 Good afternoon and welcome everyone. My name is Marta and I will be your host for today's webinar organized by School Education Gateway, the place to engage with European policy and practice for school education. Just the practical information for the audience, the webinar is recorded and the recording might be used for dissemination purposes. And if you have comments, questions, please use the chat and we will also have a Q&A session at the end of the webinar. Let's introduce now our focus for today. As you all know, the war in Ukraine has led to a significant increase of refugee children in many schools across Europe. The experiences of war and sudden flight from their families' surroundings can have a negative impact on the children's mental health and well-being. In this webinar, we will learn how schools can play a crucial role in meeting the needs of distressed and traumatized children and how to strengthen their mental health and well-being. I would like to introduce now our guest speakers today. Helen Kowie is a Merita Professor at the University of Surrey in the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. She has researched and published widely in the field of anti-bullying interventions at school and university, as well as books and articles on the emotional health and well-being of children and young people. And Ilse Derloon is full professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Ghent University in Belgium. Her main research topics concern the psychological well-being of war-affected children, young refugees and migrants. Without further ado, I would like now to give the floor to Helen. Thank you very much for being here with us today. Good afternoon and greetings from sunny Galaxidi in Greece. Though normally I'm in the UK, I'm really pleased to be here today and pleased to have such a large audience for our webinar. As Merita has just said, we're assailed each day by images of families, let me get my next slide, of families and their children suffering as they're forced to flee from their war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and most recently Ukraine and others that I haven't mentioned. It's easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless in the face of such suffering and to wonder how are the children managing what impact is all this dreadful experience having on the mental health of children and young people. The aim of my talk today is to relate some of the evidence from contemporary research and practice on the mental health of youth in general and to relate this to the current refugee crisis. I'll get to my next slide. What is mental health? What do we mean by it? Well, there are many definitions of mental health and over the years they have changed. Here are just two. The World Health Organization has defined it as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of infirmity. I think not very many of us reach that state of well-being in our lives, but it would be nice if we did. A more realistic definition is given by the Mental Health Foundation in the UK, which says that it's an emotional and spiritual resilience which enables us to enjoy life and survive pain, disappointment and sadness. It's a positive sense of well-being and an underlying belief in your own and others worth. Now, current thinking, let me just go to the next slide. Yeah, would be to see mental health as being on a spectrum. With aspects, an important aspect is the acknowledgement that it is completely natural and understandable that when life is difficult or dreadful events are happening as to the refugee families, a child will feel sad, anxious, stressed and traumatized. An interesting idea around current definitions of mental health is that we need to know quite a lot about the resilience and strength of the children who are so affected. From this perspective, it's very, very useful to view mental health as a spectrum. If we don't offer immediate action, the outcome for refugee children's mental health is diminished and would include heightened anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and other disorders. But that's where the role of pastoral care systems in schools is so important in alleviating the distress of children displaced by war. Here's a framework which is quite commonly used in many of the writings that you see at the moment about how do we help refugee children. Most of the interventions suggest a whole school approach, and I thoroughly and totally agree with that. From this perspective, we would be looking at, of course, links to preventative services that meet the basic needs of the families so involved, their safety, their security, their economic needs, providing them with housing, food and healthcare. These are absolutely fundamental needs that need to be met, and schools can point the families in the direction of the support services, whatever they are in that particular country. Another dimension of this multi-layered approach would be the social support and community engagement with peers and school staff that all schools can offer. Another key factor is to learn the host country's language so that the children can communicate more effectively with teachers and other young people in their new school. Then there's the non-specialist interventions. They're called non-specialists, but I think that's perhaps to undermine the emotional and social learning that takes place in every school, and that children so appreciate. And finally, of course, specialist care when needed, such as counselling, psychotherapy or counselling psychology for those children who are very, very seriously ill. Let's start with social support and community. This is the crucial role that all children need to have a sense of belongingness. If they're going to be happy, they need to feel that they belong in the school where they are. So from this point of view, the whole school will play a very important part in this process. So it's essential, as I said before, for the school to engage in dialogue with support networks for