.6 Choices
A multi method approach will be used, one approach facilitating another, each completing
the other. The first stage will be to gather quantitative and qualitative data through use of
open and closed questions posed in a web administered questionnaire from those that have
taken part in learning to build resilience. The results will inform an action learning approach
which will use questionnaires to gather quantitative and qualitative data both before and
after the three day training programme, and overt observation of those taking part which
will include systematic observation, self-memos that allow for ideas to be recorded as they
occur, and interpretation of participants behaviour. This choice will allow for the experience
to be shared by “not merely observing what is happening but also be feeling it” (Gill &
Johnson., 2010. P 161). Observation will also allow for the context in which the
respondent’s comments are set and the “nuances of meaning with which the respondents
garnish their responses” (Saunders & Lewis., 2012. P 342). A mono method was rejected as

29. this would not provide sufficient depth of data nor opportunity to triangulate and thus
reduced chance of achieving reliable, meaningful and credible results.
The purpose of the initial questionnaire will be to get a feel for the key issues and success
factors, and to inform the preparation of the pre and post questionnaires. This will offer
some confidence that the research is addressing the most important issues. The
questionnaires will allow interviewees to explain and expand on comments, particularly
relevant to the interpretivist approach. Results will be transcribed and analysed using a
quantitative and qualitative approach. It is recognised that a could be encountered in
accessing adult social care workers that have taken part in learning and development to
build resilience.
22
3.7 Time Horizons
The web administered questionnaire will be used initially followed by attendance at a three
day building resilience programme at which action research using pre and post
questionnaires and direct observation will be employed.
3.8 Techniques and procedures
A number of data collection techniques will be used in combination. They will include web
administered questionnaires which will be used for initial mapping of activity and to get an
overall “feel” for the topic being researched (Fisher, 2007), a pre and post questionnaire
supplemented by participant observation of those that took part in the training and
development activity delivered. Approval will be gained from those taking part in the
training to observe. Data collected will then be triangulated. Likert scales will be used in all
questionnaires used, providing fixed choice options to measure attitudes and opinions
(Bowling, 1997). This scaling method is chosen as it is easily understood, requires more than
a yes or no answer, allowing for degrees of opinion to be identified and therefore a greater
depth of analysis achieved. Question wording will follow the checklist presented by
Saunders, et al (2007). Scales chosen were based on discussion of scales by Likert and
Guttman, as found in Corbetta (2003). Quantitative data gathered will be analysed.

30. Comments from respondents will also be sought, this qualitative method helping draw out
more in depth responses.
Survey Monkey will be used to introduce and administer the on-line questionnaire,
questionnaires that will be used pre and post training will be introduced in person at the
training event, and observations will take place at the building resilience event.
To gain access to individuals suitable and willing to complete the initial questionnaire, adult
social care strategic and membership bodies will be approached making use of contacts and
building new contacts in the sector along with those organisations identified by the
literature review as delivering resilience training to those working in the adult social care
sector. The approach will explain clearly the purpose of the research, access required,
benefits to the organisation of taking part and will aim to build credibility in order to
encourage participation. Each will be asked to publicise the research and to provide an
invitation to complete the questionnaire. Strategic bodies will include the National Skills
Academy for Social Care, Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, Skills for Care,
Community Care, National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work, British Association for
Social Work and the College of Social Work. To address the risk that 30 questionnaires will
not be completed using this method, postings onto forums and discussion boards will be
used to publicise the research along with a link to the questionnaire to help achieve the
target.
All identifying characteristics of student respondents will be masked and names anonymised
to protect confidentiality.
3.9 Ethics
Key considerations for the research include the need to ensure the privacy, confidentiality
and dignity of organisations and individuals involved in the research. The research
recognises that employers may not wish to have comments made by an individual
attributed to their organisation, particularly where these are centred on sensitive issues
such as bullying, management and leadership style and support, blame culture and poor
resources. The emphasis of the research is solutions rather than causes or evidence that
23

31. stress is an issue in the sector. Nevertheless this topic is likely to be raised in the context of
why resilience was identified as a topic for learning and development activity. All
respondents and participants will be informed that questionnaire responses and any
observation and notes will be held in confidence and that their details and those of their
employing organisation will remain confidential.
24
3.10 Chapter summary
An interpretivist philosophical framework will be used along with inductive reasoning. A
multi method approach will be used which will include gathering information about existing
learning and development practice using an exploratory approach to gather primary data
using a web administered questionnaire with a group of 30 adult social care workers who
have taken part in learning and development focused on building resilience. Results from
this will be used to inform an action research approach to further attempt to identify the
critical success factors of learning and development activity such as the content, preferred
learning and development methods, most favoured and useful elements, and impact of an
intensive three day building resilience programme. Pre and post reflections and views of
respondents will be gathered along with over participant observation of the full three day
programme.

