Resilience Through Relationships

People across the globe are caring for children in adverse circumstances that place those children at risk for negative outcomes. Children metabolize difficult experiences from within a relationship with a responsive, well-regulated adult. The presence of one such person is a 'super protective factor' that buffers against trauma, toxic stress, and negative developmental trajectories. It is within this caregiving relationship that children are able to reestablish physical and emotional safety, experience and express their emotional reactions, and co-regulate with the limbic system of the caregiver. Unfortunately caregivers are often experiencing similar stressors and may not have access to the support they need to offer the same to their children. This project proposes a physical/technological space (Emotional Support Pod) within which people can make use of a peer-support tool (Listening Partnership) to offer attention and emotional support to other people experiencing adversity regardless of physical location. 

There are numerous global crises in which human beings are experiencing severe adversity while lacking the emotional support necessary to allow for healing from the effects of toxic stress and trauma. Food, water, protection from the elements, medical care and physical safety must be secured first. But emotional support to allow for people's innate emotional healing mechanisms to function should also be considered an essential component of any disaster relief program, any refugee support structure, and any health services program offered to communities and people in crisis.

We are proposing that this resource be made available to caregivers across the globe. We are particularly focused on caregivers of young children in order to build resilience in those caregivers so they can protect children's functioning during a time of increased vulnerability to negative developmental outcomes.

The proposed emotional support tool, a Listening Partnership, is a simple, no-cost, low-tech framework through which two people take turns listening to each other. This creates the emotional space within which the person being listened to can experience and express their emotions and co-regulate with the listener. Although this is a simple tool there are often barriers to its use. The primary barrier is the availability of another person whose attention is not similarly consumed by shared adverse circumstances. This project proposes to develop a physical space, an Emotional Support Pod, equipped with video technology that can connect people located anywhere in the world. This Pod would ensure a temperature-controlled, privacy-protected space within which caregivers could connect with each other regardless of their location and make use of Listening Partnerships.

Our solution combines existing technology and a simple yet powerful interpersonal connection tool to create a space in which caregivers can harness their innate emotional healing mechanisms to recover from the effects of adversity. Caregiver resilience can then buffer the children in their care against the impact of this shared adversity. The public health impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences is being recognized in a wide array of fields (medicine, education, mental health) but barriers to accessing this kind of emotional support are high.

We propose the creation of a portable space, possibly similar to a phone booth, with room for a person to sit, facing a video screen equipped with technology to connect with another person anywhere in the world. This pod would need to ensure an appropriate temperature, protection from the elements, physical safety and privacy, while making use of available and renewable energy sources to operate.

Our theory of change is a comprehensive theory of emotional functioning which posits that people heal from difficult things that happen to them within the context of a relationship where one person is listening to another. This listening framework allows for the operation of a set of inborn healing mechanisms involving the experiencing and expression of emotions while co-regulating with the listener's limbic system. Our proposed solution would allow for the creation of these conditions in spaces where the emotional resources of people in the affected community are likely to be stretched or unavailable.

The Listening Partnership tool was developed over 30 years ago by Hand in Hand Parenting, a not-for-profit parent-support organization founded in Palo Alto, CA. Hand in Hand has over 150 certified instructors in countries all over the world and served 60,000 people last year. We would hope to conduct a pilot study with an initial prototype of the physical/technological structure with a small group of participants within a year of development.

We would like for this simple yet powerful healing tool to be available to all people across the globe within the next five years.

The Listening Partnership tool has been widely disseminated but it is the availability of a listener whose attention is not similarly impacted in the context of adversity that is an on-going barrier in communities experiencing adversity.

We would hope to partner with a group that could help us develop the technology platform.

At this point we are a completely volunteer team that has come together to work on this issue. Depending upon options for pursing this idea we would expand our team as necessary.

The final make-up of the team will depend upon funding

Frontiers of Innovation at Harvard University's Center on the Developing Child

We are currently an all-volunteer team

We are looking for funding to work on this project

To be continued

To be continued

To be continued

To be continued

To be continued