Good Morning
Worldwide, over 1.5 billion people experience armed conflict
In response, people are forced to flee their country.
leaving over 15 million refugees.
Children without a doubt are
the most innocent and vulnerable victims.
But not just from the obvious physical dangers,
but from, the often, unspoken affects that wars have on their families.
The experiences of war leave children at real high risk
for the development of emotional and behavioural problems.
Children as we can only imagine,
will feel worried, threaten and at risk.
But there is good news,
the quality of care that children recieve
in their families, can have a more significant effects
on their well-being, than from
the actual experiences of war that they have been exposed to.
So actually, children can be protected
by warm, secure parenting,
during and after conflict.
In 2011, I was a first year PHD Student
in the University Of Manchester
School Of Physiological Sciences.
Like many of you here, I watched the crisis in Syria
unfold in front of me on the TV.
My family are originally from Syria, and very early on
I lost several family members in really horrifying ways.
I sat and I gathered with my family and watched the TV.
So we have all seen those scenes,
bombs destroying, buildings, chaos, destruction.
and people screaming and running.
It was always the people screaming and running
that really got me the most.
Specially those terrified looking children.
I was a mother to two young, typically inquisitive children.
They were five and six then.
At an age when they typically ask lots and lots of questions
and expect real convincing answers.
So I began to wonder what it might be like
to parent my children in a war-zone and a refugee camp.
Would my children change?
Would my daughter's bright happy eyes lose their shine?
Would my son's really relax care-free nature
become fearful and withdrawn?
How would I cope?
Would I change?
As psychologists and parent's trainers
we know that arming parents
with skills and caring for their children
can have a huge effect on their well-being.
We call this parents training.
So the questions I had
was could Parent Training programs be useful for families
while they're still in war-zones or refugee camps?
Could we reach them with advice or training
that would help them through the struggles?
So, I approached my PHD supervisor,
professor Rachel Calam,
with the idea of using my academic skills
to make some changes in the real world.
I wasn't quite sure, exactly, what I wanted to do.
She listened carefully and patiently,
And to my joy, she said:
"If that is what you want to do,
and it means so much to you, then let's do it.
Let's find ways to see if parent programs can be useful
for families in this contexts."
So for the past five years myself and my colleagues,
professor Calam and Dr. Kim Cartwright
have been working on ways to support families
that have experienced war and displacement.
Now, to know how to help families that have been
through conflict, support their children,
The first step must obviously be
to ask them what are they struggling with. Right?
I mean, it seems obvious,
but often those are the most vulnerable
that we are trying to support that we actually don't ask.
How many times have we just assumed
we know exactly the right thing that is gonna help someone or something
without actually asking them first.
So i travelled to the refugee camps in Syria and in Turkey.
And i sat with families and I listened.
I listened to the parenting challenges
I listened to the parenting struggles
And I listened to their call for help
And sometimes that was just paused
as all I could was hold hand with them and just join them
in silence crying and prayer
So they told me about their struggles
They told me about the rough, harsh refugee camp condition
That made it hard to focus on anything but practical chores
like collecting clean water
He told me how they watch their children with draw
the sadness, depression, anger bed-wetting, thumb sucking
fear of loud noises, fear of nightmares terrifying terrifying nightmares
this families had been through what we had been watching on the TV
the mothers almost half of them were now window of the war
or didn't even know their husbands were dead or alive,
described how they thought they were coping so badly
They watched their children change
and they have had no idea how to help them.
They didn't know how to answer their children's questions.
Why I found incredibly astonishing and so motivational
was that these families was so motivated to support their children
Despite all the challenges they faced
they were trying to help their children
they were making attempts at seeking support from NGO workers
from refugee camp teachers, professional medics, other parents.
One mother I met had only been account for 4 days
and had already made two attempts at seeking support
for her eight -year-old daughter
who was having terrifying nightmares.
But sadly, these attempts are almost always useless.
Refugee camp doctors when available are almost always too busy or
don't have the knowledge all the time for basic parenting supports.
Refugee camp teachers and other parents I just like them
part of a new refugee community who's struggling with units
So then we began to think how could we help these families.
The families were struggling with things much bigger than they could cope with.
The Syrian crisis made it clear how incredibly impossible it would be
to reach families on an individual level.
How else could we help them.
How would we reach families at a population level and low-cost
in these terrifying terrifying times.
After hours of speaking to NGO workers
one suggested a fantastic innovative idea of distributing
parenting information leaflets by a bread wrappers.
Bread wrappers that were delivered to a family
in a conflict zone in Syria by humanitarian workers
So that's what we did
The bread wrappers haven't changed at all in their apperance
except for the addition of two pieces of paper.
One was a parenting information leaflet that had basic advice
and information that normalizes the parents
what they might be experiencing
and what their children might be experiencing
and information on how they could support themselves
and their children
such as information like spending time talking to their child
showing the more affection being more patient with your child
talking to your children.
The other piece of paper was a feedback question
and of course there was a pen.
So is this simply leaflet distribution
or is it actually possible means of delivering psychological first aid
that provides warm secure
loving parenting
We managed to distribute 3000 of these in just one week
was incredible was we had 60-percent response rate
SIxty-percent of the three thousand families responded.
I don't know how many reasearchs we have here today
but that kind of response rate is fantastic
to have this in Manchester would be a huge achivement
Let alone in conflict zone in Syria
really highlighting how important these kind of messages word to families.
We ain't remember how excited
and eager we were for the return of question is
the families had left hundreds of messages
most incredibly positive encouraging.
My favorite has got to be
"Thank you for not forgetting about us and our children".
This is really illustrates a potential means of the delivery of psychological
first data families and the return of feedback to
Just imagine replicating this using other means
such as baby look distribution
or female hygiene kits or even food baskets
Let's bring this closer to home
because the refugee crisis is one
having an effect on every single one of us
We're bombarded with images daily of statistics
and photos
and that's not surprising
because by last month
over 1 million refugees had reached europe
1 million refugees are joining our communities
They're becoming our neighbors
their children are attending our children schools
So we've adapted the leaflets to meet the needs of European refugees
and we have them online open access
and areas with a really high refugee influx.
For example, the Swedish healthcare uploaded it
onto their website
within the first 45 mintutes
it was downloaded 343 times
really highlighting how important it is for volunteers
practitioners and other parents to have
access psychological first aid messages.
In 2013, I was sitting on the cold harsh tent floor of a refugee camp tent
with mother sitting around me as I was conducting a focus group
across from East, an elderly lady
with what seemed to be a 13-year-old girl lying beside her
with her head on the other ladies knees
The girls stayed quiet throughout the focus group not talking at all
with her knees curled up against her chest.
Towards the end of the focus group
and as I was thanking the mothers for their time
the other lady looked at me while pointing at the young girl
and said to me:" Can you help us with?"
not quite sure what she expected me to do
I looked at the young girl and smiled, in Arabic I said
(Arabic)
"What is your name?"
She looked at me really confused and engaged
but then said:"Halluan"
Halluan is the best name for the Arabic female name Halla
and is only really used to refer to really young girls.
At that point, I realized that actually Hallo was probably much
older than thirteen, it turns out Halla was a 25-year-old mother
to three young children