Social Health Care for Healing Syrian Refugees

The Syrian civil war is now 8.5 years old and the needs of serving the large refugee community evolves as the realities of long term displacement take hold. In the early years of the conflict, a majority of the Syrian children were not attending school. A significant number (estimated at that time as 10%) of the children crossed the border without an adult relative. Many families kept their children at home out of fear for safety. Prior to the conflicts in Syria, Syria had one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Those numbers have dropped dramatically as a result of the war and mass displacement.

In the earlier years, those children who were going to schools often experienced being treated as unwanted outsiders and being bullied. Over time, in many situations a separate school track has evolved for the Syrian children to avoid these issues. The one consistent thread from the beginning has been the challenges of the schools being able to address the massive trauma healing needs many of these children present. While teachers have training in teaching subjects, most are ill equipped to handle the challenges of working with these children to provide a safe environment for learning. Issues that present themselves include but not limited to : emotional reactivity and fighting; depression; anxiety; suicidality; hyperactivity; inability to focus; lack of self esteem. 

Expanding on our ongoing pilot projects, we are launching a trauma informed education project in one the schools that serves a largely Syrian youth population. Working with teachers and administration, we will provide on site training and virtual training content to raise awareness of the effects of trauma and how to address student needs in an educational setting. Additionally, we hope to make available our staff and volunteers to broaden service availabilty at the pilot project school. All of our pilot projects allow us to develop programming, assess what is working/what is not working, and then transfer those programs to other sites in the region to address refugee needs.

The schools are resource poor. So we have launched a drive to get laptop donations and we'll help with assuring the schools have a strong enough wifi connection for the virtual classes to succeed. Additionally, we are working on projects of U.S.A. children becoming pen pals with children our programs are serving and exploring the possibility of virtual connection of USA teens and Syrian teens.

Even though the global media tends to gradually focus less and less on the plight of Syrian refugees, this humanitarian crisis remains massive and is only growing. And so the need for our services to continue is all the more urgent.

* July 18 Matching Funds day: Your support - and especially on July 18 when donations are matched beginning at 9:00 am Eastern Standard Time and lasting until matching funds run out – is truly appreciated.

Over the course of our work we are often asked if people outside the region are still aware of their plight, and the desperation of their day to day lives that they have been enduring for now over 8 years.

Children who were infants or not yet born at the beginning are now school age, although many have had little or no education, and have never known a life of security. Those who were in elementary school are now teenagers and young adults looking at an uncertain future for themselves.

Thanks to the amazing support we receive from donors who contribute the funding needed to make this critical service possible, the answer we can provide is IHPA’s humanitarian Social Health Care (SHC) treatment services continuing and even expanding our life saving services to the most vulnerable of refugee children and their families throughout Jordan.

The direct healing results of the services are growing as well, through the residential service center for widows and their children, Women’s Safe Spaces, community-based day service sites, community resilience building events, and new programs such as a trauma-informed elementary school project for refugee children.

As one example, the residential center that houses up to 40 refugee families headed by widows continues to provide a safe and supportive environment while they receive treatment and skills training in areas of coping, self help, and daily living to prepare them for moving forward with their lives. As these families are able to reach a point of being more secure and self-sufficient that allows them to move out into more independent living situations, other more vulnerable families are able to move into this site to be assisted in the same way. By partnering with local humanitarian aid organizations we can also help to continue services in the community to families once they move out.

Our trauma skills training programis also increasingly equipping local medical students and health care service providers, the staff of humanitarian aid organizations, teachers, clergy, and members of the refugee community itself with various levels of vital trauma healing skillsthat enable them to work closely with our treatment team and reach even more who are at risk.

Based on our central commitment to local capacity building to growand support the number of current and future disaster health care professionals and paraprofessionals within the community who are desperately needed for the true long term recovery of hundreds of thousands of children and their families traumatized by war, violence, and loss, IHPA is steadily increasing it’s direct services while preparing those who can continue them into the future.

As part of this free training service, IHPA is partnering with the medical schools in Jordan to officially provide professional psychosocial skills training to all 5^th and 6^th year medical students in Jordan.

We are now preparing to take another team of our volunteer expert trauma therapists and trainers on a mission to Jordan to continue conducting disaster health care field clinics, as well as provide more on-site skills training and clinical supervision to further increase the skill level of our local trainees – all of who volunteer their time and energy in service to those in need. During this next trip we will also be conducting several large community resilience building events in the Amman and Irbid regions. These events provide needed respite from the drudgery of daily life and rejuvenating experiences of joy, celebration, and community cohesion, as well as opportunities for our team members to provide basic information to parents on how to understand and help support their children when experiencing trauma induced difficulties at home, such as night terrors and day-time panic attacks.

Our pilot community-based service centers in Amman and Irbid allow us to both provide immediate direct services and demonstrate to our trainees and other local humanitarian organizations how to create, operate, and maintain such services in regions where there is massive need and scarce resources.Our programs are designed to be quickly replicated and scaled up in other locations, with the goal of promoting the growth of psychosocial services throughout the country.

In this way every dollar donated to our efforts multiplies the amount of service actually provided, and the number of refugee children and their families still suffering from the massive crisis of this war who are reached with these services.

With your help, we can carry on to help every child experience genuine hope for a healthy and secure future.

Links:

• IHPA partner NGO: Common Bond Institute