32. 25
CHAPTER 4
EMPIRICAL DISCUSSION OF DATA
4.1 Web-administered Questionnaire
A total of 19 questionnaires were completed by a variety of individuals working in adult
social care, less than the target of 30. All strategies and contingency strategies were used as
described above, with the National Skills Academy for Social Care publicising the research
nationally to members via their monthly e-newsletter, Universities with social work
programmes encouraging participation, private providers delivering resilience training being
approached to take part, but with little success. Reasons for the low response rate included
the relatively low numbers of those working in adult social care participating in
development activity focused specifically on building resilience and some commercial
sensitivity from those delivering such training to share information. This unanticipated
commercial sensitivity also impacted on the research method that involved contacting
training providers directly. Other national organisations such as BASW, ADASS and Skills for
Care were not able to encourage participation as the time needed to submit, and have
approved a request for the research, was prohibitive: there was a tight timescale in which
the research data needed to be collected. However, despite the short-fall in returns, the
objective of being able to get a better feel for the subject to inform more in depth research
and analysis was realised from the 19 respondents completing the questionnaire, and
information emerged that could be used to inform the next stage of the research, including:
 Self-awareness, managing emotions, spotting the emotions in others and time
management/achieving work life balance to be perceived to be of most use in
building resilience
 Better capacity to make informed judgements and improving the quality of services
delivered the most significant impact of training
 The strong focus on building internal, rather than external capacity, to cope with
adversity and pressure.
4.2 Action research and observation

33. To further investigate the information gathered in order to build a more robust and reliable
picture of the critical success factors of training to build adult social care worker resilience, a
three day resilience building programme delivered by the University of Chichester, with 18
of the 24 delegates attending working in adult social care, was attended over the three day
period and action research and participant observation methods employed.
4.3 Duration of training
The length of training attended by those completing the web administered questionnaire
varied as can be seen from Table 1 below.
26
Duration Total
1-3 hour workshop 6
Half day training / workshop 3
One to two day training / workshop 7
Three or more days training / workshop 3
Total 19
Table 1: length of training
The Annex provides full data. Results show a fairly even distribution of the length of training
delivered, although little over three or more days. The literature review found most
examples to be short events such as the wellbeing days hosted by the University of
Bedfordshire, three hour workshops (Anghel et at., 2010), a full time equivalent of three
days learning at the University of Bournemouth and up to one day training delivered by
private training providers. These findings reinforce the literature review finding that training
is generally based on short events.
4.4 Rating activities
Those completing the web administered questionnaire were asked to rate activities using a
five point Likert Scale, justification for this choice given in Section 3. 1. A score of one was

34. described as being not at all useful and a score of five extremely useful. The results to the
question regarding usefulness of activities are presented below in Table 2.
10 activities scored four or higher which would indicate that the following topics were of
particular use to respondents; self-awareness, managing emotions, spotting the emotions in
others and time management/achieving work life balance. This reinforces the work of
Kinman & Grant (2012) who found that social work students with higher emotional
intelligence, social confidence and reflective ability were more resilient. However, i t cannot
be assumed that those activities scoring less than four were not found useful as there was
some polarisation of scores, some finding these activities extremely useful. Social
confidence whilst scoring low overall, scored very highly for all but three candidates who
had given this a one for usefulness thus lowering the mean average rating. It could also be
the case that the quality of the trainer, or interpretation of the topic, affected the results, or
that the respondent did not understand these terms. Strong conclusions have not then been
drawn.
27

35. 28
Topic Rating
Self-awareness 4.47
Managing emotions 4.41
Spotting emotions in others 4.25
Time management / achieving work/life balance 4.25
Perspective 4.22
Communication 4.21
Problem-solving skills 4.13
Action planning individual responses to stress 4.06
Reflective skills 4.05
Mindfulness 4.00
Social confidence 3.94
Assertiveness 3.94
Early signs of stress and burnout 3.89
Reflective supervision skills 3.76
Thinking skills (for example CBT principles) 3.76
Self care 3.47
Learning optimism 3.39
Relaxation skills 3.38
Alternative therapies 2.27
Table 2 Usefulness of Activities

36. 4.5 Learning methods
Responses to the question regarding methods and usefulness of the training used are
summarised in Table 3 below where 1 = not at all, 5 = very useful.
29
Method Methods and
Usefulness
Experiential learning (learning by doing) 4.63
Group discussion 4.50
Individual reflection 4.17
Presentation by course leader 4.16
Action planning how you will implement
4.06
resilience building techniques
Drama / role play 3.67
Table 3: Learning methods and usefulness
Experiential learning was viewed as the most useful training method used, with over half
those completing the questionnaire stating this was very useful, and none less than useful.
This supports the finding of Cherniss,. C et al (1998) that resilience is an attribute that can be
learnt when effective use is made of experiential learning. This suggests that experiential
learning could be a critical success factor. Group discussion also scored highly. All, bar one
method, scored highly and were thus considered useful methods, with the exception of
drama and role play, however, even a lower score in this could be due to respondents not
having being exposed to this learning method or poor facilitation. Only further questioning
would have established this fact.

