Professionals have to "stop thinking that help only comes from professionals", according to Prof Robbie Gilliganof Trinity College Dublin.
Prof Gilligan, who is professor of social work and social policy at Trinity College Dublin, was addressing a two-day conference at NUI Galway (NUIG) on the theme of building resilience in children, families and communities.
He was one of several keynote speakers, along with writer and former Beirut hostage Brian Keenan and Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay, at the conference hosted by NUIG's Child and Family Research Centre.
Prof Gilligan noted that research was "beginning to catch up with reality" in this area, and cited several international examples of this. For instance, in Canada, "first nation" communities which were afforded stronger political and cultural expression showed a reduction in youth suicide.
Research in the Netherlands found that ethnic groups which had their own - rather than integrated - sports teams benefited from the sense of collective identity which this engendered.
However, Prof Gilligan warned that the notion of "community" was not simple, but was very complex in stratified and ethnically diverse societies. This was not being given sufficient forethought in this changing State, where we were "high on diversity, but low on social cohesion".
Dr Pat Dolan of the NUIG Child and Family Research Centre told The Irish Times that the conference aimed to explore the idea of giving more support to families in difficult circumstances at an early stage. It could be argued that if one-tenth of the budget to take a child into care was given to the affected family at an earlier stage, a potential crisis could be avoided, he said.
In his address, Dr Dolan said that professionals "need to be surer" that they are being realistic in their approach to children and families experiencing adversity, and should take into account the core issue of poverty.
Services needed to be more "transparent" about involving the family in choices about what might work best, and new services which nurtured natural defences to stress, such as extended family and friends, should be encouraged. Service planning also needed to consider the wider and longer term needs of families, rather than "fire brigade" actions, he said.
Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay noted that if resilience could not be taught, it could "certainly be crushed", and one in nine children still live in consistent poverty in Ireland - one of the richest countries in the world.
Barnardos had a saying that "every childhood lasts a lifetime", and a childhood of poverty could leave scars that never fade.
Earlier this month Barnardos evaluated the success of its "Da Project" to improve the relationship between children of single parents, mainly mothers, and their fathers. Mr Finlay outlined the findings of a study of young children in one large housing estate in Dublin, where two-thirds of the children lived in houses with cold, damp and inadequate furniture.
One in three had missed 10 days of school or more in their first year and a quarter displayed significant problems of conduct in starting school. One in five had eating difficulties, virtually all had witnessed drug taking and a majority had experienced bullying. Every second child in the estate had been born into a single parent family, he said.
