Professor Dame Sally Davies, in her annual report, said the approach has proved so successful that it is now been adopted by agencies around the country and in other European countries.
'Boingboing – so called to illustrate the idea of bouncing back from adversity – provides resilience advice and training to help people who are suffering hard times'
Professor Davies said: "A series of Resilient Therapy (RT) research and development projects emerging from the joint enterprise (boingboing) have generated new knowledge about context-specific resilience building in a range of circumstances.
"What's more, the work has highlighted the importance of working with parents, practitioners and young people themselves to enable this."
Professor Davies said the boingboing idea has now been adopted across the UK and internationally: "Community and academic collaborators have implemented and adapted RT and its Resilience Framework across many practice arenas both nationally and internationally, including adoption, fostering, mental health, learning disabilities, youth offending, and practitioner resilience in social care and health fields.
"The RT approaches have been embedded in 10 local authority children's workforce training programmes and 12 university courses, in addition to community sector organisations such as Sussex Central YMCA, local 91¶¶Òõ charity Amaze, national charity YoungMinds and Newport Mind. Internationally, RT has been taken up by children's services in Greece, Italy and Sweden.
"At boingboing, resilience research is more than just taking part in projects; parents, practitioners, young people and academics have formed a community around the work, allowing knowledge, ideas, skills and development to cross boundaries and challenge traditional hierarchies."
Professor Davies detailed case studies including that of 'M' who turned to self-harming to cope with the tough times she was facing. M first encountered RT when volunteering with a community art group for young people with mental health issues which works collaboratively with the 91¶¶Òõ.
Professor Davies said: "More and more she started to replace self-harm with art as she occupied herself with her voluntary work and applied the Resilience Framework to her own life. M has worked as part of boingboing, collaborating with university academics on several RT projects and, together with other young volunteers, has written RT practice guides and talked about RT to a range of audiences.
"M is passionate about art and helped write a guide for working with young people with complex needs through community arts practice following a resilience building project exploring the RT approach in this context."
Boingboing is made up of academics, parents, young people, practitioners and service users. It is co-led by Professor Angie Hart, the 91¶¶Òõ's Professor of Child, Family and Community Health. She said: "We are delighted the Chief Medical Officer has recognised us in her annual report. This reflects the commitment of all the organisations and volunteers who have invested so much time and effort in developing our resilience research community and in trying out ideas in practice."