37. 30
4.6 Learning impact
In answer to the question “How did this learning impact on you?”, responses are shown in
Table 4 where one equalled not at all and five very significantly.
Impact
Better capacity to make informed judgments 3.94
Improved quality of service you deliver 3.84
Greater awareness of how to build personal
3.68
resilience
Increased or sustained high morale 3.58
Reduced risk of absenteeism 2.87
Reduced risk of burnout 2.76
Table 4: Learning impact
The greatest impact therefore was found to be better capacity to make informed
judgements, a critical skill for adult social care workers (Rately, 2001), and improved quality
of services delivered, again of key importance to successful performance in the sector.
Searle and Patent (2012) and Curits et al., (2009), found high turnover to be a concern in the
sector, and whilst relatively lower scores were in evidence for lowering the risk of
absenteeism and burnout, a third responded that they were unsure whether or not this
would be the case. Lower scores could also have been due to this not being perceived as a
risk by respondents.

38. 31
4.7 Topics most like to see included
Reponses to the qualitative question as to “What topics would you most like to see included
in a resilience programme?” varied. The range can be seen in table 5 below:
Comments
Examples of real life difficulties / scenarios and how you might cope with these situations
Techniques
Frameworks/theory around risk/protective factors; strategies and practical approaches
Mindfulness, communication skills, emotional awareness
Learning from experienced social workers
Use of Action Learning to support reflection and build resilience
Time Management
Links between emotion and behaviour, prioritising work, understanding that not everything
is urgent
Anxiety control
Strategies for supporting others to cope
More on managing emotions and role play
How to boost the elements that create resilience in life
Table 5: Topics most like to see included
Almost all suggestions made are based on building the internal capacity of an individual to
enable them to cope with adversity, not external factors such as those identified by Mocke
et al., (2002) Beddoe et al., (2001), and Richardson (2002), such as social networks,
workplace supervision, mentoring, work place practice, family support and cohesion and
external support systems. Whilst suggestions made reinforce the importance of building
internal capacity and therefore consideration of this as a critical success factor, further
investigation would be needed to establish why so few had mentioned external factors
before drawing any conclusions as to whether their inclusion could be regarded as a critical
success factor.

39. 32
4.8 Training provision
The research set out to identify who delivers resilience training and the nature of this
learning. The results from respondents indicate that predominantly external training
providers are being used, that the learning does not form part of accredited training
programmes, or form part of a larger programme of learning. This reinforces the literature
review finding of little accredited provision on offer and brief specialist training being
commissioned. This may suggest that a critical success factor is having the required
specialist knowledge needed to deliver a programme of this nature, the necessary funding
needed to be able to commission the training from external providers and knowledge of
who provides the learning and what learning they are providing.
4.9 Training event analysis
A pre, and a post training questionnaire were developed, informed by the results of the
literature review and on-line survey. Both are included in the annex. To supplement this
research method, observations were made, allowing for the context of questionnaire
responses to be understood and to experience at first hand participation.
4.10 Reasons for taking part
Question one asked what the purpose of taking part in the training was. A score of one
equalling not at all a significant reason for enrolling and five a very significant reason.
Results are at Figure 1.

40. 33
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Respondent number
Reasons for enrollment
Reasons for enrolling onto resilience building programme
1
2
3
4
5
As can be seen, building team and organisational resilience, improving service quality,
building staff member’s resilience and reducing burnout risk scored highly. Given the value
of reducing burnout, it might be useful to reflect on the work of Anderson (2009) who found
that where reducing burnout is a key objective helping workers cope with the emotional
context of their work would be of benefit. Building personal resilience was not provided
with similarly high ratings, with 47% rating this reason as a three, 35% a four and a relatively
low 18% a five.
Findings are further analysed by extrapolating only those that responded to the question
highly, with a four or five, as is shown in Figure 2 below.

41. 34
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Figure 2: Highly rated reasons for enrolling.
4
5
The literature review identified the sector’s strong focus on managing and promoting
individual resilience, highlighted by the sector’s own PCF. The results show a more
significant reason for enrolling to be a desire to help others build their resilience whether
this is as part of team or organisation. This may indicate that a critical success factor might
be to give individuals the skills and knowledge to help them confidently help others given
the motivation of participants to do this.
Making better improved judgements and reducing absenteeism also received relatively low
scores which could suggest a lack of knowledge of the link between resilience (coping with
stress) and absenteeism, or few issues with absenteeism in their employing organisation. A
critical success factor might then be the need to raise awareness of the link between
resilience and absenteeism.
4.11 Topics most valued
Question two asked respondents to rate the topics of most value. This was asked in both
the pre and post questionnaire. A rating on one = not at all valuable, five = extremely
valuable. Findings of note include:

