 Let's go for it. Good evening, colleagues from Asia. Good afternoon, colleagues from Africa and Europe and good morning, colleagues from the Americas. Welcome to the Animal Global Protection Forum 2020. Like every year, the GBC convenes a forum to discuss challenges that we face, we exchange lessons learned and try to provide strategic direction to the cluster. The 2020 Global Forum is jointly hosted by the GBC Strategic Advisory Group and the AORs. As you know, there are four AORs, which is the Child Protection AOR, the Gender-Based Violence AOR, Housing Lines and Property and Mine Action. This year, the forum is 100% online and I think we all know why. Now, this online webinar is, of course, for all of us, a bit learning process. But anyhow, please do let us know how we can improve by filling out the evaluation form at the end of the session. This session will be recorded and I trust that you're all fine with that. The topic of the session of today is cross-sectoral work as a condition for high-impact MHPSS. Welcome, everybody. I'm Kunci Sevenans. I'm the lead of MHPSS and the CP AOR and the co-host today of this webinar is Sarah Harrison, co-lead of the MHPSS Reference Group. Sarah, over to you to go over the agenda. Thank you very much, Kun. It's delightful to see so many of you online. So welcome, all of you. As you can see on the slide that I hope you can view on your screens, we will have opening remarks for this session by Michael Copeland, who is a Global Child Protection Area of Responsibility Coordinator. And then we have a panel discussion that we moderated by Kun, where there's an opportunity also for you as participants to write questions in the chat function, which we will also come back to. And the panelists are from the health cluster, health sector and education. And then we're very lucky to have the opportunity to have Elizabeth Stickman from USAID, the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, and I will be interviewing Elizabeth and getting her perspective from a government agency, who does a lot of financial and political support to both protection and mental health and psychosocial support programs globally. And then we have a quiz for you that we will use through the Zoom function, so an opportunity for you to use your brains and interact. And then in the second part, we have a panel discussion that will be moderated by myself with colleagues from Mine Action and GBV, Areas of Responsibility, and also a colleague from the nutrition sectoral nutrition and MHPSS area. And then we will have a review on what we've learned in the event today. And then we have closing remarks by William Jamali, who is the Global Protection Cluster Coordinator. And William will also be highlighting and speaking about a publication that's just come out, a fact in the past two hours, in relation to protection and MHPSS. And then we will end the event for those of you that have the opportunity to stay online with a viewing of the My Hero is You children's animation video as well. So thank you, Kun. Fantastic, Sarah. So we have some little rules here, actually. If you are a speaker, kind of keep your microphone on mute and your, unless you are a speaker, kindly keep your microphone on mute and your video off. And please, we really encourage you to ask your questions, your comments and ideas, share them all in the chat. Sarah, finally, in the last years, MHPSS is getting a bit more attention and that is well deserved, isn't it? Yes, it's well deserved. I'm very biased, but it's well deserved. So what happened? What other things that brought it very much in the attention? What other indicators actually? Yes, so I'm going to take you all back into the very distant past of December 2019, where there was actually a series of events and initiatives that happened actually at the end of what was also a very busy year last year in the humanitarian sector. So there was a global refugee forum event that was held at the UN Pali in Geneva that many of you attended. And at that event, there was a specific event on mental health and psychosocial support that also had panellists and pulled in people from different sectors. So there was also colleagues from health, from education there, from and from protection as well, as well as researchers. We also had a statement released by the IASC principles. For those of you who are not familiar, the IASC principles are the heads of all the UN agencies and heads of ICRC and IFRC. And they announced that they're meeting in December that mental health and psychosocial support is a cross cutting issue that's of relevance across the entire humanitarian system. And that's quite a powerful statement because it then needs to be translated into operations. And then thirdly, in December last year, we also had the International Red Cross Recrecent Conference where there's 196 state parties to the Geneva Convention who actually signed and adopted a resolution on the importance of mental health and psychosocial support in conflict, armed conflict and other emergencies as well as natural disasters. So that was in December last year. So a lot happened. And then, of course, this year, we've all been thrown a little bit off balance. So politically this year, a lot has also happened. And we had a brief release by the United Nations Secretary General stating the importance of mental health. So very strong leadership buy-in from the United Nations side. We also recently had United Nations General Assembly resolution on non-communicable diseases where it specifically states that mental health and psychosocial support is required and should be embedded in all emergency response plans and systems. And states are requesting support to do this. And we also, forthcoming, have what's called an echo sock, a humanitarian resolution that will come out in December where we again have a paragraph on MHPSS. So politically and on a humanitarian diplomacy perspective, there's been a lot happening in the past nine months, both at state level, states are placing this as an area of importance but also within the humanitarian system. We also have a number of tools that the mental health and psychosocial support reference group under the IIC have released this year. I think as with most groups, we've produced a huge amount of guidance and tools that are being adopted. The difference is that within the IIC, the mental health and psychosocial support tools are among the most downloaded and the most requested. One of our tools, the My Hero Issue Children's Story book is now available in 127 languages and it's the 10th most translated book ever in the history of the world. So there's clearly a need that's happening globally, irrespective of what we do at a very high political level. And operationally speaking, we have mental health and psychosocial support as an indicator now within the Global Humanitarian Response Plan that came out that many of you are involved in at country level. And this is the first time that we've had a specific indicator in which to measure our work. We also have a doubling of the number of mental health and psychosocial support working groups at country level. We used to have 22 at the beginning of this year and now we have 42. And that's as a direct result, unfortunately, of the virus, but also the need for mental health and psychosocial support programming and the need for it to be better coordinated. And then finally this year, operationally speaking, we also have an interagency deployment mechanism where we can deploy people to emergency contexts. This is an initiative supported by the Netherlands government and the Netherlands standby partner. And we've had a number of requests this year, all of which we've been able to fulfill. And we've had so many requests that one sixth of all GHRP countries have had an MHPSS international deployment to support their work. So there's clearly an operational demand from country level for MHPSS and for MHPSS to also be cross sectoral as well. But we're not there yet. It's an ongoing battle. It's a consistent fight. I think we've gone with many things actually that we have achieved as MHPSS workers lately. But still, of course, there are still many problems. We're still underfunded also. There's still too much split off between what protection work does called PSS and mental health. And also COVID is by most people still seen as only a virus that travels around without other aspects. For example, food security and increasing child marriages and especially, of course, also the mental health crisis that have provoked common off in the limelight. But thank you, Sarah, for that. Michael, I'm going to give the floor to you, the virtual floor to you for some opening remarks. Thanks, Colin. Checking you can hear and see me okay. Yes. Great. And thanks, Sarah, for the introduction. So as Sarah is saying, we have attention and we have some space and we have some improvement in the country level coordination structures. My sense is the window is open, but it may close before too long. So we need to move now more than ever on mental health and psychosocial support. Colin started to mention some of the challenges that are there in terms of children and mental health and psychosocial support. And it's always mattered. I'm turning the volume up. It's always mattered. But now more than ever, with COVID-19, we see, for example, the global protection cluster recent reports referencing two thirds of operations with increases in child marriage, recruitment of children to armed forces and groups, and online sexual exploitation now being seen more and more in specific country operations. And that comes on top of what we already had, incredible levels of armed violence, armed conflict and an increasing use of detention as a measure against children perceived to be a security threat associated with different armed forces and groups, or even just for trying to seek asylum or a better life being detained without their loved ones with devastating impacts for their mental health. So it always mattered. It matters now more than ever. We have some space. We need to move ahead collectively. And we need to do that by describing in more detail at country level the situation for mental health and psychosocial support. So one of the jobs of coordination groups across the protection cluster and other clusters is to determine the need and the scale, providing the evidence. And one of the particular challenges for protection I wanted to reference is that we come under pressure to mimic other sectors and really provide quantitative data. And that can be challenging in protection generally, and it can be challenging for mental health and psychosocial support needs because we know that collecting household level data at scale on some of these issues can be unsafe, inaccurate, and also unethical if it's not backed by services as well. So in describing those needs, I'd like us to think about the available information, including prevalence data and how as a protection cluster and working with other sectors, we can get better at using prevalence data. For example, that coming to us from WHO, where we understand up to 20% of children may have significant mental health issues coming out of violence, conflict, violence, for example. The next point I wanted to make is that we need to work with other sectors, but also better within protection. And I'll give you a couple of examples within protection. For child protection, we need to work better with GBV on case management for child survivors of sexual violence, where we see teenage children and particularly girls at risk. We need to work with mind action for children who are victims of explosive ordinance and require comprehensive case management, including mental health and psychosocial support. So we need to get better working within protection and describing the story, being efficient and coordinated, but also with other sectors. And for example, for child protection, we need to get better at working with education, and