The Children and Families Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Resource Collection

Caring for Child Survivors of Sexual Abuse: Guidelines for Health and Psychosocial Service Providers in Humanitarian Settings

The Caring for Child Survivors (CCS) of Sexual Abuse Guidelines is part of the CCS Resource Package developed to respond to the gap in global guidance for health and psychosocial staff providing care and treatment to child survivors of sexual abuse in humanitarian settings. It provides guidance on how to: (1) Build the capacity of health and psychosocial service providers on the foundational (or “core”) knowledge, attitudes and skills to work with child survivors of sexual abuse; (2) Adapt case management for child survivors; (3) Implement targeted psychosocial interventions; (4) Improve coordinated care across multiple sectors and service providers; and (5) Monitor the quality of service provision. The CCS Guidelines are based on global research and evidence-based field practice and bring a much-needed practical approach to helping child survivors and their families recover and heal from the often-times devastating impacts of sexual abuse.

Improving Learning Environments Together in Emergencies (ILET) Package

This resource is a detailed training package on using assessments for improving learning environments in humanitarian contexts through community participation. ILET empowers communities to improve the quality of the learning environment through a data-driven, participatory, sustainable process of planning and implementing School Improvement Plans. ILET offers a set of easy-to-use data collection tools, real-time analysis, and visualization via a user-friendly web-based platform with both mobile and paper data collection features. Collecting data and sharing results with the communities in a timely manner enforces transparency, increases accountability and ownership and stimulates the creation of local solutions. The ILET package consists of three pillars: 1. Guidance Documents: the Overview Document, Step by Step Guide, Training Manual (including training handouts + training powerpoint) 2. Data Management: Data Management Platform, Data Management Handbook, Data Collection Tools 3. Program Templates: School Findings Cards, School Improvement Plan Poster, in addition to program management templates such as results framework and budget samples.

Conflict Management and Peace Building in Everyday Life: A resource kit for children and youth

The Conflict Management and Peacebuilding in Everyday Life resource kit contains a series of tools that have been collected, adapted and used with and by children and youth in diverse socio-cultural and political contexts. The tools may be used with and by children and youth to analyse conflict, to plan, implement and assess conflict management and peace building activities. They can also be used to develop and strengthen strategic plans for peace building in different settings, such as family and school, and at community, district and national levels. This kit will be useful for education programme managers, education advisors, and teachers.

SEL and PSS Measurement and Assessment Tools in Education in Emergencies: Identifying, Analyzing, and Mapping Tools to Global Guidance Documents

This document covers programmatic measurement approaches, global measurement frameworks, assessment tools, and monitoring and results frameworks. It aims to map what constitutes quality and equitable education in emergencies and how it can be assessed at the program and individual learning levels. It also aims to inform on the linkages between measurement at the programme or national level and global measurement frameworks. It includes a set of profiles of measurement and assessment tools; a summary table for looking across measurement and assessment tools and guidance documents; and a set of profiles on programmatic approaches to SEL and PSS.

Field Handbook on Unaccompanied and Separated Children

This handbook provides operational guidance for child protection staff and other actors working on prevention and response to family separation in emergencies. It sets out to ensure that responses meet agreed inter-agency standards and are appropriate to the particular situation of individual unaccompanied and separated children, emphasizing the importance of working with affected communities, including children themselves. It accompanies the Toolkit (see Linked Resources section). The handbook is divided into a summary guidance section, which collates all the essential actions and tools covered in the handbook and acts as a quick reference guide for practitioners. Detailed guidance on each topic can be found within corresponding chapters in sections one and Two. Section one provides an overview of the legal framework and organizational mandates related to unaccompanied and separated children (UASC), characterizes family separation in emergencies, describes the causes of separation, outlines how to prepare for and prevent separation in emergencies, and how to undertake coordination and assessment. It also covers the basics of UASC programming, case management and information management. Section two provides detailed guidance on immediate needs in emergencies and detailed information on identification, documentation, alternative care, family tracing, verification, reunification, reintegration and cross-sector coordination.

Toolkit on Unaccompanied and Separated Children

The toolkit was produced by the Inter-Agency Working Group on Unaccompanied and Separated Children (UASC) to provide technical guidance to support the implementation of the core principles for working with these children. It highlights key international instruments and guidelines relating to unaccompanied and separated children, including a series of tools and sample documents for use in programming. It accompanies the Field Handbook (see Linked Resources section).