42.  94% respondents gave a score of four or five before and after training, to ways of
building resilience, 80% to emotional intelligence, 77% mindfulness, 76% to
dysfunctional teams, and 71% understanding resilience. There was little difference
between scores pre and post questionnaire.
 88% rated building resilient teams four or five at the outset and conclusion, 35% a
35
higher rating on conclusion than at the outset
 Action planning was rated by 80% at a four or a five in terms of its value both before
and after the training. 40% found this more valuable, and 27% less valuable than at
the outset
 35% gave meeting emotional needs a higher rating on conclusion than at the start of
the training, 76% at the outset.
 72% gave learning optimism a rating of four or five before the learning and slightly
less, with 67% on conclusion
 67% gave spotting the signs that stress has become an issue a four or five both
before and after the training, 17% found this was slightly less useful than they had
anticipated at the outset, giving a five at the start as to how useful they thought it
would be, and a four on conclusion. 11% however raised their rating from a four to a
five.
 Emotions in organisation life whilst not scoring highly at the outset or conclusion, did
show some significant distance travelled in terms of movement of scores, with 44%
giving this a higher rating in terms of value on conclusion than at the outset.
When identifying the critical success factors, these results indicate that, due to the high
values awarded both before and after the training, that a critical success factor could be the
inclusion of:
a) ways of building resilience, as highlighted by the literature review as being a key
concern for the sector
b) emotional intelligence, supporting the suggestion by Kinman and Grant (2012) that
resilience is underpinned by emotional intelligence

43. c) mindfulness, supporting Lynne (2009), who suggested resilience can be built by
36
learning mindfulness practice
d) dysfunctional teams, further reinforcing the interest in team working
Building resilient teams, action planning and meeting emotional needs, being more
highly valued on learning conclusion, suggest that a further critical success factor may be
to ensure adult social care workers and training providers recognise the value of these
topics. This would support the work of Rajan-Rankin (2013) who reported that feelings
and emotions needed to be worked through with space for reflection, both of which can
be supported by the process of action planning. Emotions in organisation life, scoring
more highly on conclusion, could also suggest, along with the work of Morrison (2007)
who found the sector’s training curriculum focused heavily on content rather than
emotions management, that a critical success factor could be recognising, and
responding to the need to focus on meeting emotional needs, rather than solely the
intellectual needs of workers.
4.12 Ability to build resilience
For the next three questions respondents were asked to rate their response using a Likert
scale as follows:
1 = Not at all 2 = Slightly 3 = Not sure 4 = Quite 5 = Very
Question 3 asked “How able to build your own personal resilience right now?” This question
repeated for the post event questionnaire in order to measure distance travelled during the
three days. Responses were as follows (see table 6 below).

44. 37
Pre response Post response Number % (rounded to nearest %)
Not at all Quite 1 6
Not sure Quite 2 11
Quite Quite 8 44
Very Quite 1 6
Slightly Quite 1 6
Not sure Very 1 6
Quite Very 4 22
Table 6: Ability to build personal resilience
This shows that just under a half felt no more able to build their resilience than at the
outset. However 50% reported that they were more able to build their resilience on
conclusion than at the outset, 22% from quite able to very able. One person representing
6% of the total moved from feeling very able to only quite able.
Comments and observations
Comments include:
Pre questionnaire comments include “experience of depression due to transition”,
“Interested in signs of stress/burnout and avoiding this - staying sane for the latter years of
my career” and “my experience of stress and managing my resilience is that I am aware of
what affects my resilience. What I need to do is manage it”.
Post questionnaire comments:
These included “much more than at the start of the course. v insightful,” and, “the course
has been very empowering + confirming some things I do already and others I want to be
better at…” Other comments focused on the need take time to reflect on the course “Lots
of helpful tools + tips. Will need to reflect on and work on these.” “More than when we
started but it remains a work in progress and lifelong”. These comments indicate that some
respondents gained skills needed to build personal resilience but that for some there was a

45. need to reflect to achieve impact. This was reinforced by listening to comments made on
the final day “this has been a great course, thank you so much. There has been lots to take
in and I need to really think about how I can use what you have been telling us about to do
things differently”
Participant observation found that many on the first day felt that external factors, such as
the organisation was to blame for low resilience “they are continually changing our
structure, how we do things. I just get to grips with one way and then it’s all up in the air
again, I just don’t feel in control at all …” and “I am being asked to do a lot more things now
and sometimes feel I just can’t cope”. One commented that “I am really at the end of my
tether and think I just need to find another job”. This is in line with Collins, S., et al (2010),
Kinman & Grant, (2011), Skills for Care, (2014), CIPD, (2013) who identified that
practitioners in the sector were experiencing high levels of stress.
In response to Question 4, How able to build the resilience of staff do you feel right now?
The question repeated in the post questionnaire, responses were as follows in Table 7.
38
Pre response Post response Number % (rounded to nearest %)
Not at all Not sure 1 6
Not sure Not sure 3 17
Not sure Quite 5 28
Not sure Very 1 6
Quite Slightly 1 6
Quite Quite 6 33
Quite Very 1 6
Table 7: Ability to build staff resilience
These figures show that half felt that they were no more able to build the resilience of staff
than at the outset. However the remaining half all indicated that their ability to build the
resilience of staff had increased, albeit to a lesser extent than building personal resilience.