the family as well as the children, such as community elders, spiritual leaders, community groups, local charities and NGOs, and other strengths-based support groups. And this will take the focus away from viewing refugee families and children as victims. It'll take us away from victimhood, symptom reduction and pathology to seeing more positively refugees as survivors of adversity with potential for resilience and strength. Key to this is to enhance staff knowledge, the teachers and support staff that work with the children who have been traumatised by war and by separation from their loved ones, loss of their homes, seeing violence and things that no child should ever have to see. Staff need to be sensitive to this and have knowledge of how to deal with it when they encounter it. And for this reason, they need training in recognising the signs of distress and to enable them to show empathy for a child who has experienced such dreadful things. So schools need to liaise with psychological and social services and community resources, whatever they are, in that particular country or locality. There are interesting training resources and programmes available at the moment. One of these, for example, is ICAM, including children affected by migration. They are on training courses and I would recommend that schools if possible try and access these courses just to enhance the understanding of staff about the needs of these children who have joined their school. But we mustn't forget the children. The children and young people must also play an active role. Here are some comments from Ukrainian children who were involved in one of the Save the Children projects and they say, we participate in this project to make schools better and safer. We decide how we can help each other and how we can help someone with problems. So they're recognising and appreciate their own active role in helping others who are in a similar situation to themselves. And also it's interesting that they make comments like, a safe school is like a second home, a place to feel at ease. Or schools should be a place where children feel safe and do not suffer, neither physically nor mentally. So in the children's voice, they're actually viewing their schools as a safe home, a safe place to be. Now here's some interesting material from a piece of research done by the Wellcome Foundation. They set up focus groups in nine countries across the world and they asked young people, what are the active ingredients that would promote mental health in youth? And here are some of the replies that they got and there was a certain commonality across countries in the world. Quite high up on the list was peer support. They said it really would help us if we got support, comfort, friendship from other children and young people when we're going through a difficult time. They also stressed the importance of having good family relationships and that may be difficult when you're in a refugee situation. Nevertheless, the young people themselves are saying good family relationships are key to our mental health. They also said it's important for young people to have a purpose in life, to feel that they have a purpose in life, to have meaning in their life, even when everything seems to be falling apart all around them. They stated how important it was to help children to feel safe and protected from violence and abuse, particularly meaningful for refugee children. And here are some other active ingredients, agency, taking responsibility and having a sense of belief, a system of belief, whether religious, spiritual or political, but some kind of framework within which to house their own beliefs and understandings of how the world is also very relevant when everything's falling apart around you. And these people, these young people said it's also important to strengthen our cultural identity, to feel that we know who we are and where we belong and to share this cultural identity with others. So here are some interventions which can help refugees, refugee children to achieve some of these ingredients that other children from other parts of the world have recommended. Creative approaches are probably one of the most universal approaches in helping people come to terms with difficulties in their lives. They're used in psychotherapy and counselling, but they're also used in schools, music, play for very young children, dance, telling stories, listening to stories, listening to group narratives, taking part in movement, expressive movement, making films and videos, writing poetry and listening to it, being engaged in drama and song. These are all universal creative approaches which help people with extremely difficult feelings and help them to come to terms with dreadful experiences that they might have had. They aid the symbolic expression of feelings and they also can act as a kind of container for narratives of trauma and huge distress. They reinforce people's identity, people's cultural identity is often expressed through art and story, and they can enhance the sense of belonging with own culture communities, as well as giving opportunities to share your culture with others and so broaden young people's in the host community, broaden young people's understanding of what these young people who are coming to their school have to offer. Engaging in creative arts can also help children to find meaning in their migration, understand the history, understand the strengths of their community and support one another through very, very challenging and difficult times. And to raise awareness of traumatic situations and lived experiences that other people have found very hard as well and not to feel alone. Unfortunately, although I've emphasised the value of the peer group in helping one another, let me go back one. Oh no, sorry. How do I go back? Here we go. Can I go back? Can you put me back? Here we are. Yes? Yes. Oh no. Can you put me back? Just one second. Yeah, that's it. No, we're fine. Perfect. Sorry. Some peer groups are not support and we