Psychosocial support for Typhoon Yolanda victims

Mental Health and Psychosocial Services (MHPSS)

The MHPSS program aims to enhance the capacity of local education, health and social welfare workers by increasing their understanding of the impact of trauma. Using expressive art and basic psychosocial interventions, the Department of Education will mainstream this curriculum into the public school system.

The first half of the program focused on training professionals from the local education, health and social welfare officesand the second half of the program was directed towards teachers and guidance counselors. The direct beneficiaries of the trainings are the professionals and the indirect beneficiaries are their clients. The main achievements to date include 90 graduates of the family counseling training program, and a successful three month expressive arts psychosocial support pilot program operating in four public schools with over 200 participants. 

Third Stage expansion:

IsraAID Philippines' MHPSS third stage expansion program is being carried out in collaboration with Ormoc’s Department of Education, which began at the end of 2015. The third stage aims to integrate psychosocial activities into the education curriculum of public schools in Ormoc. It focuses on raising awareness about those experiencing trauma. The program provides MHPSS tools and services using expressive arts therapy, and the dynamics of the class as a group to teach normalization of stress reactions, resilience techniques, and self-care. The PSS activities are being integrated into the Values Education curriculum while all guidance counselors and Values Education teachers in the city went through PSS training given by IsraAID staff and core team facilitators. To date welfare professionals, in collaboration with school teachers who have been trained by an Israeli therapist, co-facilitated classes for students grades 5 – 10 in 100 selected public schools in Ormoc City. Heading into the 2016-2017 school year, the MHPSS expansion program is already being standardized across the Ormoc’s Department of Education public school system.

In the expansion plan for the second half of 2016 every class will participate in eight activities. Each activity starts with a warm – up exercises in order to increase participant’s enthusiasm, encourage them to participate and get them more comfortable and relaxed before the activity. Each activity ends with the opportunity for the students to share how they felt and what they learned.  IsraAID’s MHPSS staff with provide supervision and support for the professionals and educators implementing the activities. 

IsraAID's vision is to expand and to institutionalize more psychosocial support in the municipal Department of Education in other regions in the Philippines by integrating expressive arts psychosocial support activities into the public school system curriculums, thus, mainstreaming a PSS approach in the school system and the community.