46. Pre event questionnaire comments of note included “Dysfunctional organisation, every man
for himself culture” “…some more tools to do this would be helpful” and “As all people are
different I need to recognise signs in others and how individual needs can be met”. This is in
line with Collins et al., (2010), who highlighted the need to help students recognise early
signs of stress and burnout.
Post event questionnaire comments included “In that I am aware of what stops this
happening in the organisation”, “More equipped with tools and strategies, knowledge to
take forward and apply” and again highlighting the need for reflection, “Lots to take in and
want to process a bit more on how/which bits to use in the team,” and “Need to
review/reflect on tools provided and see how I can use these with my team.” The literature
review found significant reference to the reflective capacity of individuals, linking this to
resilience (Rajan-Rankin, 2013). Indeed the programmes developed by the University of
Birmingham and the University of Bedfordshire were based on building resilience through
reflection. This could therefore indicate that learning the skills of reflection and providing
tools and space needed to do this could also be a critical success factor.
Observation found delegates eager to gather practical tools and techniques to build
resilience. An example included the use of laughter to build resilience which proved popular
with several wanting more information in order to be able to use this with staff members “I
think we could really do with Lisa (laughter coach) at our hospice. I am going to get her over
to us I think” and “it’s shocking how little we laugh. Must do more of this with staff as it
helps us bond and release some of the pressure”. This might add weight to the theory that
experiential learning, as laughter therapy is, is of value when building resilience (Chernis, et
al,. 1998).
In response to Question 5: How able to build the resilience of the organisation do you feel
right now? The question repeated in the post questionnaire, responses were as follows (see
Table 8)
39

47. 40
Pre response Post response Number % (rounded to
nearest %)
Not at all Quite 1 6
Not sure Quite 2 11
Quite Quite 8 44
Very Quite 1 6
Slightly Quite 1 6
Not sure Very 1 6
Quite Very 4 22
Table 8: Ability to build organisation resilience
This shows that 28% moved from “not sure” and “quite” to very, and 23% strengthened
their perception of their ability to build organisational resilience.
Comments before the course indicated that some felt that it was unlikely that much change
to the organisation could be made “I am sure I could help but maybe don’t have enough
influence to” and ““not sure how I can influence this” and then on conclusion “still not sure
how I can influence this”. Post event comments included “much more affirmed of the need
to do this” and “More tools, techniques, ideas to share and implement”. However, these are
the comments of only a small minority of respondents and therefore generalizable
conclusions cannot be drawn. Participant observation reinforced this finding with many
individuals expressing doubt that they could impact on external factors that influence
resilience as determined by the organisation as they had insufficient authority to do so, “I
am not senior enough where I work to do much about what happens ‘up there’”.
4.13 Course impact
The following questions aimed to measure the impact and views regarding how to improve
the course.
Question 7 asked “How do you think the course will impact?” Statements of potential
impact were listed and respondents asked to rate on a Likert scale of 1 = not at all, to five =
very significantly. Responses are at Figure 3 below.

48. This shows where the perception of the most significant impacts lay. It illustrates that
building personal and staff member resilience had the most significant perceived impact.
Improved service quality also had high ratings along with reducing risk of burnout and
increasing morale. Building team or organisational resilience and making better judgements
scored less highly.
41
Comments provided by respondents included being able to “introduce the concepts to
others”, “being far more knowledgeable that I was” that there is “always more to learn”
and that “notes and exercises great but need more learning outside the training room”.
Observation found some participants believed the course would impact significantly on a
personal level “it’s not just at work that I will be able to do some of these things, but at
home to”, and “this has been a fantastic course, one of the best I have been on, I feel like I
will really able to do things differently now”
This is represented in Figure 3 below.
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Figure 3 Impact of Resilience Building course
1
2
3
4
5