know that. And so it's very, very important to recognise the dangers of being bullied or cyber bullied or socially excluded to children who come as strangers to a new community. We're all aware of this in all our schools, but it's particularly important to be aware of this when refugee children come to a new school. Most schools will have some kind of anti-bullying policy, but there are also very many interesting resources on the web. I can only mention a few here, but if people want to contact me afterwards, I can mention more. Here's one from the Diana Foundation. It's the anti-bullying ambassadors. And this is a toolkit which can be offered live, but I believe they also have an online version where they train children in the whole school. Not only peer supporters, but they train the whole school to be what they call upspenders, but as people that will actively challenge bullying when they encounter it. And they're given a whole range of strategies for doing this. How to be an upstander against bullying, how to help people when they're being insulted or excluded on social networks, and generally how to be supportive to somebody who's in distress. These young ambassadors also create a positive ethos in their school and a helpful, joyful experience for people in their peer group. And also learn the skills of challenging bullying in constructive ways. For those who are some of these interventions take the form of befriending people, doing peer mediation, simply sitting with someone who's on their own. Others involve practical guidance. For example, here's one set of ambassadors who designed a booklet helping people to manage the internet safely might be very useful when you come to a new country. Now these interventions are what we might call using or adapting and Mastin's phrase, ordinary magic. This is ordinary magic that any one of us can actually offer to people who are in distress or feel lonely or isolated or just unsettled in their new environment. This everyday magic, this ordinary magic involves setting routines for people, sharing memories and experiences together, simply having fun together, using the social media creatively in ways that can be supportive. As Mastin said, this resilience is a form of healthy and adaptive functioning over time following adversity and resilience can be enhanced at many levels. Here we're talking about a whole school approach, but it can be enhanced in many ways in the community and within the family. Now these are the results from a survey that was done during lockdown where they interviewed people who had existing mental health problems and who were unable to access their usual support networks of counselling and psychotherapy. And they were asked what was most helpful and they said it was difficult for us, but what we found helpful was speaking with friends in any way we could, it wasn't always face to face. Exercising, going out walking or running, we couldn't engage in our normal sports, but what we could do was walk or run, listening to music and having a routine. And these are some of the guidelines that they gave to the mental health charity that did the survey, hoping that it would reach other people. These are everyday things that helped them to deal with their distress. And I think it's very relevant to young refugee children coming to a new school. In conclusion, I'd like to say that in summary, that we need to support refugee families so that they in turn can support their children. We also need to listen to the children. They can give us many ideas about ways in which we can be helpful to them. We need to be aware of their needs, as I've said, need for action, for activity, for sports, being engaged in the arts, being in nature, communicating with others and engaging in altruistic behaviour themselves. Peer supporters, many of them are people who perhaps suffered themselves in the past and wish to pay back the help that they receive. And I think most of all, for today's seminar, we need to acknowledge the crucial role of schools in supporting children socially and emotionally, all children. And I think often it's not acknowledged. And I think we really need to be aware of the fantastic things that teachers and other support staff in schools can offer to the children in their care. It's important to reach out, that's what it's about, reaching out to people in this difficult time, in this difficult day and age, and upstanding. Being standing up and being counted in ways in which we can help other people are in distress, take opportunities when we can to affirm children's deep need for safety, connectedness and agency. And collectively, if we can, try to improve the systems within our society to enhance the emotional health and wellbeing of refugee children when we encounter them. I'd like to thank you for listening, and I look forward to engaging in the discussion on the chat and face to face as well. Thank you. And I'd like to hand you over to Ilsa, who's got a lot of very fascinating examples of the kind of work that she's doing with refugees. Thank you. Thank you very much, Helen, for this overview of what we mean indeed by positive mental health for refugees that are in fact survivors of adversity with the potential of the resilience and the strength. And you really highlighted how it is also important and necessary the support of the whole school community also to create a safe environment for them and to allow young people themselves to advocate for their own emotional wellbeing. But yeah, thank you very much. I think now we can move on and I would like to give the floor to Ilsa, welcome and thank you very much for being here. Thank you so much, Marta, for the very nice introduction and thanks also to you, Helen, for a really very interesting presentation. And I think the listeners, and I'm really happy that so many of you joined from all over Europe, joined this webinar that I think many of the listeners will hear many similar things that you already talked about during your presentation, Helen. So that's really