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Working with children from refugee and forcibly displaced backgrounds: Throw the 'Rule Book' Out!
Book chapter

Working with children from refugee and forcibly displaced backgrounds: Throw the 'Rule Book' Out!

Eileen Pittaway, Linda Bartolomei, Emma Pittaway and Jung Sook Lee
The Routledge Handbook of Child and Family Social Work Research: Knowledge-Building, Application, and Impact, pp.729-751
Routledge, 1st
2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003241492-51
Appears in  Recent Faculty of Education Publications

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Abstract

This chapter explores the horror of the refugee experience and the impacts of this on children and their parents. There is no ‘normal’ in the refugee experience, the question is not ‘have the children experienced trauma?’ but ‘what type and what level of trauma they, and their parents have endured?’. Many responses which we use when working with troubled children and with childhood trauma just do not apply. To work effectively with refugee children and their families, it is essential that we understand the types of experiences they might have endured and identify ways in which we can explore this so that we can identify appropriate and effective responses. We paint a picture of some of the things refugees experience, and also their amazing resilience. We present a case study of our work with refugee and other conflict affected children with a disability targeted for sexual abuse on their return to their homes and villages in Burundi. Using a Human Rights based framework, participatory research models and community development principles, we explore how practitioners can build a strength-based, trauma-informed and culturally responsive model which responds to the horrors experienced by refugee children, and at the same time build on their strengths and resilience. This provides a framework for developing a targeted and effective response.

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