49. 42
4.14 Most useful thing learnt
Question 8 posed the question “What was the most useful thing you learnt?”
All responses are included in the annex. In summary these were broad in nature and
therefore, although there was some clustering that can help determine critical success
factors. These key areas include emotional intelligence, spotting the signs of stress,
personality and resilience, importance of humour and laughter to build resilience,
mindfulness and organisational resilience as can be seen from table 9.
Theme Post questionnaire comments
Emotional
Intelligence
“more in depth knowledge of emotional intelligence, emotion in
organisations”
“emotional competence framework”
“the benefits of actively recognising emotional intelligence in how
individuals relate to one another in whatever role”
Spotting the
signs of stress
“the importance of knowing self and triggers to stop “burnout “ before it
starts”
“recognising the signs of stress”.
Personality
and resilience
“understanding personality types and team dynamics”,
“content of day 3” (which included personality theory linked to resilience)
“colours exercise”
Use of
humour and
laughter
“the role of laughter and smiling”
“reminded to laugh and smile more,”
“...reminded to laugh more! Take time out and be playful and enjoy life”
“…enjoyed the laughter therapy”
Mindfulness “to accept emotions and turn towards them – not see emotions such as
anxiety or stress as toxic” “mindfulness…”
“Mindfulness”
Organisational
resilience
“content of day 3” (which was included organisational resilience)
“tools and info regarding organisational emotion / influencing factors”
Non clustering “I liked the guided visualisation and sense of positivity”

50. comments “impact of the organisation on the individual and vice versa and how often
43
the organisation doesn’t take responsibility for the damage (and lack of
attention) to the individual’s resilience”
“The breadth or insight. The academic insight”
“The areas to focus on for supervising and managing trainees and ASYEs
(newly qualified staff)”
“I liked the concept of emotional labour which I want to take back and
discuss with the management team to see how we can develop it for our
staff”
Table 9: Most useful thing learnt
4.15 Course improvement
Question 9 asked “How would you improve this course?” Clustering of comments focused
on the suggestion that breaks be shorter. Other ideas included more information before the
course, more handouts, articles and theory. One person felt the third day was rushed with
lots of contributions in three days and whether “splitting the days would allow some
reflection time to consolidate learning”. Others had no suggestions but were keen to
express positive feedback which included “very good!”, “Nothing” “Very well constructed,
great content. Best course I have been on in a long time” and “thoroughly enjoyed all
aspects of the three days. Can’t think of anything to change. Diverse and engaging each day”
Again all comments are listed in the annex.
4.16 Chapter summary
The web administered questionnaire found activities that were believed to be of particular
use included self-awareness, managing emotions, spotting the emotions in others and time
management/achieving work life balance, supporting literature review findings (Kelley,
2005) (Kinman & Grant, 2012) (Anderson, 2000) (Rajan-Rankin, 2013). All methods of
training delivery were deemed useful, experiential learning the most useful, with the
exception of drama / role plays. This adds weight to the work of Chernis, et al,. (1998) who
found that resilience can be built when good use is made of experiential learning. The most
significant impact was found to be increased capacity to make informed judgements and

51. quality of services delivered. A range of topics were suggested as topics respondents would
like to see included in a resilience programme, all of which were focused on building the
internal capacity of an individual to enable them to cope with adversity and pressure.
The action research and participant observation
The pre-questionnaire found the most common reasons for enrolling onto the programme
were to build the resilience of teams/organisations and to improve the quality of services
delivered. Reducing burnout also scored highly in relation to other topics, this being of
significant relevance to the adult social care sector as identified by Kinman & Grant (2011).
Building personal resilience was not afforded the same high rating, nor was reducing the risk
of absenteeism, despite this being a significant issue for the sector. However, this might
have been, in some measure, due to the general content-driven rather than emotion
management focus (Morrison, 2007) the sector is used to which may have led to a general
feeling of uncomfortableness stating that there was a need to build personal resilience.
Observations of participant discussion and comment over the three days showed many
shared experiences of unsupportive management, work pressures, conflict between client
and agency, supporting the literature review findings, (Curtis et al., 2009), (Pile, 2011)
(Adamson et al., 2012). Many participants also frequently commented on their lack of
personal resilience rather than that of teams or the organisation and the post event
questionnaire found the most significant impact had been to build personal resilience.
44
Content regarded as most valuable before and after the event included ways of building:
 Personal resilience
 Emotional intelligence
 Dysfunctional teams
 Mindfulness
 Understanding resilience.
This supports the work of Kinman and Grant (2012), who found emotional intelligence a key
factor in determining resilience, and that of Lynne (2009) who recommended mindfulness

52. practice to build resilience, and the work of Davidson & Kabat-Zinn (2003) who have
evidenced changes in brain functioning for those practicing mindfulness.
45
Content regarded as more valuable on conclusion than at the outset included:
 Building resilient teams
 Action planning
 Meeting emotional needs and emotions in organisation life.
Building resilience teams would help address the need to acknowledge, and put in place, the
external factors that contribute to resilience for those in the sector. Action Planning would
help provide opportunity to reflect, practice and reinforce skills learnt where actions are
implemented, reflection being an important tool in helping build resilience.
Building optimism and spotting the signs of stress scored slightly less at the end of the
programme than at the beginning. This is interesting in the context of Ryan et al., (2004)
who recognised the link between optimism and resilience, and Collins, et al., (2010) who
believed that it was important to help students to learn to recognise when adversity has
become too great and they are experiencing the early signs of stress and burnout.
The most significant impact lay with building personal and staff resilience. Still significant,
although slightly less so, were impacts around reducing burnout and improving service
quality. As the literature review identified, burnout is of significant relevance to the adult
social care sector (Kinman & Grant., 2011). Boosting team or organisational resilience and
the ability to make better judgements did not score as highly. The need to take time to
reflect on the learning was highlighted in order to determine impact was in evidence in both
participant observation and post questionnaire results.
Responses to the question regarding the most useful thing learnt were found to be
emotional intelligence, spotting the signs of stress, personality and resilience, use of
humour and laughter, mindfulness and organisational resilience.