nice that we kind of can join each other so nicely in this. Okay, I'll start sharing my screen. I hope that works. Okay, I don't know if you can see my screen. We can see it perfectly. Okay, so I would like to talk about psychosocial support for young refugees in school settings, giving an introduction and then also going to some of the possible interventions also think that we just set out in a large European project. As Helen also indicated, this is I think a broader field than only Ukrainians and even only refugees. The schools can have tremendous possibilities in supporting the pupils that are in their schools. And with the Ukrainian case, of course, we kind of have more attention to it in a way, but I think it creates also some tensions for the other refugees who are already for a long time here in Europe and different European countries who now kind of see the difference with how Ukrainian refugees are treated in terms of access to benefits, access to documents, access to houses. And so I think, generally, I think from this, I really hope that this very difficult and extremely harsh situation can also turn a bit around and create a nice environment also for all refugees. I'm sure that we will need to have lots of attention for the kind of disadvantaged position of the non-Ukrainian refugees in this story. So that is what I would like to do. It's a lot, I think, for today, but I will try to keep the time and go sometimes a bit faster also because Helen already indicated quite a bit. And of course, you can have a look afterwards also at the presentation with some more information. So looking at refugees, I think one of the main things that refugee children experiences is many losses that they have, which results in lots of grief. I think it's important to see that the grief that they have is really related to the many losses that they have. And it's sometimes also looking back at the home country is often not a separation or not willing to be in the host country, but it's really having difficulties to deal with losses which leads to disinterest, not sleeping well or sleeping a lot, lack of motivation, crying a lot. So that's the symptoms generally related to losses which are very multiple in this context. Of course, for the Ukrainians, but also for other refugees, we see that they have experienced many very difficult, hard experiences. Trauma, you could say, which doesn't mean because you went through difficult experiences that all the children are traumatized. So it's not the case that all children develop post-traumatic stress symptoms such as flashbacks or nightmares or hyperarousal symptoms or constantly being on heart. That's not the case, but many of them have gone through very, very difficult experiences. And for those who are really suffering from symptoms related to those difficult experiences, and particularly in schools, because I know that there are quite some questions on that, I think it's important to keep these three aspects that are on the slide in mind. First, a main characteristic of trauma is that you don't have any control over the situation. So that means if you want to kind of give a counter-poison to that trauma that you need to give back control to the pupils. So it's really important, I think, with the children and young people to give them information about what is happening, about the day structure to explain them why we do things and to repeatedly explain it, not only because of the language barrier, of course, because of language, but also because if you're traumatized or if you're dealing with lots of losses, that it's more difficult to acquire new information. So that means that you need lots of repetition. So control is first, second. We need to remember as Bessel van der Kolk has so nicely said that trauma is ingrained in the body. So the body keeps the score, says Bessel van der Kolk, which means that often traumatic memories are not in the prefrontal context. They cannot be verbalized. They are somewhere in the back connected a lot to emotions, to somatic emotions. So to heart beatings, to nausea, headaches, chest pain and so on. So that means if children suffer, for example, from flashbacks, that we need to address them also through the body. So then you can think about learning to do breathing exercises or really touching the body that they really feel that, okay, we are here because as a third aspect, it's really important that children, if you are trying to cope with a difficult traumatic event, that you see that that is something that happened in the past. So if children go in flashback, if they really have that re-experiencing the traumatic event, it's really important to keep them back in the past. So to call their names, to ask where they are, to if needed, even very softly touch them. So to really make sure that they come back in the present and as such that they also learn themselves and their body, that those memories are something that belong to the past so that they are not ingrained or not anymore happening in the present. Losses and difficult experiences, difficult experiences which also go hand in hand with daily stresses in the host country. So also in the country where they are now, they are often having not such a good housing. They are living with many people together. Sometimes, especially the non-Eukranians for the moment, they suffer a lot from discrimination, racism. So there's a lot of stressors including also lack of social network. Although we know that exactly social support is one of the main protective factors when we talk about well-being. So as Helen also indicated, looking into how we can support these children in setting up a new social network and those family is a really important aspect. John Berry, a Canadian psychologist, has said a lot about acculturation and integration processes, acculturation in the sense of how to deal with a different culture if you come from a certain background. He has, I won't explain the entire model, but the main idea of this model that you can see on the slide is that