Growing Up Resilient

It is universally accepted that sensitive and responsive caregiving leads to positive cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes for children. While several intervention approaches exist, this text brings together the rationale and current evidence base for one such approach―the Mediational Intervention for Sensitizing Caregivers (MISC).

MISC integrates aspects of socio-emotional health and cognitive development as well as being less culturally intrusive than existing approaches. It is a strengths-based program complementing existing practices and cultures. Editors bring together in one volume the theory and research from the last decade supporting the MISC approach. Chapters focus on a range of topics, such as training the trainer, maternal depression and MISC, applying MISC to families reunited after migration-related separation and more. The book also focuses on several country-specific cases, such as applying MISC to HIV/AIDS-affected children in South Africa or in early childhood care settings in Israel.

This book is essential reading for those working in early educational or clinical settings tasked with developing policy to ensure optimal child developmental outcomes. The book is applicable to professionals from a wide variety of disciplines including clinical, counselling, educational, psychology, psychiatry, paediatrics, nursing, social work and public health.

Carla Sharp, PhD, is Professor in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at the University of Houston (UH), and Interim Associate Dean for Faculty and Research. She is also Director of Adolescent Diagnosis Assessment Prevention and Treatment (ADAPT) Center at UH and directs the Developmental Psychopathology Lab at UH. As a developmental psychopathologist, she makes use of multiple methods across different levels of analyses to understand, detect, and treat emotional and behaviour problems in children and adolescents with a specific focus on attachment, social-cognitive and socio-emotional development. As a South African citizen and a child clinical psychologist, she has a longstanding interest in addressing these issues in children in resource-limited settings where children are at high risk for developing mental health problems as a result of attachment disruption and trauma. The HIV/AIDS epidemic created a tragic natural experiment that sheds light on socio-emotional and socio-cognitive development in the context of losing a primary caregiver. Since 2008, Dr Sharp’s research has been continuously funded in South Africa to study the effects of losing a parent due to HIV/AIDS. It is in this context that Dr Sharp became acquainted with the Mediational Intervention for Sensitizing Caregivers (MISC), which was evaluated in a recent trial in South Africa funded by the NICHD. She has published over 270 peer-reviewed publications (H-index 61), numerous chapters and books.

Lochner Marais, PhD, is Professor of Development Studies and Acting Director of the Centre for Development Support (University of the Free State, South Africa). Marais’s research interests cover three different, though related, themes: housing policy, small urban areas and public health (including his work on OVC). He has authored, co-authored and compiled more than 250 research reports, including more than 180 refereed articles in peer-reviewed journals or books (H-index 26). He has also co-edited eight books (two previous ones with Routledge). His work on OVC includes collaborative projects with Professor Sharp funded by the NICHD and projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Huffman Foundations.