The goal of the project is to create and implement an Evidence Based Trauma Stabilisation (EBTS) training and program that will expand professional expertise of specialists who work with refugee, asylum seeking and immigrant families. It is financed from Erasmus+ programme, Key Action: Cooperation for innovations and exchange of good practices, Action: Strategic Partnership for Adult Education, 2017. This project is born in the present need of more effective working with refugee, asylum seeking and immigrant families. The European situation is challenging, and as professionals we should find new ways of supporting the integration of refugees in our society. One way to do it, is to support constructive relations between children and parents and to develop resilience in the families. All refugee, asylum and immigrant families have some king of trauma experience in their original country or on their way to destination country. The objectives of the project include design of EBTS-Training and EBTS-Program and impact evaluation of both. The core content of the EBTS-Training will include familiarization with EBTS-Program, psycho-education and improving the skills for psycho hygiene and self-care. The EBTS-Program is based on combination between treatment of adult and child trauma simultaneously and building of basic skills how to deal with trauma. The target group for the EBTS-Training are psychologists, social workers, educators and other professionals that work with refugee families. The need of such a training arose from the organisations that are involved in everyday work with the refugee families. The number of trained experts will be approximately 45. The second target group of the project are refugee, asylum seeking and immigrant families who will participate in the EBTS-Program. There will be about 300 families that participate in the EBTS-Program. Both EBTS-Training and EBTS-Program will be implemented in three European countries – Germany, Finland and Bulgaria. After the EBTS-Training each participant will conduct EBTS-Program for a group of refugee, asylum seeking and immigrant families. The main activities will include: • creation of both EBTS-Training and EBTS-Program • conducting of EBTS training for experts in three countries • conducting EBTS-Program for refugee, asylum seeking and immigrant families in three countries • writing a manual for EBTS-Program implementation • research of effectiveness of EBTS-Training and EBTS-Program Process, principles and tasks of iterative design will be used in this project. Iterative desing is based on creating whole versions of products straight from the start so that next versions can be made based on experiences, feedback and evaluations of users. 5 developmental cycles are used to produce the final versions of outcomes. The impact evaluation of the EBTS-Training will assess changes attributed to it with repeated measurements of adult education before and after the participation in the training, and impacts of the used experiential learning methodoogy. The impact evaluation of the EBTS-Program will assess the changes in trauma experience, stress management, and self-esteem both in parents as a learners and as group participants and children of refugee, asylum seeking and immigrant families. In addition, a control group of refugee families in Bulgaria will be conducted as a comparison group to the EBTS-Program group in Bulgaria. Results of the project will include four innovative outcomes: 1. EBTS-Training 2. EBTS-Manual 3. EBTS-Program 4. Research reports of effectiveness of EBTS-Training and EBTS-Program The potential long term benefits from the project will be existence of more evidence based tools for training for experts and trauma management for refugee, asylum seeking and immigrant families (EBTS-Training and EBTS-Program). These tools can be implemented in other countries and to improve the professional expertise of specialists, mental health services, and to support and facilitate integration of refugee families.
The goal of EBTS-project is to create and implement an Evidence Based Trauma Stabilisation (EBTS) training and programme that will expand professional expertise of specialists who work with asylum seeking, refugee and immigrant families. This project is born in the present need of more effective working with refugee, asylum seeking and immigrant families. The European situation is challenging, and as professionals we should find new ways of supporting the integration of refugees in our society. One way to do it, is to support constructive relations between children and parents and to develop resilience in the families. All refugee, asylum and immigrant families have some king of trauma experience in their original country or on their way to destination country. The objectives of the project include design and piloting of EBTS-Training and EBTS-Programme and impact evaluation of both. The core content of the EBTS-Training include familiarisation with EBTS-Programme, psycho-education and improving the skills for psycho hygiene and self-care. The EBTS-Programme is based on combination between stabilisation of adult and child trauma simultaneously and building of basic skills how to deal with trauma. There are 4 different kinds of partners in this project in Bulgaria, Finland and Germany, and one associated partner: 1. Specialists on theories, methodology and learning process of the methodology used in this project. These are psychodrama training institutions Center for child development and psychological consultation Cognitiva (Sofia, Bulgaria), Szenen Institute for Psychodrama (Cologne, Germany) and Helsinki Psychodrama Institute (Helsinki, Finland; coordinator). 2. Organisations which work or their members work directly with asylum seeking, refugee and immigrant families. These are State Agency for Refugees with Council of Ministers (Sofia, Bulgaria), SKM Köln-Sozialdienst Katholischer Männer e.V. (Cologne, Germany) and Finnish Familytherapy Association (Turku, Finland). 3. One research organisation, which is the New Bulgarian University (Sofia, Bulgaria 4. One associated partner FEPTO (Federation of European and Mediterranean Psychodrama Training Organisations; Belgium), which offered the European wide collaboration network and expertise on psychodrama and its research for the project. The project is about trauma stabilisation of asylum seeking, refugee and immigrant families, which effectiveness in based on research. In the project, the EBTS-Training was developed, piloted and implemented for professionals working with these families in Bulgaria, Finland and Germany. An EBTS-Manual was created to support work of trained EBTS-Leaders. The EBTS-Programme for these families was developed, piloting and organised. There were two research studying impacts of learning of participants in EBTS-Trainings, and studying effectiveness of EBTS-programmes in families. Of both research, a pier-reviewed article is published. Three multiplier seminars were organised in Bulgaria, Finland and Germany, and two webinars on European level. Presentation and workshops were offered in seminars and conferences in several European countries to increase the knowledge about group-form trauma stabilisation and methodology used in this project. Articles about the project were published in media, and project opened both a web page (traumastabilization.eu) and a facebook page. Administration was coordinated by Helsinki Psychodrama Institute together with an exec-team, which was formed by Szenen, Cognitiva and Helsinki Institute. There were regular face-to-face international partner meetings, which were supported by skype meetings. A special effort was made to actively involve senior management in SKM and SAR in the project, and its implementation in daily operations and services in their organisations. All the four intellectual outcomes were created: EBTS-Training, EBTS-Manual, and EBTS-Programme, and effectiveness research of training and programme. 38 professionals working with asylum seeking, refugee and immigrant families were trained to become EBTS-Leaders in Bulgaria, Finland and Germany. Their professional competences increased especially in knowledge of trauma and PTSD, in leading groups and using creative, experiential action methods. These EBTS-Leaders conducted 15 EBTS-Programmes in different sizes. According to the effectiveness research, the EBTS-Programme had an positive impact on participating children.One partner organisation took EBTS-Programme to their service selection. The main partners in each country continue to provide EBTS-Trainings in EU countries and on European level. Both researches increased the knowledge on these methods especially among psychodrama professionals and trainers in Europe, and in academic world in general.