53. Ideas of how the course could be improved varied, although several mentioned the need for
shorter breaks. The suggestion that the days could be split would help address the need for
space for reflection.
46

54. 47
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 Introduction
This chapter reviews and summarises the research, identifies the methods used and their
implications in this study.
The purpose of the study has been to identify the main learning and development
approaches to building worker resilience in the adult social care sector and critical success
factors of such learning.
This was driven by knowledge that adult social care work is a complex and pressured sector
in which to work (Curtis et al., 2009), (Pile, 2011) (Kinman & Grant 2012),(Adamson et al.,
2012), and resilience something the workforce will need in order to manage the challenges
it now faces (Laming, 2009),(SWTF 2009), (SWRB, 2010).
Challenges include both internal and external factors:
Internal factors
 High emotional and cognitive labour
 Some verbally and physically abusive clients, many of whom are involuntary
 Often requires long working hours
 Tension between meeting the needs of client and the agency
 Nature of work
External factors:
 Under constant public scrutiny
 Facing severe budget cuts and ever increasing demand for services
 Poor management support

55. The sector has high absenteeism and turnover. With a workforce of 1.75 million (Skills for
Care, 2014), understanding how to build resilience could offer real benefits. Whilst the
sector recognises this, there is little consensus as to how this could be achieved.
5.2 Research approach and methods
It was important for the research to understand the term “resilience”, which has been
described as a personality trait, an attribute that can be developed, an outcome and a
process. For the purposes of this study the definition used was that it is a construct that
“enables one to overcome stressors or withstand negative life events and, not only recover
from such experiences, but also find personal meaning in them” (Grant and Kinman,
2012,p.1). This was chosen at it encapsulates that it is defined by external and internal
factors, and how individuals respond and learn from adversity.
The philosophical framework within which this research was based was interpretivist as
there was a need to understand the differences between adult social care workers in their
role as social actors, to enter the world of workers to gain their perspective, as building
resilience, is based on interactions between people and is therefore not predictable; and as
meanings and experiences of different people needed to be explored (Saunders et al.,
2007). An inductive reasoning approach was used as the context in which activities take
place was an important consideration.
A multi method research style was used, information and data then triangulated in order to
draw conclusions. An inductive approach was adopted and primary data gathered to explore
and get a feel for the subject and potential critical success factors (Saunders et al, 2007).
The first stage used a web administered questionnaire, posing qualitative and quantitative
questions, with a self-selected sample of adult social care workers that had taken part in
learning and development that aimed to develop resilience using the literature review of
activities to inform the questions posed and organisations to contact. 19 individuals
completed this questionnaire, less than the target of 30. Reasons included fewer than
anticipated numbers taking part in resilience learning, commercial sensitivity from providers
and prohibitive length of time needed to submit an application, and gain approval from
national organisations, the gatekeepers of adult social care workers. Despite only realising
48

56. 19 returns however, results usefully informed the next stage of the research which included
an action research approach. A three day Resilience Building course was delivered by the
University of Chichester, targeting social care workers, and permission gained to use a pre
and post questionnaire to collect information, from adult social care workers, and with their
permission, observe participants. The analysis and interpretation of both helped begin to
identify patterns that would enable the critical successful factors of learning that builds
resilience to be identified.
5.3 Limitations
Whilst this approach would use human insight and experience, a weakness was the
“dependence on the researcher’s skill, training, intellect, discipline and creativity. The
researcher is the instrument of qualitative enquiry” (Patton 1988). A further weakness was
that the researcher delivered an element of the resilience training which therefore exposed
the research to the risk of researcher bias, questionable impartiality and ability to gather
honest participant responses. The external validity of this research could also be questioned
as “In qualitative research, a small non-random sample is selected precisely because the
researcher wants to understand the particular in depth, not to find out what is generally
true of the many” (Merrian 1998:208). The questionnaire approach also, whilst allowing for
unlimited comments to be made by respondents, may not have allowed for the depth of
enquiry necessary in terms of the thoughts, views, interpretations, priorities, processes,
feelings and experiences of participants in the training. The numbers involved also limited
the validity of the results.
Whilst the quantitative methods used ratings scales which allowed for a more systematic,
analytical and disciplined approach to supplement the qualitative methods used, allowing
identification of patterns to emerge, this approach was limited in that it resulted in a lack of
opportunity to probe responses made, once again impacting on the credibility and validity
of the research. Despite these limitations the research methods did allow for some insight
that could inform further work in order to identify generalisable conclusions regarding
critical success factors.
49