Guidance Note for Teacher Wellbeing in Emergency Settings

The Guidance Note for Teacher Wellbeing in Emergency Settings provides information on how to support teacher wellbeing in the five domains of INEE’s (2010) Minimum Standards. It explains how to: promote mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) for teachers; create more enabling work environments for teachers; and enhance teacher voice, agency, and leadership in crises. ​The guidance note offers resources and tools and examples of these standards in action. The guidance note is for people who work in all humanitarian and development sectors that impact the lives of teachers both at work and out of work in their homes and communities. Elevating the importance of teacher wellbeing emphasizes the critical role it plays in strengthening humanitarian-development coherence and improving the resiliency of education systems.

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.

Guidelines on Children's Reintegration

The Guidelines on children's reintegration provides practical guidance to help governments, donors, NGOs, faith-based organizations, and practitioners to design high quality programs, measure impact, train practitioners, and pursue national-level systemic change in support of integration. The Guidelines provide a framework for anyone seeking to ensure family care for children. They build upon a solid evidence base, developed through extensive desk-based research which explored good practice in the reintegration of separated children in emergencies, former child soldiers, street children, institutionalised children, migrant children, and children who have been trafficked. The guidelines call for: (1) support for children and families at all stages of the process for proper preparation and follow-up; (2) a holistic package including economic strengthening, access to basic services, therapeutic support, and efforts to address violence and abuse in families; (3) work to enable communities to monitor and assist reintegrating children, and to reduce stigma and discrimination and (4) strengthening of child protection systems to create an environment which promotes effective reintegration.

Helping Adolescents Thrive Toolkit

The Helping Adolescents Thrive toolkit, developed by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, provides programmatic guidance, based on evidence-based guidelines, for people working in the health, social services and education sectors on how to implement mental health promotive and preventive interventions that are appropriate to local needs and the contexts where adolescents live. The toolkit covers the legal foundations required for such programmes to succeed, the features of environments that are conducive to the well-being of adolescents, what support should be provided to parents and other caregivers, and psychosocial interventions that work.

Supporting Adolescents and their Families in Emergencies

Supporting Adolescents and their Families in Emergencies (SAFE) is a protection and psychosocial support program model to strengthen the capacity of front-line actors so that adolescent girls and boys (ages 10-19) are safer, more supported, and equipped with positive coping strategies in acute emergencies. SAFE aims to make adolescent girls and boys more visible and heard in the first phase of an emergency response. The SAFE Resource Package is publicly available and includes practical field-friendly implementation guidance, detailed facilitator training manuals and three tailored curricula – for adolescent girls, for adolescent boys, and for caregivers.

Safe Healing and Learning Spaces Toolkit

The SHLS Toolkit provides frontline humanitarian staff with practical implementation guidance, adaptable sample tools, comprehensive training materials, and scripted instructional content needed to initiate an SHLS in an emergency setting. Resources are provided for a 9-month program, and applicable in both rural and urban areas, based on locally-defined needs and priorities. The content is holistic, including tools for social-emotional learning, reading and math, and parenting support. Materials are open source, user-friendly and designed for managers and facilitators in the form of structured yet adaptable training and learning content. The tools are evidence-based and practitioner-tested, developed bythe IRC’s in-house technical experts, field tested with displaced communitiesand frontline staff in Nigeria, Chad and Iraq, and refined through feedbackfrom academic and peer reviewers.

The Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Minimum Services Package

The MHPSS MSP is a resource for humanitarian actors who plan, support, coordinate, implement and evaluate activities within and across sectors. These include government actors, MHPSS Technical Working Groups (TWGs), national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society and other advocacy groups, Red Cross and Red Crescent networks, UN agencies, coordinators of sectors/clusters/AoRs and donors. The MHPSS MSP informs the development and implementation of humanitarian response planning processes and documents including Humanitarian Needs Overviews, Humanitarian Response Plans, Refugee Response Plans, cluster strategy development and specific donor funding calls and mechanisms. The MSP builds on existing MHPSS standards and tools to create a single, easy-to-follow intersectoral package. It encompasses a wide range of activities that can be implemented by staff and volunteers with diverse backgrounds, qualifications and levels of experience. While standards, guidelines and tools for MHPSS have been developed, there is a recognized need for an intersectoral costed package to operationalize these guidelines and standards.

