Ljiljana Muslic
University of Zagreb, Department of Psychology
Croatia

Work with children in resettled community: varieties of intervention

Trabajo con niños en comunidades reasentadas: diversidad de intervenciones

The need for social reconstruction of resettled post-war communities required designing outreach community-based psychosocial assistance projects. This paper shows a model of working with children in a resettled community within the project "Refugee and displaced children's needs in social reconstruction of the community", between 1996 - 2000. The goals of the project were to facilitate psychological and social transition and to help raise professional competence of resettlement communities' care-providers to take active part in the reconstruction process, which included work with children.

After empowering care providers working with children, we implemented direct interventions with children. According to their needs in different phases of program, we used different kinds of individual work: working on traumatic experiences, normalization of traumatic reactions, debriefing after the crisis event, treatment of children with difficulties in reading and other interventions aimed to specific children's difficulties. Developing varieties of group work included: socialisation groups, psychoeducative workshops, crisis intervention groups, supporting and fostering groups of children who showed the ability to become student leaders in the local community.

As it experienced the benefit of our work, the community became more active in approaching the team for help: it included children and their parents, as well as care providers. It was important to be one step ahead, to quickly respond to needs and to be creative in developing varieties of intervention, since otherwise our work would not be so successful. Because of the project continuance, we learned that only a compliant, creative, transparent and patient approach will support the mental health of children, community resources and the mental health of care providers who implemented the program.