WORKING WITH CHILDREN IN A REFUGEE CAMP LESSONS LEARNED - A PSS PERSPECTIVE Jonathan Morgan, Siphelile Kaseke, Ncazelo Mlilo and Carmel Gaillard REPSSI PS Forum, Sept 2015 2 Background: In April 2015 there was an outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa . directed by South Africans at foreign nationals and in which at least 8 foreign nationals were killed. In response to this, 3 refugee camps were set up in Durban, 2 of which had been closed at the time of this visit ( May 2015). RESPONDING TO CHILDRENS PSS NEEDS IN AN EMERGENCY 3 In the first few weeks of the crisis, Save the Children and REPSSI, together with WVI and South Africa Red Cross Society (SARCS) successfully established a child friendly space in the Phoenix Camp. Save the Children procured a tent and play resources. During a second visit Siphelile Kaseke, Ncazelo Mlilo and Jonathan Morgan represented REPSSI and worked directly with children in the only remaining camp in which there were reported to be people including children. CHATSWORTH REFUGEE CAMP 4 Most of the children were from the DRC and from Burundi as those from Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique had either returned to their country of origin or to the townships around Durban where they had been living at the time of the xenophobic violence. BURUNDI AND DRC 5 Other organizations working in the camps at the time of our visit included: MSF (providing medical and psychological care), Red Cross (Providing psychosocial support for adults and children), UNHCR (supporting with registration and re-integration) and the Department of Social Development (responsible for co- coordinating all women and childrens services). Save the Children had been working there previously but had withdrawn the previous week. OTHER ORGANISATIONS WORKING IN THE CAMP 6 A) Simplified version of the REPSSI hero book for children aged 9-15 (This intervention involved children). B) Non-guided drawing and painting activities for children aged 3-8 years (This intervention involved children) C) Non-guided one-on-one conversations with women in the camp (this intervention involved only 5 women). INTERVENTIONS: 7 B) Involved children aged 3-8 years Children younger than 8 were given papers to draw or paint. This was meant to be free play and allowing them to express themselves. None of the children in the camp were attending school and some of the children in this age group engaged in homework for example completing Math or English exercises from their school text books. NON-GUIDED DRAWING AND PAINTING ACTIVITIES 8 Following a Narrative Therapy model, in these conversations an effort was made to hear the stories of these women, and to be on the lookout for, and to reinforce, their strengths and resilience. NON-GUIDED ONE-ON-ONE CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN 9 One striking theme that came out of the conversations with the women was that of trust. The women felt that they could not trust the police, neighbors, and even service providers working in the camps because of what they had gone through. The women also expressed that they had a lot of fear around not knowing where they would go following the camp and were worried about the future of their children. Returning to their war torn countries was not an option, neither was returning to the townships where they had been living in South Africa which is where many of them had been attacked. THEMES 10 The purpose of the intervention was: to engage children (aged 8-15 years) in a fun arts based activity that reminds them of their strengths and resilience to give them the opportunity to share with a caring adult some of their hopes and worries to support them to find strategies to overcome these worries to provide the facilitator with information regarding the childs origins and circumstances HERO BOOK 11 My name is ..and I am ..years old I come from and I have been living in I am good at ...and .. . I wish and when I am big I want to be a .. I am worried about .. People in my life who support me are . To make my worries smaller I I am a hero because HERO BOOK PROMPTS 12 CHILDREN MAKING THEIR OWN HERO BOOKS 13 HERO BOOK COVER 14 I AM GOOD AT 15 I COME FROM . 