A Toolkit for Integrating Gender Equality and Social Inclusion in Design, Monitoring and Evaluation

The Toolkit for Integrating Gender Equality and Social Inclusion in Design, Monitoring and Evaluation provides guidance and tools to support staff in integrating the Gender Equality and Social Inclusio (GESI) perspectives in all stages of project. Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) is integral to achieving global sustainable development goals, and child well-being objectives. GESI advances World Vision’s core values to promote human transformation by reaching the most vulnerable children and adults and challenging the root causes of vulnerability that sustain gender inequality and social exclusion, such as restrictive socio-cultural norms, unequal power relations and disempowering systems. The toolkit is based on a review of existing DME tools and approaches. It can be relevant to all who collaborate on gender equality and social inclusion goals which lays in to achieve sustained, transformational change at individual, household, community and societal levels so that all persons can enjoy fullness of life. It may be a useful resource for implementing partners and government stakeholders, as they collaborate on gender equality and social inclusion goals. Both individuals and organizations can use this toolkit to apply a GESI lens in all stages of project Design, Monitoring and Evaluation (DME).

Engaged and Heard! Guidelines on Adolescent Participation and Civic Engagement

The ENGAGED AND HEARD! Guidelines on Adolescent Participation and Civic Engagement was developed to enhance systematic programming and advocacy to realize adolescents’ right to be heard in matters affecting them. The guidelines provide information on the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how-to’ of participation and civic engagement, with a specific focus on adolescents. The main sections include guidance on: Conceptual understanding, Main strategies and key interventions , Organizational commitment and processes, and Monitoring and evaluation. The appendices provide sector-specific guidelines for adolescent participation in: Health, WASH, Nutrition and HIV; Education; Child protection, care and justice; Disaster risk reduction, climate change and environmental protection; and Peacebuilding and humanitarian response.

Global Multi Sectoral Operational Framework for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support of Children, Adolescents and Caregivers Across Settings [Field Demonstration version]

UNICEF’s Global Multi Sectoral Operational Framework for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support of Children, Adolescents and Caregivers Across Settings [Field Demonstration version] aims to guide MHPSS programme development and integration of MHPSS into all sectors that influence children, adolescents, families and caregivers mental health and psychosocial wellbeing. The framework can be used in development contexts, humanitarian contexts and within the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. There is emphasis on engaging actors in the health, social welfare and child protection and education sectors at all levels of society to design, implement and evaluate MHPSS strategies that are locally relevant, comprehensive and sustainable. The framework can be used by all persons involved in assessing needs; designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating programmes for children, adolescents and caregivers; and those involved in advocating for support children, adolescents and caregivers.

Photovoice Guidance 10 Simple Steps to Involve Children in Needs Assessment

The Photovoice Guidance 10 Simple Steps to Involve Children in Needs Assessment is primarily aimed at country-level Save the Children staff and partners responsible for implementing development or humanitarian programmes. It brings together practical and tested ‘how-to’ guidance from colleagues in Bangladesh. Photovoice is a participatory action research methodology that was coined by Caroline Wang in the 1990s. She describes Photovoice as a methodology that enables people to identify, represent and enhance their community and life circumstances through photography. Photovoice projects aim to make voices heard and support the self-development of participants. Photovoice can be used as a needs assessment tool and to develop a more contextual understanding of the context in which a programme is embedded. In addition to understanding children’s needs, this might include an analysis of children’s coping strategies, giving you an insight into the innate resources and support structures that you will need to strengthen. Obtaining children’s voices at the planning stage, can effectively ensure a programme targets the articulated needs of children and resonates with their lived realities. Photovoice can also be used at to re-define what success and impact looks like, transforming monitoring and evaluation frameworks.

Listen and Learn Participatory Assessment with Children and Adolescents

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.