you need to balance between on the one hand cultural maintenance and on the other hand taking over the new culture. I've called cultural assimilation is not the exact framing, but is the best word I could find. And from an emotional well-being perspective, integration as a strategy where you keep the balance between on the one hand cultural maintenance and on the other hand also taking over some new habits and norms and values from the context where you are now living in is the best. So that means that cultural maintenance, keeping on being connected to the culture from the past is really important. And as host societies in general for refugees and migrants, we often struggle with that. We often push people towards assimilation and taking over the new culture. While from a more psychological perspective, we know that also keeping those linkages and connections with the past is really important. And certain future perspective is also something that has a big impact on their well-being and also, and that's a very important also in the Ukrainian crisis, lots of concerns about what is happening at home. And that relates a lot, I think if looking more from a child perspective to the fact that many of them have lost their fathers or their fathers or elder brothers have been staying behind and there's uncertainty or at least lots of concern on what is happening with them. So those changing familial relationship have a very, very big impact on their well-being. And that is really something also in schools to be very aware of. How do you talk about families? How can you be aware of trying to be very sensitive on whether to mention the father or the elder brothers or being aware of that issue of the separation of the partially parental separation? And not all parents are still available. So you see that also the parents themselves may suffer from the past experiences from the many losses and then or not always any more that available. And that is I think also something where schools can play a role in also explaining to children that also for the mother and the father back home, it is a very difficult time. And that also makes that you are not always available as a parent or that you sometimes are too angry in your reaction. So that as such you can also help understand the child a bit what is happening also with the parent. Still as Helen also indicated, I think it's really important that we look at those children as being normal children in so-called abnormal situations. Upnormal situations, this is war and fleeing and migration is abnormal. But back home, they were normal children. So that means that the symptoms they develop now and the struggles they have are in fact very normal reactions to that abnormal situation. And that is something in relation to regaining control over the situation. That is really important to explain to children. You need to know that if you have heart beatings, if you have nightmares, if you feel tensions, if you don't have energy that this is very normal in your situation. You are not becoming mad, you are not needed to go to hospital, you are just very normal in this very difficult situations, your reactions are very normal. Bringing me to what I've called a relational approach on psychosocial support of refugee children. Starting from the idea that the migration process brings lots of ruptures in very different aspects but mainly social ruptures and social networks and loss of parents and so on. We need to think on how can we rebuild connection, continuity and connectedness. Three important words to think about how to best support these children. I will go through a number of anchoring points that were already mentioned by Helen and by me before but just to make them very clear for you. First, normalization. Your feelings and reactions are very normal. It's a really important thing to tell the children and also their parents a lot. It's normal that you feel not well in this situation. Giving them back control through the predictability of day structures and what's going to happen, how is the school organized, where will you go to, what will happen in the morning. Giving information also to parents. I really liked what Helen said about the listening to parents. I think information for and from parents is really crucial here. You also give information to the parents about what will happen with the parents in relation to the school and with their children at school but that you also listen to the parents on what they tell you about their child. They know their child the best. If they think that the reactions are fine or rather normal, I think there's something to be listened to. If they are concerned, the same. I think that that relationship is really important. Collaboration with parents is for me really crucial. Ask them how they want that you speak about the father. Ask them what certain behavior of the child can mean or do give them some information about particular behaviors that you think that might be in need of some extra attention. I think also if possible, it's important that we think about the transition from home to school knowing that those children have been in difficult situation for quite a long time now already that transition then from home to go to a new school is in itself already very difficult transition then of course in this situation even more. So think about how we can make this transition more smoothly. For example, by having the parents also being allowed in the class in the morning for example or even during longer time in the daytime. And of course we need to work with interpreters, preferably professional interpreters but if we cannot understand each other, it's really difficult to talk. So please do try to work as much as possible with interpreters even with a phone or with Zoom or whatever so you can also use those technical ways to do that but please do use also interpreters. Of course we need to detect psychosocial problems as early as possible for the Ukrainians I think it will still take a time before we go really