Social Health Care for Healing Syrian Refugees

The Social Health Care Program continues to provide training in trauma informed treatment to a growing number of students, volunteers, and collaborative partners in Jordan. When we first started five years ago, there was a dearth of services available to address the psychosocial needs of a highly traumatized Syrian refugee population. Much of what was being provided were psychosocial reports done by persons who had no formal clinical psychology or social work training. Those people who were receiving academic training in Jordan would leave the country to get formal internships required for licensure and not return. Thus creating a brain drain and few skilled clinicians in Jordan and the region as a whole. 

Aside from the ongoing training we offer in trauma informed care, both on the ground and virtually, we have worked alongside with our partners in the region to help build capacity of services to meet the needs of Syrian refugee families. Currently, we are working with a small Jordanian consortium of social work to help establish that field in Jordan and working with Yarmouk University and the Queen Rania Center to create the curriculum and programming and funding to expand the number of graduate level students in the region. We have a couple of field placements now established for interns to get hands on experience providing psychosocial treatment to refugee families with professional supervision. Additionally, we have a German graduate level psychology intern on the ground providing group support and training through SHC (and soon a graduate student from the U.S.) The long term goal remains to train and develop capacity within the host society and refugee population to provide the needed services and prevent festering unhealed trauma from being past down through future generations. 

Additionally, we have extended our services to schools where refugee children attend. In the beginning the migration, large numbers of the children were not attending school for a variety of reasons. In our clinics, many of the children complained of being bullied and treated badly by other children because they were Syrian. The schools were finding many of the children exhibiting symptoms of trauma they were not equipped to handle and we are in early stages of expanding our offerings to teachers working with these children.

May is shaping up to be a very full month for SHC. We have trainers coming to Amman and Irbid to provide classes in a variety of topics including family therapy, professional burn out prevention, and internal work with trauma. The therapeutic bears will be arriving late May and will launch a number of events in Amman, Irbid, and Mafrac City where the largest number of refugees reside. Parents and agencies serving the refugee population will receive training in how the bears can be used to help children self sooth, work through emotions, and bond. SHC is launching a research project on the use of therapeutic bears and their efficacy in address certain symptoms of trauma seen amongst the children.