we'll hear about that today hopefully, so that we're not duplicating, we're adding value, so that child protection is able to take referrals and provide more advanced support. We need to get better at working with health as we step up and provide more advanced support into level three, how we work with health actors, you may be operating at level four, for example. So we need to do that work at country level and through the technical working groups at country level. This is very important. So as we coordinate our work and get better at working together within protection and with other sectors, that needs to happen through the technical working groups. And Sarah referenced that increase in those coordination groups at country level that we need to plug into. It's great that we have global frameworks, but these need to be balanced by country level coordination. And our first focus must be country level coordination. The situations are different in each country, the capacity of different sectors, how we work together, the configuration of line ministries and so on. So focusing at a country level. In child protection, we're going to have a particular focus on sectors such as nutrition, health, education, and we're going to do that through those technical working groups I mentioned. Many of you may know that child protection is often leading psychosocial support groups and with Cohen, we've been encouraging our child protection colleagues to move to a single platform that is mental health and psychosocial support. So we become part of a comprehensive coordination platform. And I'd like to thank colleagues from BHA for their support in doing that in the coming year. We've got huge amounts to do. We've got a great opportunity right now. We have to challenge ourselves and work together more than ever. I look forward to hearing Cohen and Sarah to the rest of the session and to the panelists. And I wanted to say a big thank you to colleagues at the ISC Reference Group, Sarah to you, to FAMI, and others for the great partnership in this work. It's truly valuable and appreciated. Cohen and Sarah, back to you. Thank you, Michael. And thank you also for thanking us. It's nice as well to be thanked. So thank you for doing that. We're now going to have our first panel discussion and we have colleagues here from the health area and also from education. So Fatmi Hannah from the World Health Organization who's also my fellow co-chair of the Reference Group and also Mackenzie who is a representative from the Global Education cluster as well. And Cohen is going to moderate this panel session. And please if you have questions in the chat that you would like to write or comments in the chat to the panelists or in relation to what's happening on the panel in terms of discussions, then please do write them in the chat function because I will be checking that and hopefully feeding it in at the end of the first panel discussion as well. So we welcome your inputs as well. Cohen. Thank you, Sarah. FAMI, welcome. Mackenzie, welcome. Mackenzie, you've been such a champ in promoting the cooperation between child protection and education. So it's good that you switch on your camera. And now I'm, I think, there is FAMI, you know these things. Fantastic. FAMI, I'm going to start with Mackenzie. Mackenzie, I have a question for you and the same question we're after. It's also be asked to FAMI as well. So how important is actually now at this stage MHPSS in your sector? I'm asking the reality, what is it now really and how important should it be on the other hands? If you can give an answer in about four minutes. Thank you. Yeah, well MHPSS is already quite central in education. Study after study have shown the positive impact and correlation between good child well-being and learning outcomes, attendance at school, peer interaction. So for this reason, the education responses are increasingly including MHPSS. This year in all of the HRPs, we calculated 5.8 million children are targeted for MHPSS activities within the education response. Now that's more than half of the total children targeted. So I think that shows the importance of these activities within our sector. The reality is also though that while there's an expansion of children targeted and reached, there's a plethora of different approaches and different depths of approaches in applying the MHPSS activities and education settings. This could be MHPSS activities that are integrated into the part of daily classroom teaching and learning. For example, social emotional learning approaches or standalone MHPSS activities happening in the school environment which could be structured or semi-structured or unstructured MHPSS activities. How it should be, in my opinion, more coordinated. So remembering that both education and child protection are focusing on the same children, I think there's room to expand and enhance our intersector collaboration to make sure that we're together delivering a holistic package of MHPSS activities to children and more coherently as well. Schools have really unparalleled access to children. Since education is a universal service and tended to reach every child in a country, this is really a great opportunity that we should leverage to reach more children and together achieve our collective MHPSS outcomes since we since we have that access to children. But at the same time we need to place the school and the school's role within a child's broader environment and link with the other sectors and services to reduce the disconnect between the PSS and the MH with the PSS predominantly is what's provided in schools, but we know that children sometimes need more than that and making sure that the connections both up and down the pyramid layers are made and enhanced through better collaboration. And just a final note on what it should be, in my opinion, teachers in schools can't do everything. So we do need to strengthen that link with other sectors and think realistically about the capacities that schools have, maximize those and also support them to be able to serve children better. Thank you, Mackenzie. So MHPSS education is there. That's good, but it can still be better, right? Okay, thank you for that. Fanny, I think the world should be grateful for all the things that you've been doing in MHPSS. It's a mixed world of different section. I'm so happy that you wanted to be part of this panel actually. The same questions for you. What is now the importance of MHPSS in the health sector and how important should it be as well? Thank you Fanny for four minutes. Thank you very much and thank you for this opportunity and thanks for the appreciation as well. But we did not do this alone. We did it with you and with partners from different sectors and clusters. And for the purpose of this session, I'm wearing the heart of health sector, but my job every day is to make sure that mental health and psychosocial support is integrated into all sectors and all clusters and provides the needed support for MHPSS technical working group. But let's zoom in together on the health sector and health aspects. To what extent it's important, mental health has been there as part of WHO definition for health since it was established in its constitution. The motto of no health without mental health has been raised by WHO for decades. And you look at the sphere principles throughout one of the sphere principles has been always within the health component, mental health. And that continue to grow across the year. Within the health sector, there is a key indicator of having the percentage of general health care facilities with at least one person trained and the system in place to provide services for people with mental health conditions. I work in Syria, both wearing the heart of an officer in Syria, providing technical support and also globally with my colleagues in the countries and regions providing support to Syria. And in a country like Syria, this indicator specifically has seen huge success across the paradoxically before 2011. This indicator, integration of mental health into general health care was 0%. We started before the conflict from 0%. If you look at the health sequester, the health sequester data now, the one which just released back in last year in the annual report of EROM and the health sequester, there is 32% integration means that 32% of general health care facilities starting from 0% are providing mental health services for people with severe mental health conditions. They started from two psychiatric hospitals only in 2011 with no integration and community-based centers and family centers in schools. But now there are services in 11 cities and outside of the psychiatric hospital community-based center. And that happened in Syria. But why it happened in Syria and do not happen in other places? Our main problem is lack of investment in this area before conflicts and before emergencies. Most governments in the world are investing 2% of their health care budget on mental health. While one in 10,000, this is the rate of mental health professionals, one in 10 would have a mental health condition, one in five in humanitarian situation would have a mental health condition. But we have globally one in 10,000 in low-income countries, two for every 100,000. You apply how many mental health professionals are there for a country such as South Sudan, which has seen decades of conflicts. There are three mental health professionals for South Sudan in a rate of one for every 12 million. Just imagine the gap. One in five people needs a service, but there is one for every four million. Our main challenge is lack of investment in community-based mental health services within the health sector and other sectors as well before emergencies. We need after emergencies to look into building back better, more sustainable mental health care systems, but also we need to think before emergencies and to building better before mental health systems for preparedness. Thank you. Absolutely. That's a huge gap indeed actually. It's quite shocking when you were talking about just numbers of South Sudan. That's quite something. Thank you, Fahmi. Mackenzie, back to you actually. What would explain the difference between what the situation now is of MHPSS in the education sector and what should be, how it should be, and then in your views, how can it be solved? And afterwards the same question also for Fahmi. Four minutes, please. Thank you. I think the difference is between what it is now and what it should and can be is putting the child at the center and responding to their needs holistically through multiple sectors and in a joined up way and in a coordinated way. I have three ideas for solutions. First, as I said, strengthening our intersector coordination. So child focused MHPSS delivery requires us to provide a coherent support at different levels of the MHPSS pyramid and referrals in between those levels. So we need to collaborate with different sectors, education, child protection, protection, health to enhance the quality and the coverage. And I think together we can do that. We can capitalize on our complementarities, avoid duplication of services. And through doing this, we are maximizing the limited resources and human capacity that we have available and reach more children in need. But that will require us to come together, break the silos and work intersectorally. What that could look like? What are some of the steps of working in an intersector way? Michael mentioned we need to understand the needs, the MHPSS needs of children. And we need to understand this together, that we could work together in needs assessments or coming together, putting all the information that we have from different sectors on the table and analyzing that jointly to come to a better picture of children's mental health and psychosocial needs. Secondly, strategic planning, doing this together, agreeing the roles and responsibilities of our different sectors in responding to those needs and dividing those responsibilities in a strategic way. And then targeting. So making sure we're not doing the same activities in the same locations for the same children, but rather more strategically dividing the targets and activities to make sure that we're playing to our strengths, maximizing the opportunities and saving resources through targeting more efficiently between the different sectors. And I think specifically for education, as we mentioned before, we have such access to children and quite often the activities that we're doing at school level are in the layer two of the MHPSS pyramid. If we are more collaborative and discuss the targeting and plan together with child protection, for example, if we're taking on a lot of the level two activities in MHPSS service delivery, that potentially frees up a lot of resources and space for child protection to provide more specialist services, referrals between the layers, case management, things like this that require a lot more resources and perhaps more specialized and dedicated human resources and allowing us to compliment that with the wide scale, low level support that's feasible through schools. And just for example, the Child Protection and Education Clusters and AOR have come together to develop a collaboration framework to help have some of these discussions and divide roles and responsibilities more strategically. Thank you. I don't know if I'm out of time, but I have two other solutions that are very short. They are very short, we can give them, but of course we need solutions always. Okay, a second idea for a solution, it's really connected to the first, but making sure that the responses are joined up, we need to focus on the referral mechanisms between the layers, between the sectors, and really working together to facilitate that. And again, that's part of the Intersector Collaboration to join those dots. And finally, the third solution from the Education sector is teachers. I think parents and caregivers well-being is increasingly being discussed and addressed, and we need to do the same thing for teachers, because not only is their mental health important in its own right, but let's think about the knock-on effect that a teacher with poor mental health would have for the children in her or his classroom. I think we see more positive classroom management strategies employed, reduced corporal punishment in those classrooms, so this should be also front and center in our thinking when we want to affect positive outcomes on child well-being as well. And those are all the solutions I have. Thank you, Mackenzie. I think there are, those are very, very good suggestions. One thing that came to mind when we were talking as well was when we are moving more PSS activities from child protection into education, and child protection will focus more on level three activities, is that we will also have to work with a different costing model, right? Now, the financial flow goes to the clusters, how will it work then in the future? Also, in the past, you could see in child protection, quite a horizontal costing model of 800,000 children times $3 per child for the PSS activities. Now, it will be so much money for PSS activities, but then also for level three and so on, and it will be a much more complicated structure. Fami, you mentioned investment, so obviously the explanation between the difference what is and what should be is, is the lack of money and how can be solved is more money, but I'm sure there's more than that on the table. Indeed, I think resources still, still, still a big issue and resources, resources also reflected not only in financial, but, but human, human resources lack of investment does not only mean lack of investment in services, but lack of investment in pre-graduate and undergraduate and post-graduate education, which lead to availability of mental health resources that would be working in this area. Kun, let me share with you some findings, very fresh data, just released actually yesterday, which is very relevant to our discussion. Yesterday, WHO released a survey on continuation of mental, neurological and substance use services in 130 different countries. Some of the findings are really eye, eye-openers and very relevant to your question. Actually, out of the 130 countries, 89% big majority said that they have included mental health and psychosocial support in their COVID-19 national response plan. Huge majority. Two-third of the countries have reported having a multi-sectoral MHPSS coordination platform. Almost 90% of them said Ministry of Health is there, around 70% said either Social Affairs or Education Ministry is part of this coordination platform. However, but 17% of those countries that have integrated MHPSS into their plan reported having full funding to implement the activities in the, in the plan. So again, it brings us to the issues. When we look at the continuation of the services during COVID-19, a big eye-opener here, 93% of the countries reported either whole or partial disruption of services. And guess what? Which services was among the most disrupted? Services for the most vulnerable people. Children and adolescent services. 30% of countries only reported full continuation of these services. Similarly, services for older adults. Very similar percentage for services for anti-natal and post-natal mental health services. Prevention and promotion services were amongst the most badly disrupted. Outpatient and community-based services amongst the most disrupted. So to some extent, the recommendation and finding is that there are existing guidance and continuation of essential health services and again disruption on how to continue and have safe delivery for these services that is released and available. And the recommendation from WHO to countries, including in humanitarian situations, is to apply this because what we see is major disruption in most of the countries in humanitarian and also in non-humanitarian settings and to monitor these changes and also use it for improvement. So we need also data to continue collecting data like the survey I just mentioned. I think other areas which are needed, which will help us to get there, is advocacy. Mental health can be less prioritized among other areas of work, especially in situations where the resources are very limited. We need to present the service as essential and as sometimes life saving and above all, as a basic need and a human right. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yes, I mean human resources are indeed a very important issue and the advocacy is totally needed. Sarah, you've been monitoring the chat. Have there been any questions coming out of the people participating? Yes, there's been a few reflections, particularly on what the panel has said. So good reflections as they're saying in response to your comment, Mackenzie, for teacher wellbeing, I think, and the role of teachers is being part of the solution as well. And also support for what you were saying, family on the need to invest in human resources. And that needs to be collective capacity building, collective training opportunities rather than just looking at one cadre of professionals or one type of officer. And then there's a particular question that's come in and a reflection also from Alfred Mutiti based in Syria. He was saying that the challenge over time has been the medicalization of mental health and psychosocial support with a limited focus on investing in community structures and community based responses. Are we looking at reviewing different approaches to mental health and psychosocial support so that we avoid doing harm and we actually start doing better for children and more vulnerable groups? If I remember having discussions with family about that topic as well, family I'm sure you have things to say about that. I think it is wrong to think about mental health and psychosocial support as a matter relevant to one sector or one cluster. This is a cross cutting subject in good humanitarian practice. You will find mhps actors working under child protection, good mhps practice. You will find mhps actors working in education sector, doing school mental health promotion in nutrition sector, doing behavioral activation for children with severe malnutrition and many other activities within general protection clusters, within health sector, doing mental health integration into general health care. I think the mistake happened in coordination at country level if mhps is taken or dominated by one sector only. Whatever is this sector, this is a subject which is cross cutting and there need to be a balance through having mhps technical working groups which are not belonging to one sector or one cluster which are cross cutting with good representation and good services happening within different sectors and different clusters. Also another solution for what the colleague from Syria has proposed is using cost-effective methods and the survey that I just shared released yesterday. We found that above 80% of countries are using telehealth or tele-syrupy as an intervention which is very good, which is less used in low-income sitting, but what we found is actually less used is tools which have been advocated for for years such as task sharing by building the capacity of general health workers to do things that specialists can do. We find very, very smaller percentage compared to tele-syrupy and tele-health intervention invested in task sharing. So getting back again that there are things that can be done by community-based health workers and community workers in general, things that can be done by teachers. There are things that can be done through task sharing where a more multi-sectoral and multi-separate approach can be introduced at case level. Thank you. Sarah? Yes, it's time for one more question from Sharon Abramovich. I apologize if I've got your name wrong. She was asking if we could reflect on how mental health and psychosocial support is being integrated into risk communication and community engagement, RCE, specifically in relation to COVID. So how MHPSS is integrated into risk communication and community engagement? Who wants to comment? Mackenzie, Fami? I see Fami clicking yes. Okay, Fami, go ahead. Just want to say that MHPSS is cross-cutting across sectors, and MHPSS is cross-cutting in public health emergency responses within sectors as well. So it means that within the health sector, MHPSS should be seen also as a cross-cutting subject, not only relevant to risk communication, but also relevant to clinical management, because there are mental and neurological manifestation of COVID disease itself. It have mental and neurological consequences, which are known clinically. Risk communication, there are things that we can do for stress management. There are things that we can do in community messages that we need to integrate MHPSS into. In public health emergencies, there is a pillar for partner coordination, MHPSS is relevant there as well. In public health emergencies, there is another pillar for operations, where there is a duty of care for all staff working. So MHPSS is cross-cutting across sectors, and MHPSS usually is cross-cutting also within sectors of relevant to different sectors. So when it comes to risk communication and community engagement, there is a published WHO guidance since February available in numerous languages in all six UN languages on WHO on risk communication and community engagement, including the messages that can be used, and I saw it used creatively, especially in humanitarian settings in developing messages using WhatsApp for dissemination of messages in very difficult to reach areas. And also WHO released a stress management guide, an illustrated guide for self-help that can be used by frontline responders and can be used also by individual. But just want to emphasize that it's relevant for risk communication as well as it is relevant for other pillars within any public health emergency response. Thank you. Thank you, Fahmi. Mackenzie, I see that you're on mute. Do you want to add quickly something to that before we move on to the next topic? And just quickly from education, again, what a great opportunity to integrate. We've seen fantastic examples of MHPSS messaging going out together with other risk education messaging through the distance learning modalities. So a fantastic avenue to reach the ears and minds of children when these systems have been set up for the remote education distance learning. And there's been some really, really good examples coming through of including MHPSS messaging within those broadcasts as well as RCCE to school children. Thank you, Mackenzie. Thank you so much for participating in this panel today. Also, thank you, Fahmi. Thank you so much for your time and for your valuable input. There have been very interesting comments as well on the chat box, but I'll leave it up to all of you to read it. And we can move on to the next point in our agenda, which is an interview with Pat from of the USAID. And that's in the hands of Sarah. Sarah, over to you. And thank you again, panelists. Thank you, Kun. And hello, Elizabeth, as well. Hello there. With regards to the questions in the chat, I think we will also come back to them subsequent panels, because some of them are not specific just to health or protection or education. So we will come back and also the panelists feel free to respond to any questions that come up in the chat as well. Okay. Hello, Elizabeth again. Sorry. You are the psychosocial and protection focal person within the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance at the USAID. I'm yourself and other colleagues. What portfolio of projects or programs do you oversee in that position? Well, hello, everyone. I'm happy to be here today to participate in the session alongside my colleagues from the Mental Health and Psychosocial Reference Group, the Child Protection Area of Responsibility, and to all of you who are showing an interest today in mental health and psychosocial support. It's great to see this highlighted on the agenda, the Global Protection Forum this year. For me, for the USA Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, formerly known as AFTA, Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and Food for Peace, we recently transitioned, our mission is to save lives, alleviate human suffering, and decrease the economic impact of disasters. And as part of this mission, BHA supports activities in all humanitarian responses to address the critical mental health and psychosocial needs of persons exposed to stressors during conflict or crisis. Within BHA, advisors such as myself lead humanitarian protection programming, interagency coordination, and U.S. government policy engagement across the sub-tech sectors of gender-based violence, child protection, psychosocial support, and protection coordination advocacy and information. In addition, our work is to support technical leadership, guidance, and policy development to promote gender equality and integrate gender, age, disability, and social inclusion in programming. The work is also to ensure protection remains central to all of our response programming through safe programming, accountability of populations, and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse. A core part of this work is to ensure program safety, which takes into account the physical as well as psychological aspects of disasters. This is a core component, a core aspect of our programming that we do not take lightly. And throughout the years, we've done more and more in the area of MHPSS. So what does this mean for my portfolio or the work that myself and my colleagues do? We review every single proposal that comes into the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance to ensure that partners meet requirements. In the last year, that included over approximately 700 proposals from across the globe. This, all programming did not, obviously, a part of that included mental health and psychosocial. But we do look for those aspects in there. The team proactively engages with the protection coordination bodies, such as yourself, that are here today. The MHPSS reference group, the child protection and gender-based violence ALR, and the global protection cluster. And we do this to ensure the development of protection policy, tools and guidance, which are responsive to emerging protection needs at the field level. So given the importance of psychosocial support to USAID's protection programming, USAID is investing in new tools, modalities and standards for MHPSS that can provide humanitarian actors with interventions that can safely be deployed at scale in culturally diverse and resource-challenged environments. Some of the activities that we, that I and others in BHA cover include when it comes to MHPSS. On the psychosocial side, examples are group and peer-based activities, as well as recreational, social and emotional learning activities. Our global level projects also include examples such as the World Health Organization Problem Management Plus project, which provides peer professionals with the training they need to provide focus group interventions designed to reduce levels of social emotional distress during the aftermath of an emergency. This also includes, you were talking earlier, about community-based, the need for more community-based mental health and psychosocial support. One of the projects that we supported was the really recently released by IOM manual on community-based mental health and psychosocial support. Another example of the programs that we do is we supported the IRC's Women Rise project, which included a psychosocial framework and resource package for gender-based violence programs. Also a reintegration package for children associated with armed groups and forces that included a psychosocial component, as case workers and social workers provide support to families and children and the reintegration process. An upcoming project that we are also incredibly happy to support is with the IFRC Psychosocial Center and the development of an integrated model for supervision, which will provide guidance for supervision of staff and volunteers implementing mental health and psychosocial support protection interventions and emergency. So that's a little taste of what we cover. There's even more, but I'll stop there. Great. You sound very busy having to review 700 proposals. You're a very popular government. I know that you do a lot of work off of financial but also diplomatic support, like you said, supporting protection policy initiatives as well as direct programming. So it's a nice balance that you see. And as a donor agency and one that's been very consistent, both for the protection sector but also with regards to mental health and psychosocial support, it's a consistent and knowledgeable donor here with a considerable size of funding as well in support that you give to the humanitarian system as well as for refugee and migration response. How do you see a good proposal? And is there something in particular that you look for in terms of cross-sectoral or work or trying to bridge across different clusters or different sectors as well? Absolutely. So first and foremost for our global programs, we look to fill critical gaps of the reference group and the agreement of the AORs and that is looking at those as the coordination bodies that are working with all the implementing organizations to identify the biggest needs on the ground. So we're really at our global level looking at filling those critical gaps. We want to, all of our program we're looking to align the global technical bodies. Outside of this, we look to support programs to meet global need not just in building capacity of an organization but connected to the broader community of practice. We also, when I'm looking at a proposal, I'm looking to ensure that it is in line with the BHA application guidelines. We just recently released a new version of this which you can find on our USA website and this is for all our non-competitive emergency awards for NGOs. These guidelines are written in line with the global guidance that is released by the IASC guidelines on MHPSS and emergencies when we're talking about emergency proposals or MHPSS proposals. And so I'm looking to make sure when I'm addressing or reviewing proposals that it's in line with what they say. Some of the main confinerations to highlight from because there's such a depth and wealth of information in those guidance documents is also that programming should focus on activities that span across the mental health and psychosocial intervention pyramid. For BHA, this will mean, as we were talking before, about not wanting to stop that type thing, but this means for us that often that goes across the health and protection sectors. So we're looking to see ideally that programs show both of those sectors and how the MHPSS work is crossing both of those. We're also looking to see that it's placed based on internationally recognized evidence-based strategies that reinforce the central to disaster response. This includes standalone life-saving protection activity, preparedness and disaster risk reduction. That's our mandate for BHA, so we're making sure that it's in that area. We also are looking to ensure MHPSS programming is coordinated across the sectors. This is the idea of our session today, but that is one of our core pieces that we look for. In many cases that the social programming will intersect with and complement programming in other sectors and sub-testers, both internal and external to protection. So some of the other things we look for with that is that there's a clear referral pathway. So for individuals identified through psychosocial programs that are in need of more intensive mental health care, we're looking at those referral pathways through there and vice versa. We also avoid awareness raising in programs. Sometimes we've seen this in some of the applications that we get. We want to avoid awareness raising that is not alongside, that does not have, it can't be done in the absence of services. So absolutely needing both of those things to be there. In addition, clinical diagnosis and management should be provided by trained supervised clinicians. We want to make sure that staff that are organizations that we're supporting to do the MHPSS work are fully staffing these programs, fully supporting those who are trained to have that supervision and support that's needed. Just a couple of two points on that, two more points. So we're talking about training. We really want to ensure that the training, supervision and mentorship of generalists, paraprofessionals and community workers are available by specialists and trained experienced providers. We have seen this also in the need, earlier we were talking about the need for more community-based psychosocial support. So that's something we're looking to in our proposals also. Wanting to ensure that community-based psychosocial support is focused on building and establishing positive coping mechanisms, increasing social cohesion and strengthening community resilience. What are, what do communities, what are the strengths they already have, what are the things already in place that can be reinforced to these programs and not left out of our activities? So that is just a few highlights. There's so much more I could go into that I know we're short. Thank you and it's really a pleasure to see a donor government agency that also understands the importance of human resources in this area both for protection but also health and education and MHPSS and the need that families and individuals who are vulnerable and communities and who are requiring support in emergencies that they get that accompaniment and that you are able to refer and provide them with the service that they are actually seeking rather than saying this isn't my responsibility any longer. So thank you for reinforcing that point as well. There's something that's come up in the chat function that I can just directly ask you now, Elizabeth, that's in relation to all the programs that the BHA supports, is there a link where people can learn more about the types of programs or initiatives or projects that you support and also in particular the new guidelines that you mentioned that you'd released on how you review your applications? Absolutely and I will put in right after this interview I'll put in the link to where our guidelines are. You also find fact sheets on the different activities that have happened across the different sectors including protection, health, you can find more on our website. Thank you very much Elizabeth and thank you for your time today also to talk about the work of BHA. Thank you. This was very informative actually, I think everybody should be interested in how to write successful proposals. Yes Sarah, we have a quiz, it's going to be a fascinating quiz. Yes, we don't have big prizes but we have no prizes in full transparency. Yes, yes, yes and we actually have two Zoom masters, Sonya and Blanka which I also would like to thank now that we are on the topic as well and they're going to give you the first question and you can then give answers in the form of a poll. Yes, so I promise to read the questions out for all of you. So the first question there's going to be four on this quiz so the first question is, is the creation of a psychosocial support working group in which you invite different sectors a good way forward? You have two options, either yes or no. Then you have 10 seconds to reply. Five, four, three, yes Sonya, there we have the result, the majority of the people answered yes, this is a good way forward and I can understand why you would say that because it says you invite different sectors, right? However, the correct answer is no, it was a bit tricky because we're talking here about the PSS working group. The right answer would have been we have to create an image PSS working group, not a PSS working group. We are struggling currently because in several countries there are separate mental health and PSS working groups and we really need to unite the image and the PSS working groups so it is not a good way forward to create a PSS working group even if you invite different sectors. It should be an image PSS working group, sorry for being so tricky but for now we can keep our price, right? Okay Sonya, next question please. Okay question number two is can stress management strategies for young mothers reduce acute malnutrition in children? Again two options either yes or no. And you have 10 seconds, five, four, three, two, one and there we go. Sonya, the results please. Yes, so the majority of the people say yes, I forgot to say that this question was not related to any price, right? The right answer is yes actually so most of you are right, stress can stop the production of breast milk and the target that's I must be assessment interventions we can actually reactivate breast milk production and as such we have a big role to play in malnutrition as well. Thank you Sonya, number three please. Okay you noticed the questions are getting a bit longer now so the question number three is for clusterized countries so this is for IDP settings. What would be the impact in terms of the number of beneficiaries of level two activities if child protection would consistently work together with education? So by level two activities it's referring to level two of the ISC intervention pyramid which is family and community supports. So what would be the impact of child protection and education work together to deliver level two family and community support interventions? And sorry you have three options here and numbers of percentages. Exactly, you have 10 seconds left. Five, four, three, two, one. Thank you Sonya, the results please. Okay so 24 percent of our participants says 50 percent, 55 percent said that the number of children reached would increase with 80 percent and 20 percent of our participants would say that it would increase with 100 percent. The 20 percent of our participants are right, the number of children reached if we would work consistently together with education it would increase with 100 percent. Now child protection is reaching 5,320,017 children exactly on level two services that's the HRP of 2019. While education in immersion she has 10.8 million. In other words if we work consistently with education we can double the amount of children that we reach. So it's really worth doing that. Yeah we still cannot give our car away, right? Question four please Sonya. Okay question four, this is the last question for you. Which way should referrals take place between service providers according to the ISC MHPSS intervention pyramid? So upwards from level one and two to levels three and four, downwards from level four to the other three levels, sideways within layers or all of the above. So four options there. Every time there are options there, this is the last question. We have 10 seconds to go, four, three, two, one, zero. Then here comes the result. 21 percent, set option one but indeed all of the above is the right answered and 62 percent is the amount, is the percentage of participants that gave the right action. It is manifesting that we always need to refer up basically but there is an issue as well that up the psychologists and so they're having a bottleneck with services and unless they start referring down then we also cannot fill the gap that the family was talking about. So they should also refer down and we also should also refer sideways, right Sarah? And what is that again? Yes so sideways is your organization may not be the person providing all of the different types of activities within say layer two or within say layer three but you may have another organization that's providing similar activities. So you can also refer and accompany as Elizabeth mentioned in the interview beforehand. So there's no one direction for referrals. It should be a very dynamic way through all the different layers of the pyramid and we should really be thinking about pulling in holistic supports for a family or for an individual in need. It doesn't really matter what layer of the pyramid you operate in. The fact is you need to pull in services to help that particular person or that family in front of you that's in need. So you can also as I said go sideways, look at fellow organizations providing similar services that might be able to help you as well as referring to specialized services as well as referring to things like shelter and basic needs as well. Thank you for the clarification Sarah. And I think actually everybody of all did very well in the quiz. Thank you so much for participating in that. Sarah if I'm not mistaken then the next chapter of this webinar is in your hands and you're going to do a panel discussion with Megan from GPV with Cecil from the nutrition sector and with Murat from mine action. That's going to be fascinating. Thank you. Yes thank you very much Kun and could I please invite Cecil Murat and Megan to please put their cameras on so we can see you. So hello friends and colleagues Murat I can't find you. Hello. Yes now I can. Great thank you. Okay so similar to the panelists that we had before I'm going to ask you each of you two questions and it's the same question that we will take in terms across the different sectors in this case. So the first question is how important is mental health and psychosocial support in reality in your particular sector or area of work and how important should it be? Okay so we can start off with Cecil from nutrition. You're actually an MHPSS colleague but I know you straddle nutrition very well and then we'll go on to Megan and GPV and then Murat and mine action. Yeah maybe it's part of the challenge and the solution is about how as a mental health specialist you become a nutrition expert. So I think there are many many links between nutrition and MHPSS so I will maybe just start I won't explain all of them maybe during the question we can go a bit further but maybe I would like to start by why we started in action against hunger to work on MHPSS because I think it's a good example of why there is linkages between the two. So it was a long time ago in Congo Brazzaville where we had some treatment for malnourished people. It was a huge crisis and we get some people coming directly from the bush into the nutrition centres but when in the nutrition centres some of the people they don't want to take any of drugs or protocols to be nourished again. Cecil we seem to have lost her. Cecil we're going to come back to you and Megan I will jump the question to you now instead as GBB. Sure no problem can everyone hear me? Yeah okay great so it's a it's a really interesting how important MHPSS is to the GBB sector it's it is foundational to our sector and I think that is both what we want it to be but also the reality. So I just want to talk a little bit about some of our interventions you know that our MHPSS interventions so case management which in most GBB programs is not just targeting GBB survivors but is also a service that is available for all women and girls that want to access it you know this is a level three intervention and it is it's really the foundational part of any GBB program. We also most of our services in our in our sector both case management but other types of level two psychosocial activities are provided within women and girls safe spaces and these are really you know a women and girls safe space is not just a space you know for for women and girls to come together and sort of a physical location that houses PSS activities but we also consider it to be a PSS intervention in itself because of the the the safety the psychological and emotional safety can provide women and girls as well as it being an entry point for services for other MHPSS services but that piece around kind of also helping to reduce isolation and bring women and girls together to be able to connect is is really important for women and girls safe spaces as an intervention and then you know many of the activities as I mentioned that we do within women and girls safe spaces and often in coordination with other sectors are level two activities on the pyramid so it could be very informal discussions with women and girls sometimes that's tea and coffee sessions sometimes it's livelihoods activities where we're working with you know the livelihood sector as well one kind of new piece that we're really excited about in this sector and sorry I should say before that that many of our programs and organizations also provide in their programs higher level level three group psychosocial interventions and this next thing that I want to talk about is really really excited that OFDA or BHA US government is funding is the development of a resource package to support GBB practitioners with the implementation of level three group PSS interventions for women and that also includes a specific curriculum that that IRC has developed and has been piloted and adapted in several contexts so that's something that's going to be coming out in the spring of 2021 and I don't know if I'm running out of time but you have 30 more seconds Megan I have 30 seconds okay yeah I will just I'm gonna sort of set sort of plant a seed for my answer to the second question which is just that not only is mhpss so foundational to the GBB sector but the way in which we provide it and I'll talk about that later is so critical it's a very specific approach so thank you thank you Megan and Cecil welcome back we were listening to your beautiful story in West Africa for the the start of ACF and your nutrition programming there so welcome back and please continue thank you this was a teasing you know it's like Netflix okay so just to say that yes what was happening was that the people I don't know where it cuts exactly but the person were coming in the nutrition centers and refusing to take the treatment or committees willing to commit suicide or also being prostrated so the nutrition team were asking what we can do to support them and also to be capable to to nourish them so maybe this is the first thing between the nutrition in mhpss is that both of them are talking about willing to be alive and willing to get appetite and willing to have life so I think there is a clear connection between them and maybe one of the challenge that we have now in emergencies and in in the way that we are working is that we're becoming very very technical persons so capable to explain how many kilo calorie you should take every day but or which type of clinical protocol you should put in place but maybe we forget sometimes to have something that is more holistic and maybe a more global approach about the human being and social beings that we are that we have in front of us so maybe it's where we I can see a lot of connections between nutrition and mhpss to give life again give the wish to be in connection again and this kind of thing that we can work on together so this again also the multi-sectorial component is very important on this so this is also where I can see that there is connection between the way that we look at the things so if we are talking we were talking just before about breastfeeding or we are talking about children and what does it mean to nourish or to breastfeed your baby for example when it's not a baby that you are willing to have or when you are feeling depressed yourself so this is the types of work where we really try to work together with the nutrition and with mhpss so meaning that we need to be capable to to put together knowledge that are coming from different spaces together and to learn from each other and this is one of the issue also is to know how we can explain and share vocabulary share knowledge through different disciplines so maybe it's one of the things that we are talking working on so just to give you an example for example when we look at at severe acute malnutrition as psychologists we can see severe acute malnutrition as one of the consequences of neglect and that the the malnutrition is only one of the consequences of this it's not for all the cases but it's something that we know we'll learn during the studies that is coming from far in the psychology child psychology but it's not something that is known by the nutritionist so we try to adjust these kind of things and in the type of projects that we do we work we try to work on all these maternal mental health programs in mother-child or parent-child relationship and also all the child mental health we didn't speak so much up to now about very young child mental health but for sure this is one of the very important things that we are working on when we are talking about nutrition is all the support that we can provide with family when there is pregnant woman and also with the families with very young children so this is types of things that we are working on the other thing was also mentioned by far me before we work a lot on behavior activation in nutrition and how to to make sure that we adapt good methodology in terms of behavior change and this is coming from more the social social psychology that we use to be able to apply the good good ways or good factors that can help in terms of nutrition there is also some other factors that we are less working on for example all the links that are going between micro deficiencies and mental health as an example if you have some iodine deficiency in a country and you have a stronger risk to have children with creatinism so it was something that we observed for example in in Afghanistan through the nutrition survey we found out that there is a lot of women with that co-eater because of iodine deficiency and many children was born with the creatinism and in that type of situation you are working for example to provide some salt in order to prevent creatinism so this has another way to work together between nutrition and MHPSS so it's huge I can give you an example for hours but just to give you some a few examples of how we can work together okay thank you very much and Murat is a person from the mine action community you're very lucky in that you have an international convention actually that includes MHPSS but how important is it to the work of mine action how important should it be and how important is it in reality if I can give you three minutes to talk Murat you on mute yeah thank you Sarah I was just saying thank you for having invited me and I just wanted to also thank all the previous speakers who I've been listening to with great interest so it seems like a very simple question you're asking I will try to give a simple and straightforward answer on behalf of the mine action AOR but actually I do find it quite a complex subject first of all I think it's good that we always remind ourselves the place of mine action within the overall protection sector and I'm very glad to see William online here and in that sense what I would like to say is that having listened to colleagues from from the GBV area responsibility child protection education nutrition the same way that people facing needs and concerns protection or otherwise related to those areas of responsibility or clusters the same way that those people of concern do appear and have MHPSS needs clearly the same does apply to persons of concern to mine action and I would say in a very particular way I think as a sector there's very little doubt about the direct and indirect physical and psychological impact of explosive ordinance contamination and explosive violence at various levels and when I was just thinking about this question I thought it was worthwhile to kind of relate that to what we see actually in the MHPSS guidelines themselves they speak of emergency induced social problems or emergency induced psychological problems well and I also I noted previous colleagues especially found me talking about disruption of services access or or or an education sector schools so from our point of view there is the the impact on social networks community structures access to resources or facilities is terribly impacted by the presence of of explosive ordinance contamination and this has knock on effects then on the other side when we talk of psychological problems induced by explosive ordinance we're talking about all of these issues that we see they're talking about grief depression anxiety disorders including PTSD and other conditions now those are the kind of problems we're talking about but then let's talk about the persons of concern to mine action and risk of these problems we've seen hundreds of thousands of recorded incidents and accidents over the decades killing and maiming innocent civilians who are they so what is being left behind and what are we seeing these are persons left with physical impairments with disabilities induced by explosive violence we're talking about children child victims by the way tragically speaking the statistics over the past decade has shown that even while there has been a decrease in in some of the years previously in in overall accidents or incidents the rate of children child casualties has been on the rise and has continued to be and and let's not forget that for every parent injured or killed there are children affected there are children orphaned there are children who continue to work out of no will of their own in in hazardous areas there are children who suffer accidents are knocked out of social cultural and educational life as they once knew it if they once knew it and we talk about women widows single mothers that also as a cause of of of this of this let's say horror men who have lost the ability to take care of their families and and the list goes on so from from the mine action perspective I think there's little doubt and and referring back to what I noted from from what was mentioned by a colleague for me no health without mental health that really sticks with me and that's very important because it's hard to talk about recovery or increasing personal capacity of the victims without the mental health dimension um um of course why it also should be important is because by nature of these problems and impacts that I've just mentioned and the persons at risk or who have already been impacted the response has to require a cross sectoral planning in order to on the one hand prevent and reduce risks I mean the best cure is prevention for any um issue we do believe that's why clearance risk reduction risk education continues to be a very important uh part of any humanitarian response as far as the mine action sector is concerned but at the same time um the reality is that prevention is not 100 successful by far from it so the issue of needing to respond to the needs and by the way short medium and long-term needs of victims of which mhpss is an integral part is is an integral part of what is defined as victim assistance within mine action and among the pillars so um okay can I just stop you there morat because I'm going to give you another question to answer as well so thank you very much thank you very much so the second question which is also for all panelists and you actually started answering a little bit of morat as well when you in your first response is um why do you think that mhpss has struggled to gain traction and particularly within your sector if it has indeed struggled what's it competing against and also what do you see as solutions how can we better integrate it within the work of that particular sector so I will do the same um flow as before so starting with nutrition and hopefully we'll get the full nutrition not the netflix highlighted version yeah I will do my best you've got three minutes to answer okay okay um well I think one of the first issue as I was mentioning is that both sectors or I don't know how to call them I are huge and there is a lot of connections so it's not easy to have easy protocols or easy explanation about what should be done or what should be done um the second issue regarding this is also the cultural adaptation we didn't speak so much about it up to now but for me this is for sure that when we are talking about mhpss there is really some contextual adaptations that should be done and I'm not sure that we can apply some protocol or a generic approach that are working everywhere and there is a long time to to adapt what we propose to to the to the population and link to this at the beginning of the session we were discussing about indicators and I think it's also an issue even if I do believe that in mhpss we are quite good in uh in indicators but we are maybe better at the top of the pyramid rather at the bottom of the pyramid and it's somewhere where we we need maybe to to think about how we can increase and improve the work that we do and to be better um on this and to show more uh on this we are also I guess much more challenged than the other sectors to to provide indicators when I see what's happened to my colleagues in wash or nutrition but it is how it is so we should continue to to do evidence based on this uh I do agree as well on the questions of funds but also in terms of multi-sectoriality because I think that everybody is talking about multi-sectoriality and saying how important it is but when you start to work on funds for example you find out that many donors are talking to you about no but this is a proposal for nutrition so you cannot include mhpss or when you do mhpss you okay but you cannot include something that is nutrition uh and as an example uh we do for example baby friendly spaces when where we have integrated early child development mhpss nutrition health and we never know to which donor we can provide uh we can ask the funds because it's everywhere and nowhere at the same time so this is a type of a challenge that that we face as well as um also the the questions of human resources on the field it has been also elated by a family but the question on which tasks can be proposed to some other professionals and what should be still in the hand of a mental health professional is concretely an issue and I think there is a burden of the health systems when we are working in low and middle income countries we we have the tendency to ask them to do everything nutrition mental health and all the health and it's very challenging so it's in the same time an opportunity to try to see how we can integrate mhpss nutrition for example within the health system but it's also a big challenge and I was quite agree with one of the comments that I saw about the risks of uh psychatrization or medicalization of mental health and I think that we should keep this in mind also when we think about uh uh health system strengthening and not to forget all the work that can be done also within the communities and with the peer group support or with the helpers and with also patient experts so I think there are many other options that maybe we don't uh we don't target enough yet yeah thank you Cecilia Megan over to you and from a GBV perspective and you're you have to explain your little taste that you gave us before yeah it's a solution yeah yeah so I think that you know one of our our biggest challenges is is really more um having other mhpss actors and other sectors recognize the expertise we bring to providing mhpss services to women and girls and also remind like keeping it communicating and and having other actors understand that the services we provide are not just for GBV survivors but really are accessible and applicable to to any to all women and girls and what I was starting to reference before is just that we do take a very particular approach in our sector which is um a feminist approach to providing pss mhpss services so it's very much rooted in a power analysis um very much rooted in um the lived experiences of women and girls many of which you know are many of whom are facing violence but other types of stressors in their lives um just by the nature of being a woman and a girl um in a displaced setting um and you know that we not only support healing and recovery from specific incidents of GBV or or trauma or stress um but also all of the other you know activities um whether that be level two or level three um really take an empowerment approach as well um so I think that you know our biggest challenge is is really getting um other actors to refer um uh to to us for services for women and girls and really um you know understanding um why we're um as a sector best place to provide those services um I think just one other one other piece if I have time yes you do yeah quick yeah that I would just mention is um just to speak to some of the other um pieces that are coming up around donors and donor advocacy um I think we struggle and I guess that this is not specific to the GBV sector but I do think we struggle sometimes um to uh to get approval from donors for level two activities um because you know they they aren't as um quantifiable right with indicators um in terms of improvement and well-being um and and it takes a lot of um resources to be able to monitor and evaluate that so I think just a plug for um really us as a inter sectoral sector in the MHPSS community really advocating for the importance of those you know of those level two um activities um that are often community based is is quite important okay thank you very much Megan it's interesting that actually the issue to do with human resources has come up a lot in education and health and also nutrition and now also with GBV um so also using resources within other areas like you mentioned Megan's referring to GBV actors for women and girls but also working with teachers or also seeing the role of a nutritionist or someone working within a mother and baby space to also be able to provide MHPSS services and um Murat from a mind action perspective then um what do you see as as a solutions to to better provide MHPSS services um as part of victim assistance got three minutes thank you um yeah I was very interest to note I believe also from the participants and this is where I very much agree with them there was a few um uh contributions around the HRP and indicators and the question of of dedicated um planning now uh from from my perspective also as someone who's been working over the past let's say nine months on uh around collective outcomes that have actually been agreed by um by the child protection mind action and education clusters and AORs looking at I think what what I found as at what we've collectively been looking at as a potential solution is the question of um intentionality if I can summarize it in one word so intentionality in the sense that we really I think um can make a difference by targeted assessments and evaluation of needs um providing dedicated response indicators in the in the HRPs articulating these properly in the HNOs and uh providing for dedicated budgeting and resource planning which will allow for an accountable approach in reporting also for the mind action sector so obviously MHPSS needs and requirements are vast and they cut across all of the the various AORs and sectors that have been represented today as it does for mind action from a mind action perspective what will be helpful is if we can really articulate uh specifically um the the needs and resource requirements for services for MHPSS services to reach explosive ordinance related victims either direct or indirect so in a nutshell in the in the interest of time I'll leave it at that but I think that was one main point I would like to get across as someone who's also been trying to extend within the framework of GPC support field during the HPC and I know Sarah that I thank you also I take this opportunity to thank you for your support as well um upon some of those contexts to try to see how that can happen in collaboration with our colleagues in the field so thank you and over to you thank you Morat as well so intentionality and asking for money putting it in the HNOs and putting it in the HRPs and it's important for victim assistance within mind action Kuhn what's been happening on the chat well um we are moving now into the second hour a really good part in the second hour so people start not to put so many things in the chat but we got an interesting question actually from Agnes So Sutan for for Megan regarding how the sector works with men and boys and she says since the stress is very much the focus is very much woman and girl friendly spaces how to make this inclusive for boys and men Megan do you want to react to that um sure um so the question is how to make women and girls safe spaces inclusive for for men and boys you work with with with boys and with men and and since very much on woman and girl friendly spaces again inclusive for for boys and and men as well yeah so I mean the GBV sector certainly does respond to survivors male men and boys survivors um that uh you know have experienced GBV our our services primarily because they are set up in women and girls safe spaces the other types of services that we provide are are really are targeted at women and girls and if you're interested to know more kind of why we haven't opened that up to men and boys we have a whole kind of background and primer on that in our women and girls safe space toolkit which you can find on GBV responders Stephanie I don't know if you could just put that up on the link um but I I think that all of us would agree that um the importance of women and girls having a space where they can go um knowing that they are the majority of survivors um but also because of all um all the other limitations and restrictions on movement that they usually face that that having a space um that they can go and receive support and um that that is just for them is is quite critical um so I mean there are there are many other ways that we engage men and boys in our programming um in fact even in kind of the setup of a women and girls safe space or a GBV program um we do a lot of consultations with men and boys also wanting to understand um you know how willing they are to support the setup of something like a women and girls safe space because in most of the common humanitarian context they're going to be particularly men are going to be the decision makers about whether or not a woman or girl could even go to that safe space so we have to do a lot of work in the beginning um to really kind of understand whether um that's even something you know that they're willing to allow as a community um we engage them in a lot of prevention work too which I know is not really the the focus of of this session um so not not necessarily prevention of MHPSS but prevention of GBV work um so I don't know if that answers Agnes's questions but um but we actually let you see that also Stephanie has put two interesting reports as well in the test one is about a report of the help ask of the AOR and then another is a project brief on the toolkit IRC is developing to facilitate group support sessions if the answers were not in what you said and definitely can Agnes and other people can find it in the links provided here um Sarah we're moving towards the end of this panel discussion correct yes we are there is nothing else in the chat then yes we are yes so thank you very much wonderful panelists no thank you thank you sir thank you Morat and thank you Megan as well um just before we um pass the ball to to William who we can now see on camera hello William um for the the closing part of the um of the session um we're just going to show our second PowerPoint slide actually um of the whole event we did not want this to have an event with lots of PowerPoint on it so Bianca yes um if you can put that full screen yes so this is just some recaps of things that have come up um in the past kind of hour and 45 minutes um so the first thing is that mental health and psychosocial support is a joint responsibility okay that's absolutely so and that's something that we learned and we will never ever forget right so it has become very clear that it's it's part of all sectors due to time constraints we could not invite all the sectors here for example camp management is not here but of course also their mhpss is a is a is a very vital part right and it's not necessarily always called mhpss sometimes it's just called activities in the camp but it's not so different from um activities level two of mhpss actually yeah yeah so for mhpss to be effective as many of the speakers have highlighted we need to be able to step out of our respective sectors and this is really challenging if you're particularly working in a clusterized country or an idp context because the cluster system enforces pillars it makes it really quite difficult to be a cross cutting issue within the cluster system um and it means that you have to go out and kind of join forces and you have to go out and hustle collectively um for something so um that means coordinating together advocacy together doing service mapping together so if there is a mapping of of mental health and psychosocial support service is making sure that mapping is known for example by the gbv a or a or by mine action as well so those services can actually better reach victims in the case of mine action and and gbv survivors um and it also means referrals um elizabeth has mentioned this um as well as others um today and also holding sectors accountable so if you don't find mental health services are being discussed by health actors then go go there and say where do you want me to refer these people that are up coming to us with mental health concerns or conditions also go to nutrition and say look people people want to live people are are not able to eat and they're reporting psychological problems as a nutrition sector how can we help them it's not just about the food there's also the mental health and care practices exactly also we have um uh encouraging this is also from the government perspective as well um it's not just about as a humanitarian actors we also work with governments