into the need for a part of the population for specialist care but for now psychosocial problems also need to be detected. Some aspects that you can take with is taking time to talk to people putting the problems or the behavior in the context. So how was it earlier on? How is it now? How is it at school? How is it at home? And talk with the parents and other people surrounding the child to try to understand what is happening. And of course if we detect problems and if there is need of specialist care we need to have that referral network. So I think as a school it's also good to think about having that referral network of specialist services. Support the building of new social networks. I had already addressed that. I think that's really important. Creating connectedness, positive relationships with peers in leisure time activities with systems of buddies or volunteers. Taking things from the home country to the host country. So creating also material continuity. If possible even in language we have Ukrainian language classes for example. And then of course you can also come to implement specific programs on refugees well-being for parents and or children in schools which I will go into in a minute, which is right now. So I will take you through some interventions that we have implemented in large Horizon 2020 project. It's called Refugees Well School. You can see the website here. On the website there's lots of information in terms of all the interventions being freely available except of one. So you can find all the manuals there and all our own reflections on how to actually implement those interventions. We have implemented five different interventions in six European countries. You can see all of them here which I will explain shortly right now. So these were the six European countries that we have implemented the interventions. Classroom drama is to say these are all interventions that are for 12 to 18 years old. That was what our project addressed that. I will then after shortly addressing those five interventions also illustrate two other interventions that you can use in primary schools. So as Helen also said classroom drama or drama non-verbal techniques are really important. That also relates of course to the idea of trauma being ingrained in the body. Classroom drama is an improvisational practice in which there is playback theater. So stories of the participants are played back or played back in theater under guidance of a play director or a drama therapist. It's a nine week program of 75 minutes which had a nice and was in terms of addressing very difficult experiences. This is very strong intervention. The drawback is a bit that you need to have a drama therapist coming in the class but at the same time that allows also the teacher to remain a bit at the side. So you will see in the interventions that there are very that there are many differences in how in the exact setup of the programs the interventions. Welcome to school is a program that has been developed by farce in the Netherlands. And that is 15 sessions on the guidance of the teachers that in refugee and migrant schools classes in which different teams. So you can see on the slide people of importance friendships being in love and dating leisure time discrimination are addressed throughout these 15 sessions. Also in this interventions is both verbal and non-verbal techniques but it can be entirely implemented by the teacher him or her cells. So it's a kind of psychoeducative program addressing different teams over different sessions. The peer intervention is a bit different because that works with the social support networks that are available in the school so with with the pupils with a non migrant background. Here we have a program of eight session each session between 45 and 60 minutes in which both migrant and non migrant adolescents take place. And the idea is really to share experiences between those two groups and as such to facilitate the support the social support coming from mainly the non migrant group to the migrant group but of course also the reverse. The nice thing here is that you're really opening up also to the pupils with a non migrant background. Then we have still another intervention it's called inset and inset is a training for teachers. It's based on an online course developed by Ogeo you can see that at the bottom of the slide. And we have developed that Ogeo online course through adding two seminars a seminar before in which all the trainees gathered to talk about certain teams and a seminar at the end after each of the trainees have individually completed the online course. They gather again to talk about their experiences their questions and so on. So the whole program consists of a seminar before a seminar after and in between an online course that participants follow individually. And then we have a quite well known intervention the teaching recovery techniques is specifically developed for children who are diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder developed by the Children and War Foundation. Who also still keep the manual so you need to have a training by that Children and War Foundation to be to being allowed to carry out the intervention. It's mainly focused on trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy with and that's here the interesting point not only sessions for the young people but also for the caregivers so that you also address their possibilities to better support their children. I promise also to talk about interventions for younger children. There's the mind spring program. It's a well known program. It's a group program. And the interesting thing here is that the mind spring groups are normally in one language in the language of the participants. Let's say in Arabic and they are guided by an Arabic speaker who has also him or herself a refugee or a migrant background. So you could call it as a kind of self help or a peer to peer method. And next to this mind spring trainer. There's a coach trainer who is a professional