Psychosocial Support in Conflict and Protracted Crisis - Enabling Children to Learn

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday III)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Theory-driven learning agendas for education in emergencies: how best to test and design for impact

Proposal

We know that the exposure to conflict, violence and insecurity can have a major psychological impact on children. In a recent study commissioned by DFID, 12-18 year old Syrian children and adolescents were interviewed. Of these, 81% had witnessed bombardments, 72% had their homes forcibly searched by militia, 55% saw their homes demolished by militia and 54% had seen dead or wounded bodies. When children experience trauma as a result of conflict or violence it is thought that the neurological development of the brain becomes distorted such that the "survival" mechanisms of the brain and body are more dominant than the "learning" mechanisms, resulting in impairments in cognitive, emotional and social functioning.

Escaping from the immediate proximity of war does not relieve the consequences of what is now widely referred to as toxic stress; the state of body and mind resulting from the prolonged activation of stress. Evidence suggests that the daily stressors children face as refugees just adds to those accumulated in the thick of a conflict zone. Daily stressors can include the erosion of family and community structures, violence in the home, unemployment in the household, poverty, a sense of hopelessness for future prospects and so on.

While emerging literature suggests that psychosocial support can improve wellbeing and cognitive function among children affected by crisis, there is little evidence on which particular interventions are effective in helping affected children to learn, catering to a range of different needs. In order to build the evidence base around how to best support children to learn in conflict and crisis contexts, we propose the following theory of change: we hypothesize that, in order for children in crisis and conflict settings to be able to learn, they need access to good quality psychosocial support.

In this round table presentation, we will present the above theory of change and pose questions regarding how best to test and revise it. The discussion will be around what we already know and what we need to know in order to design evidence based interventions that address trauma, depression, distress, anxiety, toxic stress in education, including how to measure this. For example, how can we ensure schools are safe places that promote children’s wellbeing? How can we equip teachers with the right skills to support children’s learning? We will also seek feedback on the most important questions to answer in order to influence programming.

Authors

• Laura Savage, DFID

• Rachel Hinton, DFID