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 Would my son's really relax care-free nature become fearful and withdrawn?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