16 I COME FROM .. I AM GOOD AT . I LIKE 17 PLEA FOR HELP 18 (C) The only space to work in the camp was an open sided gazebo supplied by MSF. This space was not very containing and we were exposed to the chaos of the camp. The children had to work on plastic sheeting lying on the ground and there were no desks, tables or chairs. (R) There is a need to set up a child friendly space with chairs and tables in contexts like this LESSONS LEARNT (L), CHALLENGES (C) AND RECOMMENDATIONS (R): 19 There were lots and lots of children aged 2-8 years who were too young to engage in hero booking. These children were all over us and the art materials even before we could start. (C) In order to make hero booking (the planned intervention) possible, Siphelile engaged these younger children in free drawing which turned out to be an unplanned but very successful and enjoyed activity (L) There is a need to deliberately plan for activities that are age differentiated, or coordinate with other organizations in this regard (R). AGE DIFFERENTIATION 20 Men and older teenagers seemed not to be reached by interventions in the camp (C) Services and programmes should also target men and teenagers as well as women and children (R) FURTHER MARGINALISED 21 There is a great need for the organizations in this context to coordinate services offered by various volunteering individuals and organizations. (R) Each service should be clearly articulated in terms of a) who its aimed at (age and gender), b) what its objectives are, c) what the duration of the program is, and d) how it articulates with other activities and their objectives (R) CO-ORDINATION 22 Children in the camp did not have a fixed schedule and it proved a challenge to mobilize them we suspect that there are many children we did not reach. (C) There is a need to have a well thought out comprehensive schedule for the children in the camp and make the schedule known to all the children. This will help structure their lives which have been disrupted and lack structure and cohesion (R). STRUCTURE 23 The simplified hero book appears to work well in contexts such as these. The prompts were simple enough for the children to understand and prompted deep and active engagement. (L) To avoid children losing some pages of their hero books, it worked well to fold several blank A4 pages in half and to staple these to make a hero book into which the children can work (L) HERO BOOK 24 School provides structure and continuity to children whose lives have been disrupted by an emergency. Children in the camp had not attended school for a period of 2 months ever since the xenophobic attacks began. Every effort should have been made to transport them to school from the camp (daily) but this did not happen. (R) SCHOOL 25 In this instance REPSSI who do not have a presence in Durban and who are not typically a direct service provider, for reasons of operational / action research interfaced directly with children At the end of the 3 week period, upon REPSSIs withdrawal, children had bonded with the REPSSI staff and expressed regret that we were now leaving them (C) To address this challenge, REPSSI suggests that local NGOs and suitable adults and youth in the camp be trained by REPSSI to implement the intervention themselves (R) LOVE AND LEAVE US 26 Interventions most appropriate for camp contexts fall under the IASC MHPSS classification as focused non specialised interventions typically involving groups rather than one on one interventions Hero books typically fall into this category but more work can be done to render the Narrative Therapy group work model more suitable for groups. (R) GROUP WORK 27 Risk of interpreting all of the childrens experience in terms of trauma for example engaging them in trauma debriefing is not recommended Our experience was that children wanted to have fun, be artistically and intellectually stimulated, play games, burn up energy, etc more than they needed to engage in talking about the trauma This is not to deny that there may be a small number of individual children who have been severely affected by trauma and who require individual counseling (not equal to trauma debriefing) DONT NECESSARILY TRAUMATIZE ALL EXPERIENCES 28 children need containment and structure dont approach this work within a frame of trauma take care not to retraumatise by putting pressure on children to recount or relive the trauma (in this case xenophobic attacks) children adapt well to change if containment and structure provided age differentiate PSS interventions Keep children in school CONCLUSION 29 Include men and older teenagers (as well as women and younger children) Coordinate with other service providers each of whom should have clear objectives and target sub groups articulated If cant be there all the time, develop a programme as well structured-coordinated-stimulating-containing curriculum with guest speakers who come and go allow children to understand this from the start CONCLUSIONS CONTINUED 30 There is a need to clearly articulate group work principles which allow for a safe and therapeutic experience especially for adults There is a real need for a manual of set of guidelines for PSS workers in contexts such as these A medium to long term structure / curriculum for the child friendly safe space would be very useful in these kinds of contexts CONCLUSIONS CONTINUED