57. 50
5.4 Learning and development content
Learning and development topics delivered as part of resilience building programmes are
summarised in Table 10 below.
Internal focus External focus Internal and external combined
Perseverance Social networks Individual dispositional attributes
Emotion management and
awareness
Workplace supervision Family support and cohesion
Optimism Mentoring External support systems
Perspective Work place practice Prioritising work-life balances
Sense of humour Building a community of support
Self belief
Problem solving
Self care
Coping strategies
Spotting the signs of stress
Empathy
Reflective qualities
Mindfulness
Self awareness
Time management
Goal setting
Relaxation time
Table 10: Building adult social care worker resilience training content
Table 10 highlights the larger volume of content based on building the internal capacity of
an individual, with less emphasis on external factors which are considered by many to be of
real importance in building resilience (Luther & Cicchetti, 2000), (Clohen, 1996), (Mocke et
al., 2002), (Richardson, 2002). Further research could help identify the extent to which the
inclusion of external factors could constitute a critical success factor as it would appear,
hitherto be afforded less priority.
A further implication is the number of topics included, as illustrated in Table 10, along with
their breadth, suggesting complex decision-making and informed knowledge would be
needed by those commissioning learning in order to choose the most suitable learning

58. programme. It also suggests highly competent individuals able to deliver such specialised
content would be needed.
51
5.5 Potential Critical success factors
Content
The literature review and research suggest that content regarded as “critical” could
potentially be regarded as:
 building resilience
 emotional intelligence (including the competence self-awareness)
 mindfulness
 dysfunctional teams
 understanding resilience
However, given the limitations as stated above, further research would be needed to
establish the reliability of this finding.
Other content that may potentially be critical includes: building resilient teams, emotions in
organisation life and meeting emotional needs as these were areas that received reasonably
high ratings in the post questionnaire, and those identified by the literature review as
elements that research and training providers include in their training. The extent to which
learning should focus on building personal resilience and/or that of others is also an area
that requires further research.
Areas which respondents classed as “the most useful thing learnt” that have not already
been highlighted as a potential critical success factor that are worthy of further exploration
include personality and resilience, organisational resilience and use of humour and laughter
in building resilience.

59. Reflection time
Having time to reflect on learning could be a further critical success factor. This would
provide space for consolidation of learning and encourage workers to consider which areas
to practice to reinforce new thinking and behaviours, practice crucial to developing and
embedding the skills associated with emotion (Chernis, et al 1998) (Rately 2001).
Action Planning
Encouraging the creation of individual action plans could provide a framework to reinforce
areas for practice and development and the need for reflection.
Learning methods
The literature review found training provision included experiential learning in recognition
of the need to balance experiencing with conceptualising when learning how to build
resilience (Anghel, et al,. 2010). Experiential learning was regarded by respondents as the
most useful learning methods along with group discussion. Building opportunity for
experiential learning could also therefore constitute a critical success factor.
52
5.6 Recommendations
Agreeing a common definition
The sector would benefit from having in place a common definition of resilience as the
literature found some confusion regarding what the word means. This would aid the
facilitation of learning focused on helping participants understand what resilience is, one of
the factors that could be considered critical. This should reflect on both internal and
external factors that help people cope with, and learn from, adversity and challenge.
Learning content
Further research could help understand the extent that content should include building
resilience, emotional intelligence (including the competence self-awareness), mindfulness,
dysfunctional teams and understanding resilience. This work could also include linkage

60. between personality and resilience, spotting the signs of stress and use of humour and
laughter to build resilience.
Including external factors that help build resilience
Many of the approaches used focused on managing the internal factors that determine
personal resilience. This appears to be a gap; understanding the role that external factors
can play in building resilience could be an important strand of a learning and development
activity. This would also have resonance for those wishing to build team and organisational
resilience, teams and organisations forming part of an individual’s external world and
building team and organisational resilience forming a strong motivator for many that
attended the training programme.
Including experiential learning and discussion
Experiential learning and opportunity for discussion should be built into learning
programmes. These methods would be conducive to developing self-awareness, emotion
management, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, reflective skills, understanding resilience,
building resilient teams, emotions in organisation life, meeting emotional needs and
understanding of dysfunctional teams, the most valued elements of programmes .
Providing space for reflection
The suggestions that space for reflection and that the course could have been split to allow
time for such reflection and consolidation indicates that any programme of more than one
day might be better structured as days set apart to allow participants to reflect and also
practice the skills learnt, thus providing opportunity for further experiential activity which
the literature review has shown is so crucial to developing skills associated with emotion
such as resilience. The quality of discussion on return could potentially also be of real value
as facilitators allow participants to explore and learn from each other’s individual
experiences. Building in opportunity for action planning would help achieve this.
53