Featured Scholar: Susana Mariscal, Ph.D., MSW
Associate Professor, IU School of Social Work
Director of Strengthening Indiana Families
Research Video: https://youtu.be/g0t0IZav2QA
Caring and Collaborative Communities, Strong and Resilient Families
Dr. Susana Mariscal is an associate professor at Indiana University School of Social Work. She researches child maltreatment prevention and the promotion of resilience among children and families. What is resilience? Resilience is the transformational capacity that all human beings have to overcome adversity. It emerges in the interplay between risk and protective factors. What are risk factors? Risk factors can be adversity, victimization, a traumatic event, or a natural disaster. What are protective factors? They're the strengths, assets, resources, skills, and support systems that children and families have or that they may develop to overcome adversity. One of the most important protective factors is caring relationships. When a child feels seen, heard, understood, safe, loved, and valued that child can take that strength throughout their life. That strength is so critical because it can be transformational. And, it can be a protective factor that can be activated anytime that there are difficult times of adversity.
The beauty of resilience is that caring relationships are not exclusive of parents and children. Parents are not the only adults who can make a child feel safe and loved. Grandparents, any relatives, coaches, teachers, mentors, neighbors can also be that caring adult for children. And the same thing for parents. The more protective factors they have, the better families will do. Protective factors actually may be shielding families from maltreatment. And that is the premise of strengths-based preventions.
One of Dr. Mariscal's projects comes from the approach of strength-space prevention. It is implementing a primary child maltreatment prevention program. In Indiana, she and her team of researchers and community partners are implementing four family resource centers. And this is in collaboration with over 200 partners at the state and local levels. This is in collaboration with Firefly Children and Family Alliance and Department of Child Services and multiple other agencies that are supporting her research in different ways. What is offered at the Family Resource Centers? They offer concrete support programs. They have a store that offers baby and hygiene items. They have monthly family fun events that are designed to strengthen the bonds between children and parents. They also offer parent cafes to create informal spaces for support among parents. It is important to know that it is okay to not have everything figured out about parenting, and the parent cafes are the perfect space to talk about it. They also offer a window between World Studies arts program to support the expression of feelings that are sometimes difficult to express. A variety of other services are available with help from their wonderful community navigators.
Dr. Mariscal's creation of community resources to strengthen child and family support systems is another excellent example of how IU Indianapolis's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.
Selected Publications in IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks
With several scholarly articles contributed to IU Indianapolis's free, open access repository, Dr. Mariscal has made research knowledge available to researchers, students, and readers around the world.
McCarthy, K. M., Mariscal, E. S., & Wahler, E. A. (2022). MSW Student Concerns about Addressing Clients’ Substance Use and Misuse. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 42(1), 45–64. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/34760
Sokol, R. L., Victor, B. G., Mariscal, E. S., Ryan, J. P., & Perron, B. E. (2021). Using administrative data to uncover how often and why supervisory neglect happens: Implications for child maltreatment prevention. Child Abuse & Neglect, 122, 105321. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/34988
Hamby, S., & Mariscal, E. S. (2021). Next Steps in Untangling the Web of Violence: A Research Agenda. Child Maltreatment, 26(4), 470–475. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/34989
Mariscal, E. S., Sabina, C., & Cuevas, C. A. (2021). Interpersonal Victimization of Latino Youth: A Latent Class Analysis. Journal of Family Violence, 36(1), 37–50. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/34762
Victor, B. G., Rousson, A. N., Henry, C., Dalvi, H. B., & Mariscal, E. S. (2021). Child Protective Services Guidelines for Substantiating Exposure to Domestic Violence as Maltreatment and Assigning Caregiver Responsibility: Policy Analysis and Recommendations. Child Maltreatment, 26(4), 452–463. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/30603
Carlson, L., Smith, G., Mariscal, E. S., Rapp, C. A., Holter, M. C., Ko, E., … Fukui, S. (2018). The Comparative Effectiveness of a Model of Job Development versus Treatment as Usual. Best Practices in Mental Health; Chicago, 14(2), 21–31. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/21645
Find more free articles by Susana Mariscal in IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks.