 Good afternoon everyone and a warm welcome to this Teacher Academy webinar organized by School Education Gateway. My name is Marta and I will be your host for today. But before we start, just a practical information for the audience. The webinar is recorded and the recording might be used for dissemination purposes. And please, if you have any questions or comments told, feel free to post it in the chat and we will have also a Q&A session towards the end to address your questions. Okay, let's move on now. The focus for today is learning and care for the youngest refugees, a critical priority across Europe. This webinar addresses and discusses the priority to responsibly sustain the learning and healthy development of young refugee children who flee Ukraine by providing them with quality support through a CAC services and by supporting the key adults in their lives, their parents and the early childhood education and care professionals. A closer look at needs, programs, priorities, barriers and possible solutions is shared based on the information collected from the countries where the International Step-by-Step Association member organizations are actively involved in the response addressing early childhood. And without further ado, for me, it's a great pleasure to introduce you our guest speaker for today, Mihaela Ionescu, Program Director at the International Step-by-Step Association. So thank you very much, Mihaela, to be with us today and the floor is yours. Thank you, Marta and a warm welcome from Mayan too and I hope that the hour that we will spend together will be inspirational for all participants and hope that we will be able to answer at least some of the concerns that we are having in this very challenging period when we need to deliver for the youngest ones that have fled Ukraine but also those that are in Ukraine. I'm going to talk from the experience that we have had in the past four months since February within the organization when I am the Program Director International Step-by-Step Association. Just briefly, for those of you who do not know our organization, we are a professional association and we have 95 member organizations that are working in the field of early childhood and we stretch from Europe to Central Asia, more than 40 countries and we have 20 years of experience in the field at least. As an organization, we promote early childhood competence systems and we also focus very much on how we can support the early childhood development considering it the most important period in an individual's life and of qualified and competent workforce and we strive to achieve across all the countries where we are working quality, equitable and integrated services for all children and families. This is what we are doing through all our programs. But I think if we are in a privileged situation also as a network there has been a report that has been commissioned in 2020 when the pandemic started and there were a lot of lessons learned from the work that the networks are doing and it was not just the network that I am representing, there are other networks that focus on early childhood across the globe. There was one thing that struck me in the report that was developed by Network Impact that our professionals working in this field of networking and they said that the networks are well placed to address complicated problems in the following cases. If the problem that you are trying to address has no clear recipe or formula for success or cuts across sectors or fields of practice or is evolving and requires solutions that evolve with it or cannot be addressed effectively by single individual organization that's where the networks are working. And I think not just networks like the one that I am representing but in general networks of organizations are much more well equipped to address such complex problems as the one that we are facing. We have faced the pandemic but we are facing also today in trying to provide a suitable response for the young refugee children that have fled Ukraine. As an organization since the first day of the war in Ukraine as we have members in Ukraine and also in the neighboring countries we have closely supported them in finding solutions and trying to understand learning about the needs as well as how to provide that kind of support that is most meaningful. And we work primarily and we continue to work in Ukraine in Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and we are expanding it to other countries because we are quite aware that a lot of work will be needed not only in these countries that have been strongly affected since the first day of the war but also that there will be a spillover effect in the countries where refugees will arrive. And networks are well equipped to have their mechanisms for peer learning and for support across its members. Well, since the first day of the war we said that we have been in contact with the member organizations in the countries and I know that many of the countries where we are working are also represented today by our participants. And I think that I saw that there are also participants from Greece they also know how it has been and how it still is to welcome refugee children in the country. But by quickly scanning the context that we are witnessing today there are a few reflections that we have had and informed a lot the work that we are doing and I just want to share them with you because there might be insights, let's say, that are useful for reflecting further what can we do best to meet the needs of the youngest children and their families. And I will start by saying that each child and family might be in a different situation when they arrive at the border. Some of them I want to say, some of them are just transitioning or some of them I just don't know what to do are still in a standby and that influences a lot the way that they are responding to any kind of support that is provided. Also that the young children are accompanied by mothers primarily and or by another female adult can be grandmothers or aunts or and their siblings and sometimes there are families with two or three children of different ages. And most importantly they have been separated from their fathers and that impacts a lot the child's life and the family dynamics in general and follows them wherever they are. Another observation that we have had by just scanning the context across countries is that there is a tendency to put all refugees in the same basket in the same box while actually there are different needs that they have. The only thing that connects them is that they have been through traumatic experiences and they are still going through that many of them reacting differently but they have something in common but that doesn't mean that all of them are alike. Children are different, we are unique in general but the fact that they are refugees does not reduce them to the stages of being a refugee. Another thing that we noticed is that there is a lot of emphasis put into providing emergency support and we certainly agree that safety, protection, food and good health are of immediate importance to safeguard the lives and to provide whatever is needed at the very beginning where they have transited the border. But we just learned so much in the months that followed that it's equally important to support the mental health and recovering their routines, their sense of stability and emotional security as well as transitioning to a different life and to a different environment and that's not an easy thing to do for anybody but especially if you have fled because of the war. Also we have learned and it has been very encouraging to see that a lot of policy measures to provide free access to services have been and are being issued in many of the European countries and the European Commission has supported a lot of measures but there is still what we have noticed insufficient readiness at the national and also at the local level to provide responsive solutions and flexible solutions meeting the needs of the children and of their families. Even if we build the early childhood education and care system readiness we also need to look how ready are the children and the families to access those services so these readinesses need to meet there needs to be a quite aligned, let's say, approach from the system perspective towards the families and children's perspective and that requires a more comprehensive understanding of where the early childhood education and care system sits. I think that many of you are familiar with the Brooklyn Brenner's theory of ecological system ecological system and I think for an individual personal development it is crucially important to understand especially in times of crisis that there are so many factors that are interplaying in trying to find that context that is sufficient, nurturing and welcoming for the refugees and across all these systems that there are many factors inside the micro system, the meso system the macro system, exo system all those factors interact between themselves and all of them interact with the individual be that a child or be that an adult and all are evolving across time and have their own, let's say footprint into the individual's development. It's important to notice that the early childhood education and care system and all the services that are provided for the child are actually in the micro system and they therefore play a very important role that are surrounding the child and the family alongside all other services or other friends the health system the social services all along they are having their own input and impact but in all this constellation of services and of factors some of them easy to be controlled. I think just by going back to the Broffenbrenner theory it's important also from the perspective from which we look at this visual if you're a practitioner, if you're a parent if you're a policy maker where are you situated let's say in the system and where you can exert an influence which of the things are in the proximal, let's say in the area of your direct influence how much you can contribute to creating an ecosystem in this case for refugee children and their families so that the traumatic events are not impacting dramatically their life and these are a few key points actually that have driven also all our efforts from the beginning of the war where we do know that the early years are so important for the individual's life, I mean the impact they have long-term impact on health on realisation, on their success personal and professional therefore we can't neglect this period of time and we can't neglect everything that should be provided for children at this age child development on the other hand is a complex thing it encompasses different types of development areas that are all interacting, we talk about emotional, physical social emotional in cognitive all of them are equally important and they interact with each other that means that the interventions that we are, the support that we are providing cannot focus only on one of them they need to be addressed in a very holistic way and that's what the early childhood education and care services are doing through daycares, nurseries, crushes and kindergarten preschools however they are named or called in different countries on the other hand child development and the child's well-being depends on the family well-being meaning that we can't just address the child needs, we need to address the family's needs and in the case of families that have fled I'm saying again mostly mothers or female adults that are with children it's important to consider from their perspective what are their needs and how they should be cared another important aspect that we have mobilized let's say a lot of our efforts is the fact that the traumatic events can strongly affect the child development and when we say traumatic events where is let's say one of the extreme events that can impact their life there are many other traumatic events in child's life that can be a separation of parents natural disasters there are many other contexts that can be harmful or violence and you might also be familiar with this visual from colleagues from Harvard Center on developing child that are talking about different levels of stress in the child's life and in individual life not all the children and there is a positive stress and a tolerable one but the toxic one is the one that is most damaging especially in the early years of an individual and if stress is repeatedly continuing impacting the child's development and there are no supportive relationships around protective and supportive relationships then it affects the child development and can have impact towards long-term diseases when in their adult life and that's something that we can prevent and that's actually the engine that mobilized all efforts as early childhood professionals we said that the child's well-being depends on family's well-being but the family's well-being depends also on the communities where they settle in and also on the services that they can benefit from and now in this visual you can see a more kind of zoomed in and to those circles around the child and the family and the community that actually have a long term impact on their lives and we talk now about refugees but this is very valid for all children and families that are living in young children that are living in communities and the child development is not always seen as a priority at the level of a community or a municipality but actually everything that happens around the child in the neighborhood and in the community and the services that are provided what kind of services how well they need the needs of the families matters a lot in the way that the child's development is supported well we have asked ourselves and that's something that actually we would like to also discuss a little bit with you as you're coming from different countries how ready are the early childhood education and care systems to welcome and meet the needs of refugee children and of their families and also how ready are the young refugee children and their families to attend the early childhood services these are two questions that we think are so important in trying to provide sustainable solutions but also effective solutions and for this reason I will share later on what is our perception and from what we have learned our assessment not only perception by working with different organizations in countries and by knowing a lot of what's happening in the early childhood systems in general we want to ask now you to see from your perspective you might work I don't know exactly where do you work and what is your position professional position but I do hope that there are many of you that have knowledge about the early childhood education and care services in your country and how the system is functioning I was wondering if you were to look at the six factors that I identified which one you would think has the highest priority to be addressed in order to build the system readiness to welcome the refugee is it about policies do we need enabling policies for supporting refugee families is it about the availability of early childhood education and care services to include about the availability of places in the services is it about how prepared is the staff in the services to work with refugee children and their families is the language barrier the highest priority to be addressed or is the availability of different types of services not only the kindergarten maybe other types of services would be needed playgroups or family hubs so that they ensure a smooth transition into the more formal or is it about the urgency to address the coordination between different types of services like early childhood education and care health services social assistance they're different as I said in the constellation of services in the community there are different ones and families mothers I would say might encounter different challenges so if you were to name the highest priority which one you would you would mention you can put the number number six I see Ketavan, I see Kensia I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly Kensia perhaps preparation of staff that number six coordination of services so which one do you consider to be of the highest priority to be addressed in order to meet in the best way the needs of young refugee children so we have coordination having more numbers four and five, four, two, six six and five okay, six, many are for the coordination number two availability of places Julian, yes number six two and five Jennifer availability of places and availability of other types of services not just yes it very much depends on the country and I actually ask you for your country not for all the countries just by looking at your situation and it might be that you do not necessarily have received a lot of refugee children and families from Ukraine but it could be that you might have had other types of refugee or if you think in general of your country if refugees are coming which ones do you think should be addressed high priority Anastasia, all I agree with you but okay let's hear if there are more colleagues that want to share their view I see that I would say that the one that the highest vote is number six and then I think it was number five and well somewhere four and then two perhaps well if you say all of them that means that the systems are not ready I would say if all of them are equally important to be addressed well which to a great extent I have to say that perhaps at different degrees but the urgency is on different aspects of the system I would say that sometimes it might be that the policies have been more enabling but the system didn't manage to get to the policy or the implementation that quickly let's move to the next question and see what do you think that how ready do you think that the young refugee children and their families are to access and participate in the services in the early childhood education so we talk about precious and kindergarten schools which of the situations below so these seven ones you recognize as they have the highest impact in how ready they are how much they influence the children's choice to attend and the family's choice to attend the services language is a major barrier so this could be a reason for which they would not attend overall insecurity in preventing is preventing families to access the services so they are not sure of anything in their lives or children do not feel comfortable to get separated from their family for too much time or mothers cope with too many challenges that they can't even think of letting children they they can't manage that also or mothers mothers fear that children will not feel welcome and comfortable in the services another reason could be that they come or they don't come provision of transitioning and support activities in services this might be something that could encourage or seven mothers are in great need of services which one do you think is the one that influences the most their readiness to access the services I see one in six language is a major barrier and mothers are in great need these are kind of contradicting they want to but the language is a barrier I see a lot thank you high aim four mothers cope with too many challenges yes okay very true Kamal in Turkey yes two three five six so insecurity children don't feel comfortable mothers fear that their children provision of transitioning could help yes mothers fear that children will not feel welcome yes one and four I see a mixture of everything and I have to say that I think that in many countries there is many of these factors are interplaying so it's a configuration of factors that can prevent them but overall we can say they might not be ready even if the services are there and we have to find solutions on how we need their needs yeah I see a lot of ones but also the language barrier very true and as you could see in all these situations it could be that they want to but it's not that easy or they have a lot of fears that can prevent them so how we can address those fears so that they we kind of increase their readiness to participate having services ready might not necessarily be enough we need to see how we can meet those specific needs thank you Magdalena one and three language and children do not feel comfortable well this says that we are not ready in terms of services if we don't know how to address the language barrier and also if we don't know how to make them feel comfortable so that they feel safe even if they are separated or what kind of services we should provide so that they don't feel the separation as so painful or they have the feeling of safety emotional safety thank you so much this has been very useful in getting an understanding how you perceive actually I just put into balance the readiness of systems and readiness of those that would attend the services and you can see that there are a different levels let's say we can see on a scale that it could vary a lot from one country to another there might be countries that are better prepared but still we need to be very careful how ready are the ones that have fled to attend what has been our analysis and what we could just draw as conclusion I would say from what has happened in the past month and I don't know if this is useful or not I'm just going to share our experience and maybe this could be as I said inspirational for reflection or even thinking more strategically what would be the next steps to address and what stays in our remit of influence to do as as a professional association having organizations working in countries we have let's say aligned our thinking around what are the priorities knowing what happens in the countries where we work an important principle everybody might share do no harm everybody is well intentioned and everybody wants to support everybody I mean most of the people are quite generally interested to support but in the early childhood education and care services I would say that many of the people are really committed to do that it's only that there is a lack of knowledge and the skills on how to provide that kind of support that those children need and for this reason professionals might feel inhibited or might not know exactly or they are not so confident that they are doing the right thing which is they how to say it's a danger right so this is so we just notice there's no preparation for this across countries this has not been part of any professional development training even though children are exposed to traumatic events not only because of the war as I said of different types of reasons the second thing that we draw as a conclusion is that ensuring services that are tailored to the needs is one of priority that is so important that means it might be that one service one size fits all does not work for those children we said they are different they might come with they bring their identities but also their histories and it might be that adjusting the service to the needs it might be too difficult so we need to find flexible programs flexible solutions and those need to be locally driven not necessarily we can have a framework at the national level but at the local level it's where people are arriving in specific cities municipalities so we need to find those solutions at the local level with the capacity and the people that are there also we just notice that sometimes faster is not necessarily better so rushing into wanting to bring them in the services might not necessarily be the solution might be very difficult for professionals and also for children and families and that means that you need to have a more of a strategic plan what's the immediate response what's the short time what's on the medium term so that you create that readiness for both the service and the services and the families to and children to attend the services avoiding segregation is so important because there is a tendency especially because of the language that the children are put together and they are separated from the let's say majority of population in the host country and that can be very dangerous so avoiding segregation is so important that's why locally driven solutions are so important because it would be best if children are absorbed in larger communities of children and there is an intercultural dialogue there there's a lot of learning and these need time and that's why faster is not always better because everything needs time providing support to prevent providing support to prevent over stress and burnout in the professionals I think this is something that we've noted not only in Ukraine I have to say but also in the countries that have worked in the neighboring countries where the influx of refugees has been very high a lot of people wanted to help and a lot of professionals in the services have engaged themselves in providing a prompt response but this can become very overwhelming at certain point because there are all kinds of stories and you can see a lot of things you recognize or that people have been through very harmful situations and very hard and that kind of work becomes sometimes overly stressful for the professionals trying to help as much as they can so that's an important part in also in this kind of situations how to help professionals to protect themselves while providing the support that is needed and the other observation that we have had especially if we talk about the early childhood education and care services as I said precious kindergarten or preschools is that one service will not solve the problem these are complex problems that families and children are facing so there needs to be a network of services and these are the things that we said these are so so important to be addressed well what means if we translate them what this means and do know how principles there is a huge demand for building the capacity in the systems or other stuff that are working in other services too how to work with children and families who have been through traumatic experiences and that's something that needs to be put in place you know kind of immediately and there is a lot of expertise in so many organizations it just needs to be consolidated it needs to be catalyzed ensuring that services are tailored to the needs that means faster is not necessarily better we need to have a needs analysis we can't have solutions that are responsive if we don't know about if we don't learn about their needs and then see how those can be addressed and this is very difficult to do at the national level you might learn something but at the local level they can be done and that's the part perhaps of the system that can activate a lot of good measures so how can we do place-based responsive and also transitioning services because it might be that a service does not fit the needs faster is not necessarily better as I was saying there has to be a strategic thinking and an approach and that's perhaps something that is not always embraced especially at the local level to really make a plan on how to address the needs of the refugee children but in general of the vulnerable population there needs to be immediate short need term and long-term solutions for those that for example would like to settle in avoiding segregation I think this is a problem that it's a recurrent problem I would say in in certain countries and I think that there is already a lot of there are a lot of policies that can be leveraged I don't think that in terms of policies countries are not doing well the practices are the one that are still lagging behind but I think that there have been a lot of capacity building in this field also so how we can leverage all that knowledge that has been invested in systems for increasing this access and not only to for refugees but for all vulnerable children so that still remains as an issue to be tackled it can be combined with the work that is done around psychological first aid together with addressing inclusion and the other point that I was mentioning one type of service will not solve the problem the coordination of structures and mechanism this is a priority across all systems I have to say some countries are making more progress because they have had issues complex issues like migration that had to be tackled not refugees migration and a lot of population that we need different types of support and that's required networking so there are some countries that have been already through this experience that have learned and built more mechanisms for cooperation but that's still an issue that at the system level stays as being a problem still to be addressed I will just share with you what how this all these thoughts kind of catalyze in our thinking and I will share then what we have started doing and maybe this could be something that could be mobilized in more countries to happen because it's not just about the organization I'm representing or the organizations I'm representing as those that are working in countries there are many organizations that can help so how we can catalyze the expertise that exists in many organizations how we can connect and consolidate something that can create social impact in the context of each country by providing responsive and timely solutions we have focused on these five areas and some of them are already in progress some are still waiting but we wanted to develop this kind of long-term perspective the immediate one you can see in the first one how we strengthen the capacity of early chapter professional to provide psychological first aid and to deal with stress and burnout because that can be a real danger secondly we wanted to empower our organizations to build capacity at the municipality level to provide support to municipalities how they can respond in a short and medium term how we can create this infrastructure of knowledge for strategic thinking to build a needs analysis and to act accordingly so that the services are meeting the needs the third one which will stay for quite some time and it's not a new issue it's just that regarding as I said inclusion and respect for diversity and how equity and diversity and inclusion are key ingredients for quality this is something that will need ongoing support because there will be perhaps more challenges coming our way as we learned already from some of the countries of interlething tensions which might grow how professionals are prepared to mitigate that risk but also to build the culture of belonging and of diversity in the classroom communities or in the communities where the families are living because there could be former services but there could be a lot of non-formal services that can build this social texture at the local level the first one which we think is very important especially in terms of crisis and we have felt that during the pandemic and now we have the second time confirmation that the learning communities are so important for you need to have peers with whom you can dialogue you can mirror your practice you can raise issues that you are grappling with this is so important because in crisis situations professionals might feel insecure there are new challenges that they don't have the right answer and there might not be even the right answer at a certain point how we build and co-construct that answer that's so important in the countries and across countries and the fifth one for sure we will dedicate a lot of our work to support organizations that are working in Ukraine in the reconstruction of the systems there I'm going to share now and would just be very curious then to understand if there are any experience that we can share actually and you can put in the chat box that you have known about in your country and it would be wonderful to learn from them or if there are experiences that we could consider in sharing across countries that are coming from your countries because there is a lot of space for learning at this point we just mentioned the first strand of pillar action that we have focused on and I'm glad to share with you actually the very recent feeling and knowledge that I have from the training of trainers that we organized two of them already with the countries I've mentioned at the very beginning on a foundational training on psychological first aid and trauma informed practices with young children and their caregivers it's so important and we had professionals coming from all those countries we provided this training in understanding where the professional in early childhood education and care can provide support and where not what they can do and what they cannot do because there might be tempted to do a lot but also there might be something that puts a lot of pressure and stress on them do no harm means not only to do the right thing but not to do more than you can do and I think that's so important to be explained to professionals because they do feel the burden of and responsibility yes so what are the expectations from them what kind of practices that they should enable in classrooms so that they are confident that they are doing the right thing there are lots of things that actually they are already doing but they might not be aware of or there might be a lot of activities that they are proposing but they need to be very mindful of how those reflect or can be perceived by children that have been going through traumatic experiences just listening to one colleague from Ukraine and they were saying it might be funny in other context to pinch a balloon but in this context some children might be extremely traumatic so there are little things that we need to be very mindful of when providing a safe space but also emotionally safe space so that children can learn so we are doing this training of trainers but a training we know it's not enough it will not clear the sky that needs to be supported there is coaching going on that will happen so the training we did at the cross country level, trainings in the country and then coaching there are lots of unknown questions unknown answers to many of the questions that might come from the practice there will be a lot of learning that can happen within the country and across the countries in terms of what practices work well which are because there's a lot of expertise in practice but which ones have shown to be very inspiring for practitioners or there might be lots of ideas that are not necessarily valued or surfacing let's say in the privacy of the practice of each individual so they need to have the place where they can share having the learning communities in each country it's something that helps a lot professionals and during the pandemic they learned a lot from each other and that's what we are continuing to do also in this context but also we know that English it's not always the language that can be the best channel of disseminating resources so a lot of translation of resources will also happen because there are many resources that are in English although has been translated lately but maybe not in all the languages of the countries where they are encountering a lot of challenges in supporting practitioners and you hope you could see the countries that have been involved and just a few words about the psychological first aid because it might sound very sophisticated and even though the work psychological sometimes for practitioners sounds a bit threatening or they might question themselves what am I going to become a psychologist overnight and actually it's not and that's something that we also want very much to be clearly understood and as I said, set the right expectations you might also have been through not a psychological first aid but the medical first aid we don't become neither nurses, neither medical doctors by having attended but we know what to do if in such a situation we have to support, we have to help an individual and it's almost the same in this case with the psychological first aid. It's just a set of skills and competences that can enable people working in context with children how to reduce the initial distress of children that can be caused by so many factors and that's so important to know because you can do harm without being aware that you're doing harm while being so well in tension and that's something that we try to translate not only the concept what actually that means in practice what practitioners can do to reduce the stress or to smoothen the trauma that the children might carry with them not all of them might carry a trauma but they might be distressed for different reasons I mean even being separated from a father can be a huge reason for distress and so on and for this reason we know that early childhood education and care staff can play a huge healing role but they need to be supported this has not been part of their training or there has not been a particular attention given to this topic well what as also I don't think that many of us have been since we haven't had for decades a situation of a war and we have not had that individual personal subjective experience of it and we need to learn what actually that means what kind of impact would have and that's something that we have learned a lot besides of physical deprivation there's a lot of feeling of feeling fearful or unsafe or powerless or ruthless overly stressed there's a feeling of loss and vacation from your own people from your own home your neighborhood the places that were so familiar to you from your own land and there's a feeling of constant danger I'm not talking from personal experience the same but there's a lot that we can learn from countries that have been through that and there are lots of organizations that do share this a lot now and not only now but there's a constant danger and security all this landscape of feelings that are encapsulated in each individual that might have fled we don't know to what extent which one is the most dominant one but we need to learn about this we need to be clear that there is something that we can do but we need to know what actually is needed for that and more importantly there are already a lot of let's say knowledge resources that are indicated what could be the science of distressing children so that professionals identify them and they can deal with them or they would know how to react to them or what could be the type of intervention that they could have in different contexts and you can see just a few examples I'm not going to read them what does that mean for a children under two years of age and how children are from three to six years old my react there are many signs that could indicate that the child is in distress and that's so important for professionals to notice for parents also to notice and then the communication between professionals and parents it's becoming extraordinary important for this reason there is there are few and this has been part of the training that we have done with the trainers that will work at the country level there are three principles so important in this work of providing psychological first aid look listen and link look this is this means you don't make any assumption you just need first to understand and see what's the behavior how the children is reacting if there are signs of distress and you need to be very careful on observing different context and situations how the child is behaving and reacting also but secondly is that about listening and that's what perhaps it's underrated let's say in many of the cases because people are having the urge to do something before listening listening is extremely important because many of them that are not ready to speak and you need to know when they are ready to speak so you need to have the patience but also have active listening they might want to talk and you know you can't you don't have to re-interpret what they are telling not making any assumption and after listening which might be very healing for the person that is ready to talk then there is the link and that means if I cannot help I can connect the child or the adult be that a mother or an aunt or a father in cases that are in other situations than this one link with a professional link with a service that can help more than I can do as I said early childhood education and care professionals might do as much as the remit of their profession allows them their professional competence allows them to when it goes beyond they need to connect with another profession these are basic principles in providing psychological for a state and sometimes each of them require a specific type of skill for what should I look how should I listen and to whom I should connect with if I cannot help these are extremely important things that not all professionals are aware of and perhaps they might do or they might do them but they might not be necessarily aware of how they can move forward and not feel the stress they might help a lot they are the early childhood education and care service might be safe heavens for children they need to recover their childhood and for that reason they could be the safe the caring and supportive relationships that can heal them but playing is healing and what professionals know for this age group playing is extremely important even for children that are living in peace time but in this case it can be extremely healing and attention to play how children play and providing all kinds of context where they can enjoy playing it's extremely healing for them equally important is to strengthen the capacity of early childhood professionals to prepare themselves for avoiding the burnout caring for professionals is becoming so important I was mentioning before because working with these stress children and adults it's at times very overwhelming and stressful there's not enough knowledge about how we can protect ourselves or it's not bad to protect ourselves and learning communities can be one of the mechanism but this has to happen at the level of the service paying attention to this in general caring for early childhood education and care staff it's such an important thing in general in peace time also but in this context becomes even a higher priority I was mentioning that and I will move now from the pillar that I was mentioning about building the capacity to the one that focuses on the municipality level building capacity we have worked across countries to build that capacity it's so important for municipalities to be able to make a fast needs analysis and to have already the capacity the knowledge infrastructure to develop a strategic plan these are things that are so important in this moment and we have done that and we continue doing it in several countries we are supporting very much the development of such non-formal services the ones that are transitioning as I was mentioning the playgroups the family hubs they might be better for certain categories of children and families the ones that don't want to be feel separated mothers that do not have enough time to concentrate or to do the search where my child should be and they would just want a few hours you know to have the child in a safe place but not on entire day so these are excellent solutions for meeting that specific needs of specific families this is something that we call transitioning and inclusive services they might not be necessarily only for refugees these are actually solutions that can be provided at the local level for all those that do not attend the services and it could be a way of bringing them closer to the services as transitioning towards more formal services I will move now to the part on developing communities learning communities in and across countries as I was mentioning this is so important and we can't say how much learning exists actually when teams from different countries are meeting together on a regular basis or providing feeding the knowledge sharing across countries how inspirational it is and how solutions are blooming across countries because of having oh I heard from there you might know that already but there are not many platforms of this kind and this is something that we learned a lot for this particular topic of how we can support better children and families that fled from Ukraine it's absolutely of a high demand and that's something that we feed and we nurture at the country level but also at the cross country level we don't do this alone we are also you have seen perhaps on the slides we've partnered with World Child Calling with Amna both of them having been specialized in working with refugees and with UNICEF the regional office for Europe and Central Asia and we are working with partners that can strengthen our work but we leverage our strengths together takeaways and with this I'm going to close my presentation hoping that it was useful at the national system there are different levels on which we kind of placed our let's say overall reflections how far we got and what is actually needed where the priorities are sitting one is about the fact that the current crisis has just showed that there are a lot of vulnerabilities and you already mentioned when we said how ready the systems are we could just see that are in many places and actually I said it's true and those have surfaced also during the pandemic time but they are still there this came really after we did not really manage to recover from the period of the COVID pandemic so this stays on the table access for vulnerable groups and now for refugees it's one of the biggest challenge that the systems already have in place although we have to say that the report that was launched last year about inclusive early childhood education and care services at the European Commission from the working group I'm also a member provides a lot of inspirational examples from countries on how you can strengthen the inclusion at different levels in the systems many of the things have been done many systems before the war and before the pandemic also there are still lots of systems that are still struggling and grappling with this issue at the local system I was mentioning there might be national policies that are already in place but the problem are that the solutions, the services are provided at the local level and they can they can take different shapes and they can be they can adjust themselves to the needs of the population that they are serving and that's not always happening there's not enough flexibility there and that's something that it remains a problem it's like we're providing the same services that we know about and they should be in place while they might not be relevant for all those that are in the communities and now particularly for those that have fled at the workforce level I think that's another issue that well again the other report that was released last year from the working group at the European Commission on Early Childhood Education and Care it was about the workforce how to recruit to retain and to build professionalism in the workforce in the staff on Early Childhood Education and Care well I think that this remains a big priority in all the countries as they are underpaid undervalued and there's a lot that countries should do but in this case they really need support they really need professional development opportunities that can answer to their need to learn more of how they can address the issues that are encountering in everyday practice with children that have fled Ukraine and the last level where we saw that there is still a lot of work to do and that will take some time it's about the practice level we need to have services and practices and activities so from more general to more concrete that are recognizing the harmful in fact of traumatic experience on children I think that there's not enough preparation but there are also not enough practices that are really responding to that need flexible program I mean program in the sense from morning afternoon that could be at different times or how the environment should be organized or what kind of interactions should have take place how the child should be approached the family should be approached what kind of play opportunities we should provide indoor and outdoor art is healing so there are lots of stress releasing activities language facilitation language is a barrier and we address it also in the training that we have done there are ways in which there is there is a period of time that we have to leave to let things happen until child starts the acquisition of new words and of the new language kind of getting closer and closer to learning the language but also a lot of community building and cohesion activity inside the group of children these are all things that should have happened already in many services and it's linked with how inclusive they are but also how much has been invested in preparing professionals to address them these are just few of the things that I wanted to share with you from the experience that we have had of working in the past month and enabling lots of our contribution let's say to build the readiness of the system to address the needs of professionals and the needs of children and families I don't know if there have been questions Marta or if there are any comments that our colleagues might have thank you very much first of all Mihaela for bringing here expertise in the field I think it was really really useful for the teachers and the participants because we had a lot of let's say engagement and interaction in the chat for the time being there are no questions but of course we invite participants to post the questions we have still a couple of minutes meanwhile I remind you to save the link that my colleague Eleonora just posted in the chat for the feedback form you can just save it now and then complete it later but no certificates are issued for this webinar but we have while I was talking a question I think in the chat any plans on expanding foundational training to other countries that have large influence of refugees yes I think that can be possible it's a question of I mean there is an email address on the screen maybe we can go back yes you can just write to my email there are plans and I think we are learning about the needs as they are emerging we started with the first cohort of trainers but we know that there is a high demand so feel free to contact and we can explore further and the presentation will be shared there was a question about the presentation yeah exactly technical question regarding presentation and recording everything will be shared on the webinar page give us some time so probably won't be today but yeah you will find everything on the webinar page I'm gonna read what Natalia just posted in the chat a child from Ukraine sorry I'm losing it a child from Ukraine is included I saw it yes I think yes what I was trying actually to say is that well I've talked about the services that are for children up to 6 years old the entry age for school for those that are attending school I think for them attending extracurricular activities that are creating the feeling of safe emotionally and physical safety also on starting learning the language so everything that smoothens the transition to feeling safe in the new environment is very much recommended so arts even those kind of activities that are not only mediated by written language or spoken language or other type of language like art or music or play as I said their well-being we don't need to urge them to speak from today to tomorrow I don't know how many words but they just need time for that being exposed it matters for the youngest one it's even easier because the more they are exposed to language the easier they will learn and the faster they will learn but we need to also be mindful that those that have a different age they need time and they feel already stressed that they are in an environment enough or they do not understand the others enough and we need to create other ways of communicating beyond language of the country or Ukrainian language that can help them establish communication they need to feel supportive they need to have friends they need to have worms they need to feel part of the community that helps them learn what I was talking about the most toxic stress is that if we are not relaxed enough there is a bit of stress that can help learning but we are not learning a lot when we are under a lot of stress and that's what children important at any age not only when they are very young so yes participating in other types of activities it's very important and providing them in safe space in the communities yes indeed thank you and if you have a time we maybe can address the last question that was from Tatiana who works on ISSA materials in Hungary who can support press schools in receiving children and offering support coaching capacity development yes we have not yet trained in Hungary so at the moment we cannot but we are in discussions with our colleagues there so we work with the organization that is called Partners Hungary I think I will feed money if I am not pronouncing it wrong so Partners Hungary is the organization our member organization and they have a lot of experience in capacity building in running professional development we are sure they also said we want the training also it's very much needed and we are aware that is a lot of need but feel free to also subscribe to our newsletter or to use our on our website you will find information about the work we are doing and there might be resources that are already in Hungarian so we are trying to translate a lot of the resources in at least in the countries that are neighboring countries language there is also a very good guidebook for those that are working in early childhood in the early childhood field it's called building bridges that has been informed by the work that we did in Greece, I saw a lot of colleagues from Greece that provides a lot of inspiration about the learning environment, the activities that can be provided so I recommend that you just visit our website and look at the web page support for Ukraine there will be a lot of resources we put them for services for practitioners for parents, caregivers and there might be also in different languages we are uploading those that we select as being quite relevant in this way hoping that we can contribute and contribute to the system readiness because if all of us would contribute to that with our the remit on the mandate of our organization would matter a lot and as you said for the participants you have all the links here and you will have them also in the presentation once we shared it in the page so I think we are moving towards the end thank you very much Mihaela for accepting our invitation and for joining us today there are a lot of many thanks for you in the chat and as Odra was saying definitely some food for thought good ideas you brought today so thank you very much once again and of course thank you to all the participants who joined us today I wish you all a good evening and a nice summer break so bye bye everyone thank you Marta goodbye everyone thank you for your time today bye