"Journey of Life" Community Workshops to Support Caregivers and Children in Need

The Journey of Life community workshops to support caregivers and children in need' is designed for communities wishing to support children in need and their caregivers. Using picture codes, personal testimonies and role plays, the workshops stimulate reflection, dialogue and action among participants. By taking them through their own life journey they are better able to understand the problems facing children in their care and in their community. Pictures and posters, a core feature of the resource, are designed to facilitate dialogue. Resource mapping and action plans provide communities with an opportunity to identify their capacities and begin to act on their collective responsibility towards these children. The Journey of Life comes with a variety of M&E tools, including forms for committee information, individual attitudinal changes, household changes, and workshop evaluations. GUIDES FOR PARTICIPANTS Main Workshop: Community Implementation Guide (includes Action Workshops 1, 2 and 3 on community parenting, supporting grieving children and teaching life skills to children) Action Workshops 4–7 at synergos.org Action Workshop 8: Ending human trafficking Action Workshop 9: Protecting our children from abuse GUIDES FOR FACILITATORS Main Workshop: Facilitator Training Guide (includes Action Workshops 1, 2 and 3 on community parenting, supporting grieving children and teaching life skills to children) Action Workshops 4-7 at synergos.org Action Workshop 8: Ending human trafficking Action Workshop 9: Protecting our children from abuse MONITORING AND EVALUATION CRS also aided in providing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tools to help facilitators measure the change in attitudes and actions by the people who participated in their ""Journey of Life"" workshops. Though the workshops are designed for groups who work on child trafficking and child labor issues, the tools below can be adapted for other settings as well.

Integrating Mental Health and Psychosocial Support into Youth Programming: A Toolkit

The Integrating Mental Health and Psychosocial Support into Youth Programming: A Toolkit provides strategies and tools for designing, implementing, and evaluating mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) programs and activities for youth in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and conflict-affected contexts. The Toolkit is a resource for standalone youth MHPSS programs and MHPSS activities that are integrated into cross-sectoral youth-focused programs (e.g., health, gender, and gender-based violence or GBV, workforce development/youth employment, education, violence prevention, peace, and stability, etc.). The Toolkit includes guidance based on good practice for MHPSS, with recommendations for adapting program designs to community needs and the local context.

Ethical Research Involving Children

This Ethical Research Involving Children (ERIC project) is an international project motivated by a shared international concern that the human dignity of children is honoured, and that their rights and well-being are respected in all research, regardless of context. To help meet this aim, the compendium acts as a tool to generate critical thinking, reflective dialogue and ethical decision-making, and to contribute to improved research practice with children across different disciplines, theoretical and methodological standpoints, and international contexts. Emphasis is placed on the need for a reflexive approach to research ethics that fosters dynamic, respectful relationships between researchers, children, families, communities, research organizations, and other stakeholders. Hence, the content of this ERIC compendium moves beyond prescriptive approaches to encourage a more critical engagement with ethical issues and contemporary research practices across the multiple sectors and national/international contexts in which these take place. ERIC has been developed to support all researchers, individuals and organizations who are involved in research that is undertaken with, or potentially impacts on, children. This includes researchers, all members of any research team, research organizations, other stakeholders and research ethics review committees.

Global Recommendations on Physical Activity for Health

The Global Recommendations on Physical Activity for Health is focused on primary prevention of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) through physical activity at population level, and the primary target audience for these recommendations are policy-makers at national level. The recommendations set out in this document address three age groups: 5–17 years old; 18–64 years old; and 65 years old and above. A section focusing on each age group includes a narrative summary of scientific evidence, the current physical activity recommendations, and the interpretation and justification for the recommendations made.

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.

Disability-inclusive Child Safeguarding Guidelines and Toolkit

The Disability-inclusive Child Safeguarding Guidelines and Toolkit have been developed to respond to an existing gap in child safeguarding practices, which often fail to recognize the specific requirements and adaptations needed to ensure the safety of children with disabilities. The guidelines build on consultations with children and youth with disabilities as well as experience from over 20 organisations. They serve to build knowledge and frame the rationale supporting the relevance and necessity of Disability-Inclusive Child Safeguarding. Through the guidelines, you will find information about best practices, as well as practical tools and helpful recommendations. The different chapters are useful for both organising for disability-inclusive child safeguarding and for making each step of the child safeguarding cycle disability-inclusive. The toolkit provides helpful solutions for organisations and practitioners working across development and humanitarian sectors on how to plan for disability-inclusive child safeguarding programmes. Each tool provided shows how to include children with disabilities within programmes, this is important as it is essential we identify, monitor, and build into our programme design risks that children with disabilities may experience as a result of engaging in activities or programmes.