um so they also need to be encouraged to work together um across government line ministries because it crosses multiple line ministries at country level um as it does cross multiple sectors and clusters and sorry kun I interrupted your very important point no no no no no no I think what you were saying was very important actually no it's true I mean we need to be very assertive actually we need to stand for our points and we need to go um so we can do this two working together in the technical working group uh if there is one existing um and not just going there but really taking our points if we are for child protection then come up for for the interest of the children as well the same for AOA for for the for GBV and so ever and if there is no technical working group then we have to go straight to the other sectors go to the health sector so ask for okay where are your actors so you can refer to and if they're non-frontal well then we have to say then can we then call for sectors for for our actors to come in and step in because they really need it a platform that I find very useful is also the intercluster working group in the country where you can also give presentations uh and you can go there and sit in there as well Sarah next problem please um so we need service delivery at all levels of the pyramid and I think this has been mentioned by a number of speakers as well it's not just about you saying we only provide level two services or we operate here somebody has to provide services at all levels because a family and individual present with multiple needs and you need to be able to accompany and to refer that individual and family across the full spectrum of services that they require in order to meet their needs and that often means having holistic um approaches um so we we need to advocate for services where they don't exist if there aren't safe spaces for mother and baby groups or for women and girls and we need to advocate for their existence to in order to help them deal with any psychological issues and also to help with the group and the peer support activities similarly if we're not seeing specialized health services whether that be for older adults for for mine action victims or or for people with mental health conditions and we also need to be advocating for that to be in place as well so every layer is important in the pyramid um and they all need to exist as well as mentioned in the quiz as well something that we will never ever forget but any more mental health from pss it's a spectrum so we all have psychosocial needs or insights material needs to be communicated with the outside world and we also have our inner world which is the mental health world as well so no pss working group but mh pss working groups that's what we strive for um i'm gonna do the last one as well ask if you need support really uh i know the gbv aor has a good help desk the the the cpa aor has an excellent help desk and then there is uh of course sarah and fami who have been so helpful uh if you need to support uh when i was in the field i used them so many times and you know really ask support it's it's it's really a great resource that we have there sarah you announce william yes thank you very much kuhn um it's with pleasure actually i get to announce our special guest um william um who's some of you may not know him and some of you may know him very well um william is the global protection cluster coordinator i think you've been in place for a year now i believe william or just over a year um as well um so thank you very much for for taking the time to speak at the event and i know you've got some exciting news or so to share with us thank you so much sarah can you hear me well good sarah and kuhn we have had over 25 uh sessions in the global protection forum this is the best facilitated session congratulations that was so smooth so cheerful uh i have really truly enjoyed it uh so very well done uh i really appreciated the style the focus and the smoothness of of today's session so well done uh also for the participants on the chat box i feel like we've been having two in-depth conversations one orally with uh with uh with the camera and then on the chat box it was as interesting and uh as as intense in a positive way so congratulations also for all the participants for keeping the focus uh on this um i think the session reflects sarah a bit what the reference group for mhpss has been able to do it i want to congratulate also the reference group one for the topic and the issue and all what you're producing but also for being this model of mature cross sectoral humanitarian and protection work and i think the the spirit of the of the reference group comes clearly to this session and and i'm very glad with it um now on the substance um i have retained three main points uh before the announcement first it seems clear that there is political attention on the issue of mhpss uh from policy perspective within the agencies at leadership level and in the humanitarian sector and beyond in development sector and the sdgs etc and that seems to be established yet my experience in in these these attentions they go in in cycles and waves and the fact that today in 2020 we have this attention we shouldn't reduce the pressure we should keep the pressure on in terms of advocacy within the agencies across the agencies and within the wider humanitarian sector and that's that's an important point for us to be self congratulatory but also use that as a as a boost to keep the pressure on so message one keep on the pressure um message two i think uh what came clear from faimi is that at the core the basics of having enough resources in countries of conflicts and disasters to deal with mhpss is a major problem the figures he gave about south sudan uh about the general statistics of how many experts do we have in these countries are are shocking they're not shocking for the experts for people like us on this group but they are shocking in nature and i think they need to go out more and that seems to be a great area for this nexus talk having preparedness and enough resources in countries to deal with mhpss seems to me uh like a typical space where development and peace actors can massively invest in that can really contribute to better humanitarian action should it be needed and should it not be needed it's not a bad investment the mhpss per se issue is is a good investment to have in countries so i think we need to to benefit from this momentum and i know a lot of good work has been done in this direction to really double up the pressure on development action in countries that are fragile to really invest uh in this area of work the third point i want to to highlight is that what about the role of the protection sector uh and it's very interesting this topic is a is an interesting one because of course it's a matter of competition some areas of protection say we're better in this than others etc so there is a there is this dimension that is important and and i encourage this healthy positive competition there's also this cry outcry for better collaboration within the protection sector and across other sectors so here's the challenge of mhpss it has to be done by all so how can we do that and prioritize it at the same time for each sector program and within protection for protection program and the answer is this i think mhpss is a litmus test for mature experienced accountable not to credit hungry humanitarianism this is it if there is one single indicator that can prove that the humanitarian and protection leadership in a country is strong it's to have good mhpss response because it's not politically outrageous issue that requires a lot of political tension and negotiation it's responsible to within the realm of the humanitarian action and should we have good humanitarian and protection leadership in country that is cross-sectoral and pushing others to do their job and doing our own job then i feel there is strong opportunity for mhpss programming and response to be there so we need to get this point out there if you're a good humanitarian coordinator if you are a good protection coordinator then one single indicator can prove that get mhpss right in your operation so what are we doing by way of closure to get this right i've been trying since i started to learn from the aor from gender-based violence and the the excellent feminist approach to this from the mine action aor from our colleagues that also work on child protection intensely linked with mhpss response and programs and started looking at other areas of protection you know disability inclusion elderly inclusion areas of protection that focus on youth beyond beyond the children age we need to to to get the attention one to to convince to bring in this mindset that a stronger engagement of all protection action actors with mhpss is very good for protection response itself i repeat a stronger engagement of all protection actors with mhpss is is good is is selfishly good for a very good protection response because it creates better protection response environment but it also makes uh mhpss programs more effective more equitably more equitable and more more accessible for all vulnerable groups that that protection actors work with so if we're selfish as protection actors we need to get mhpss right and right means not doing it alone but with others if we're not selfish and we're good really protection mature actors then we should get mhpss right as well so i i would like us all to keep this pressure on and to do that i would like to announce today that with sarah fahmi peter who's with us on the on the call and nancy who's with us on the call we're launching today a short global protection cluster paper on mhpss and protection outcomes so i would call on anyone to put it yes i see someone has put it on the link so i use this opportunity to launch this paper it would be a very basic paper for all of you to read it but that's the point the point is to send this very strong message out to all our cluster coordinators in the field who are also on this call also all our members to say mhpss is your job it's not your job alone get it right so i can see that many of the final slide elements that you've put sarah and kun are in this paper part of the major recommendations no surprise the same authors i believe both for the for the paper and the slideshow i call on all of you to circulate this widely as one continuous step in us prioritizing this and i thank you for this engaging discussion today and close by saying let's keep the pressure on thank you thank you very much william kun thank you william indeed yes well i think as far as i can see the only thing that is still left basically i want to invite everybody to use the evaluation form and let us know how we can improve our sessions that's very valuable for us this information and we will also show the video animation of the storybook my hero is you we're going over time so it's free if you want to look at it you can put it on even while you're filling in the evaluation form the link is in the chat i hope and also the link for the evaluation is in the chat oh yeah there it is yeah please provide your feedback in your manner under the following link then i would like to thank everybody uh first of all all the participants for being interested in this topic it is a very important topic in this moment of human history also all the panelists uh i think they gave some very valuable contributions and i know that they're all very very busy and then the speakers of course uh bed of us eight uh microphone for opening this session and then william for closing this session and then behind the screens you can look behind your screen actually you will find sonia and and bianca of the cpa or who have been or dj's or zoom masters and who did wonderfully well and it has been very pleasant to cooperate with you on this sara i wish you a very good uh afternoon and remains of the day for everybody thank you thank you goodbye