Natural disasters and war both have a devastating impact on children’s lives. Europe is now reeling from the destruction and death caused by the February earthquake in Turkey and north western Syria – the home of so many child refugees. Horrifying evidence of the illegal transfer of hundreds of Ukrainian children to Russia prompted International Criminal Court Prosecutor to describe them as being treated like the ‘spoils of war’.
So our work is becoming ever more necessary and over the past few months we have received many requests for training to help children cope with their experiences. We have now translated our materials into Ukrainian, Polish and Armenian as well as Arabic, Spanish and English. We are finding ways of distributing resources to those who are helping children, as well as offering advice downloadable from this website (see bottom of page). We are working on very recent requests from three different local NGOs for CATT training for psycho-social counsellors working in northern Syria. In Armenia many families have been torn apart by the blockade of the only road into the enclave of Artsakh, and we are trying to help there too. In February we delivered our third online anxiety and resilience training course for 25 teachers and counsellors in the war-torn Mareb province of the Yemen.
However, we know that there is also increasing need to help refugees and asylum-seekers in the UK, and in March we ran our first pilot half-day session for 18 people linked to charities working with children and families in the Winchester area The feedback was very positive with much gratitude for a much-needed ‘useful and inspiring’ session. We managed to offer this free of charge and are planning to roll out this initiative elsewhere in the UK, so do not hesitate to contact us if you think we can help your organisation.