The Children and Families Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Resource Collection

Ukraine Parenting Response: Helping children and parents cope

The Ukraine Parenting Response: Helping children and parents cope leaflet gives 14 sets of practical tips that parents and caregivers can use to support themselves and their children during crisis. The leaflet covers tips on self-care for the parent or caregiver, different ways of supporting children to cope with stress, anger and loss, as well as advice and practical tips for ensuring their safety and protection.

Ukraine Key Care Recommendations (Responding to children's care in the context of the Ukraine Crisis)

"The Ukraine Key Care Recommendations (Responding to children's care in the context of the Ukraine Crisis) guidance document provides a framework to support child protection practitioners and policymakers working both inside Ukraine and in host countries to implement responses related to children’s care in the context of Ukraine in line with international standards and good practice on children’s care and the provision of alternative care. It includes key recommendations to inform strategic priorities, programme design, and priority interventions and advocacy efforts with policymakers, donors and other key stakeholders. The recommendations concern children without parental or family care, at risk of separation, in alternative care or who have recently left alternative care, including those who have been evacuated from residential care facilities either inside Ukraine or to host countries. Each section considers children in both refugee and internally displaced contexts, as well as children with existing intersecting vulnerabilities, such as children with disabilities and children from ethnic minorities, including Roma or third country nationals. "

Child Protection Sessions for Parents and Caregivers

The Child Protection Sessions for Parents and Caregivers manual is a guide for facilitating child protection sessions for parents and caregivers. These sessions are designed to help parents to better care for their children and to protect them from all forms of violence. These sessions must be conducted by a trained facilitator who can facilitate a discussion on the issues addressed in this manual with parents and caregivers from the community. Each session is divided into section plans that provide the facilitator with guidance on how to conduct the session, plus annexes for each major topic, including tips for facilitators. The annexes contain background information for the facilitator as well as messages for parents that can be given as handouts. Each discussion should ideally be comprised of 10-20 participants.

Connect Tools

The CONNECT project aims to support actors involved in responding to the situation of unaccompanied children arriving in Europe. Key issues addressed by these actors include recognition as a child and access to reception services, legal representation and guardianship, the participation of children in procedures, access to education and health services. Other important issues are disappearances from centers, how to determine the best interest of the child and identification of possible child victims of trafficking. Each project country have through pilot projects developed practical tools which can be used by actors across the EU Member States. These tools address specific aspects of how actors address the situation of these children and can be used separately or together as a toolkit: 1. Who's responsible? A tool to strengthen cooperation between actors involved in the protection system for unaccompanied migrant children (Italy) 2. Local cooperation for unaccompanied children: A tool to assess and improve reception condition (Sweden) 3. Standards to esnure that unaccompanied migrant children are able to fully participate: A tool to assist actors in legal and judicial proceedings (The UK) 4. The right to be heard and participation of unaccompanied children: A tool to support the collection of children’s views on protection and reception services (The Netherlands) 5. Working with the unaccompanied child: A tool to support the collection of children’s views on protection and reception services (The Netherlands) 6. Evaluation sheet - End of guardianship form (to be filled in by child).

Supporting and Responding to Forcibly Displaced Children: Training Module for Child Helpline Counsellors

The Supporting and Responding to Forcibly Displaced Children Training Module for Child Helpline Counsellors aims to enhance child helpline counsellors’ knowledge and support for children on the move, specifically those who have been forcibly displaced. By taking this module, child helpline counsellors will be able to follow a child’s journey from pre-flight, during flight and after flight while learning about the key concepts and issues associated with each phase of the flight. Case studies and self-reflection exercises are also found throughout the training module along with a final assessment to help child helpline counsellors evaluate their knowledge and contemplate on the key concepts, case stories and programmes they previously studied.

Parenting on the Move: Program for empowerment and promoting the development of competencies of parents of children up to 12 years of age, in situations of migrations and refugeehood Package

The Parenting on the Move (PoM) programme package has been developed to support families to provide the necessary conditions for well-being, resilience, and education of children up to 12 years of age, in situations of migration/refugeehood. The programme has three components: parent workshops, family workshops (led by trained moderators), and materials for activities that parents and children can engage in, in a family setting. It can be implemented by moderators (activists, experts, students) trained for its implementation. The moderators need to have the knowledge of the programme’s thematic fields, experience in facilitating group work with adults and group work with adults and children together, and also need to have empathy and developed communication skills. As a programme package, PoM provides a comprehensive framework for implementation through a) training of the facilitators of the workshops; b) mentoring through the implementation; c) monitoring and evaluation. The programme package consists of: • Moderator’s handbook with workshop program • Material for the families: “POM NOTES TO GO” and “POM GAMES TO GO”, • Handbook for trainers and mentors.

Tips for Working with Children: A Pocket Guide for Border Patrol Agents

The Pocket Guide for Border Patrol Agents provides tips for taking a child-sensitive approach which allows agents to carry out their work and communicate in a way that support children’s safety and well-being, while minimizing harm. It can also be used by others than border patrol agents, who meet children at the border or on the move.

Child Safe Programming and Safeguarding in Interim Centres

The Child Safe Programming and Safeguarding in Interim Centres outlines some of the potential safeguarding risks children face in Interim Care Centres. The guidance note identifies three main ways that children can be harmed: by people, by programmes and processes, and by the physical environment. The guidance note provides information on safeguarding from sexual exploitation abuse and harassment (SEAH), and other risks to children's well-being including neglect, emotional abuse and unsafe environments. There are also suggestions for how these risks can be mitigated to ensure that children are as safe as possible.

Manual on Community-Based Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) in Emergencies and Displacement

The Listen and Learn Participatory Assessment with Children and Adolescent tool presents an approach to participatory assessments for children and adolescents. It provides guidance on how to run participatory assessments ethically and inclusively. After tips on preparation, the tool describes a range of participatory workshop methods that can be used by humantarian actors, culminating in a sample workshop module. The tool encourages monitoring and evaluation teams to use varied activities, instead of only focus group discussions. The annex contains a number of practical tools to assist in planning and conducting participatory assessments. There is specific guidance on how to hold structured dialogues with refugee men and women, girls and boys of all ages and backgrounds about their particular protection needs and risks. The tool can be used to ensure that children are at the centre of decision-making concerning their protection and well-being.

Child Protection in Emergency Shelters for Refugees: A checklist for temporary accommodation for children and families

The Child Protection in Emergency Shelters for Refugees: A checklist for temporary accommodation for children and families presents the most important protection requirements for refugee children, young people and their families and ensures these are met, based on tried and tested quality assessment tool, “the children’s rights check”. This checklist is intended to help operators and staff to determine the situation regarding children’s rights in a shelter, and if necessary, to quickly initiate measures to improve the situation. For this purpose, five quality areas were chosen: Protection, health, participation and the cross-cutting areas of human resources and infrastructure. To check how well you are positioned to meet the needs of children, young people and their families, we translated these categories into everyday observations. Tick off the things that are already going well and highlight the areas where you still need to make adjustments. This will allow you to recognise those areas that require further action. The check list is aimed at shelters where people stay for approximately 24 to 48 hours.