social worker or therapist from the local area. So you get a kind of role reversal in in who is doing what in that that program. The mind spring mind spring intervention has initially been developed for adults. And it's a series of six to nine sessions. You have different types here each of two hours. So initially developed for adults but now also with the junior version for 14 to 18 with the junior version version for eight to 13 years old and also with the parental support intervention. So you can combine also the parental version with the junior eight to 13 version or even with the 14 to 18 version. You can find materials on the website have indicated there. We are we have also someone very experienced here in Belgium who you also can contact. You will see in the different manuals that there is quite some difference on how to use or what is exactly in the manual. And it's important to say that to become a mind spring trainer. You need to have seven days of formal training. The coach trainer participates in two of the seven days. We also implemented here in Belgium together with the Carl Löwen with Lucia Dahan a creative arts based expression program. It's again a program that is developed by in Canada by Cecil Russo. And it's a program for eight to 12 years old children which is mainly focused on creative arts program using again both verbal and non-verbal modalities combining lots of storytelling drawing and other non-verbal techniques, which had a very we evaluated that also scientifically and interestingly that program worked very well or had the best effect for children who had more mental health problems. And generally had a very large impact on the school on the class climate. So it was mainly the class climate that improved because of this intervention, which then of course said and also explained indirectly impacted children's well-being and of course also their learning. And I want to close by saying a very short word on the well-being of the teacher, which is something that we often forget, but being confronted with lots of trauma is not always easy. Lots of trauma, but also not knowing how to do the uncertainty. Sometimes also the powerlessness you feel about not being able to solve certain situations. So I think if we talk about well-being of children, we should in fact talk at least as much about the well-being of the teacher and see how also we as teachers can care for ourselves. And we then could talk about sharing experiences or other types of self-care and coping strategies that you can use, thinking also about your position, how you cannot solve political problems that you are not in that position too. So I think it's also really important to think and talk about well-being of teachers when working with these groups that have not only very difficult histories but also in the current context often have very difficult positions in our societies. So that was a snapshot. You can find my contact details here. Of course do not hesitate to contact me if you have further questions and I'm eager to hear your questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. You also to you for giving us a better understanding of the risk and the factors for the migrant and the refugee population. But also thank you very much for pointing out the importance of the well-being of teachers as well. Since you are on the virtual stage at the moment, the audience had a question for you during the presentation. And the question is what if the children do not want to share what happened to them? I'm sorry my mic is slow so it takes always a bit of time to open it. Very interesting question and thanks for that interesting question. I think as Helen also indicates just follow the temple of the child and there's no need to share. It's not important that we know everything. Then the child knows the best when is the time to share and there might be very good reasons and actually the avoidance. So not wanting to talk or to think about the difficult experiences which we in our western framework often label as something problematic. We think that trauma you should talk about and blah blah which isn't actually not always needed to do so. So that strategy of avoidance in particular if the situation is still very uncertain and very unsecure is a good strategy to do. So I would really say that do never force a child to talk about things that he doesn't want. It's not so important that we know all of these details. Thank you very much Helen. Helen I see you're not in so please feel free to add anything you want. Yes I completely agree with you also there and children can gain a lot by listening to maybe a story about someone who's having a similar experience to them or watching an enactment of a drama and then take on board some of the solutions or interpretations of that situation. Not everyone wants to share everything with a whole class and they shouldn't ever have to do that. But they can still learn from and that's where the arts are so useful in helping people not only to express their feelings but also to contain some of their feelings to feel that they can safely contain them in a good place. I think I think that's where the arts plays such a significant role I think in this work. Thank you very much Helen and maybe we have time for one more question. The audience was asking as well in which ways we can treat and refugee children outside the school in their everyday life. Generally I know that you partially replied already to this question but maybe you could go a bit more into detail if you know any solidarity programs outside schools. It depends on what exactly you mean with treating children outside schools so I think that the idea of social support and social connections is a very important one. So I think allowing children or making it possible that they take part in normal life outside schools would be youth clubs sports club and so on is one thing. Then secondly related to that but on a different note creating groups where they can connect also with other refugee or Ukrainian