Little training has been available so far for childcarers who work with asylum seekers. Judith Napier reports on a recent course.
Asylum seekers are scarcely a new phenomenon, but training for staff dealing with these vulnerable children is in short supply. Alice Sharp, who was funded by the Early Years National Training Organisation as part of a group of 18 delegates to study the way other countries had coped with integrating such children into the mainstream, devised and piloted a training programme called 'Celebrating Global Children' earlier this year.
Alice, early years executive of the Scottish Independent Nurseries Association (SINA), started by asking childcare staff in which areas they most wanted help. She recalls, 'The response was - everything! There were lots of nursery staff working with families, but no-one had a clue where to start.'
She says that the staff taking on the responsibilities of working with asylum seeker children were excited at the challenge. They recognised the importance of their new role and wanted to get it right.
Alice intended the course to add practical strategies to In Safe Hands, a resource and training pack to support work with young children published last year by Save the Children and the Refugee Council. She hopes that the format and aims of the course (see box) can provide a model for other trainers around the country trying to develop similar courses.
In Safe Hands describes asylum seekers' children throughout Europe as the silent and ignored victims in decisions that affect their future. The pack was produced in response to requests from hard-pressed school and nursery staff for advice on how to help children whose difficulties could include health issues, interrupted or non-existent schooling, horrific experiences in their home countries, bereavement, poor health, racism, bullying and language differences.
In the UK, the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act has resulted in many asylum seekers being dispersed to accommodation across the UK. Glasgow City Council agreed to house significant numbers through a contract with the Home Office in April 2000. By last December Glasgow had an estimated asylum-seeker population of 8,000 people, from more than 30 different countries. One of the first lessons to be learned is that they are not a homogeneous group.
The SINA course included representatives from a mobile creche, a women's centre, an urban aid project, a day nursery, a private nursery and out-of-school care. The delegates came with an acute sense of inadequacy in engaging with asylum seekers, says Alice. 'Beforehand, they were on a knife edge, caught up in political correctness and worried that they were going to offend, and desperately wanting to get it right. Everyone knows these families have been through hell and we don't want to put them through anything else.'
The course content was designed to provide staff with a background knowledge of asylum seekers' countries and cultures, to help them empathise with the sorts of traumas the children may be coming to terms with, and to give the strategies, often non-verbal, to help the children settle and progress in a supportive, welcoming and inclusive environment.
Ten topics, usually in day-long sessions, were led by a range of presenters. Alice says the high level of knowledge and experience that these individuals had was essential to the course's success and that she could only repeat the course in future if she could find another equally strong panel of contributors.
The course started by studying In Safe Hands, followed by an evaluation of asylum seeker children's basic needs. The third element, called Positive Environment, had input from Mairi Richardson, who used her Montessori background to explain the importance of allowing children plenty of time and space to feel comfortable, and not expecting too much too soon.
Those underpinning elements were followed by sessions covering:
- equal opportunities
- drama
- cultural identity
- strengthening home support
- creative music therapy
- play and learning
- positive communication.
Early last month the group visited Sheffield to share the experiences of professionals working there with refugees. The course concludes with a summing-up session in August.
Alice acknowledges the importance of the In Safe Hands pack. Her own sessions have put a heavy emphasis on practical strategies, and she is delighted with the way the delegates have immediately started putting these into action in their own diverse settings. Additional resource packs will be available from SINA for them.
She says, 'We have done a lot of role play, and been very honest and frank. We have all been humbled, even traumatised to some extent by what we have heard. I think there has to be a really strong grounding in understanding what it is staff are going forward to do.'
Alice says she has had a lot of positive feedback from the delegates, who feel they have gained a real belief that they can do the job. Even those staff who are not currently working with refugees are applying the strategies with success to children suffering from other forms of deprivation.