in this case children so that is also an important one. Although not all of them really will want that some some people really want to direct only to the host country some people only will direct only to the ethnic. So also there let it open on what is needed. There's a lot to say about that issue of connecting to the ethnic communities or not. I won't do that for now but it's just take a ritual like give the possibility in terms of more specialized program there's quite some psychological services that are open to children. Although they're the barriers to go or not that easy. So what we know there is that the easiest is if there is need for more specialized care that certainly at the first step that the psychologist can come to the school and that eventually also current counseling services can take place in the school. That makes it that barrier often easier to come if that if that is wanted but also here it depends really on the child and the mother or the father. If they say no no no we really don't want it in school we just we really wanted outside OK then you go that way. So just see what what what someone wants and where someone wants to go. There's no one size fits all approach here. Sorry OK I could not unmute myself. We have one more question. How can we help them keep in touch with their country and the refugees were in other places. Yeah depends I think a lot on on on what who is is in it or from context to context in certain countries. Context people are hosted with host families and other countries context it's in larger scale reception centers but generally social media is something that has a large possibilities. There are many Facebook groups that from the Ukrainians for example and in addition to that of course within the school you can also have that possibility. So there's lots of I think lots of possibilities to find things around just in the neighborhood or through through social media. Thank you. Thank you very much. And before we close actually link to that question. I think I can highlight some actions that we are doing also in our programs to to support the situation in Ukraine and the teachers. So as you can see here we have many teachers today and you teachers from especially from the other countries you are watching also the war in Ukraine. And you are really challenged to teach this history in real time and you need to explain the students what is happening to today Ukrainian friends and partners. So especially in these moments of danger we want really to demonstrate that that we support each other and that we stay connected. And this webinar we would like this webinar to be just the starting point of our actions that we can continue even further in in the future. And but actually how can we do that for instance in it winning we have two groups. We have the it winning group on integrating migrants and refugees at school that extends now its focus to really strengthen teachers supporting refugees. The group has a new dedicated section to propose and share the educational resources and activities for their refugees and their students. But we have also a grassroot group that was created by an it winning ambassador who is actually here Sophia and is open to everyone. The groups I am at sharing and coordinating community driven solidarity activities and emotional support for the Ukrainian teachers and friends. So please feel free to join this group and leave your messages of solidarity you should be able to find the links in the chat. And the last but not least we have an upcoming course on integrating migrants and refugees at school starting on the 23 of May. The courses organized by school education gateways teacher Academy but will be offered on the new Academy in the chat you can find the link with all the information to a role in this course as well. Maybe just last practical information in the chat you will also find the link to the feedback form because we would like to hear back from you. Even though I saw a lot of positive reactions and comments in the chat for you Helen and Ilse. But really before we close officially the webinar I would like to leave the floor to you again maybe for one final advice for our teachers our audience or just a message to close and to say goodbye. Maybe Helen yes first and then Ilse as well. I think my final messages connect with people help them to belong, reach out to them. That's a fundamental human need and these children really need it and we can give it and we get so much back. All the work I've done in peer support means that if children help one another they report that it makes them feel so much better about themselves and gives them an altruistic idealistic direction to their lives. So reach out. Thank you for the nice word and I just would like to say don't be afraid. I think if we just connect from our hearts and think about what children need and try to listen as carefully as possible we will do good. And that's fine and if you make a mistake that's also fine. So I think it's important to just believe and I think the fact that you're here already shows that you're at the right and the right direction. But do also take care for yourself. It's not always an easy job. So do take care. Thank you. Thank you very much once again for this very inspiring and helpful presentation for the teachers. Just to reassure the audience the slides will be shared on the webinar page together with the recording. Because I actually I read a really nice message before and one of the participants was saying I need to watch again the webinar to internalize all the thing that you have said during the presentation so that was really nice. Now you can also find the feedback form in the chat. You can also save the link and fill it in later. So thank you. Thank you very much. It was a really good hour and I'm really happy that we have spent this hour together. It's Friday afternoon so I wish you all a relaxing weekend and a nice evening. Let's keep in touch. Bye bye everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Bye.