Palestine

Children in Gaza

For a number of years, the Foundation has been supporting the work of Dr. Thabet who has piloted the Foundations “Writing for Recovery” Manual with adolescents there. Unfortunately a formal evaluation of the use of the manual was halted because of an increase in the fighting.

Evaluation of Writing for Recovery in Gaza

Psychology trainees from the University of Bergen, Ida Lange-Nielsen and Silje Kolltveit plan to use our Writing for Recovery Manual in a trial with adolescents affected by the war in Gaza. The purpose of the project is to reduce post-traumatic stress in adolescents in Gaza and evaluate the effect of the group intervention “Writing for Recovery”.

Training for Recovery in Gaza

Professor Raija-Leena Punamaki of Tampere University in Finland has worked for many years in Palestine.  The Foundation had agreed to train people in the use of our group Recovery Manual, but the recent fighting has not only destroyed schools and clinics and traumatised thousands more children, but will now set back the scientific evaluation of different methods of helping.

Pilot Project – Evaluation of the Recovery Manual across Palestinian Schools

This Center for Applied Research in Education (CARE) initiative, has been coordinated by Dr.Ghassan Abdallah is run in partnership with CAW and Dr Ian Barron, University of Dundee. The main purpose of the project is to bring the Children and War Foundation’s Recovery Manual to schools across the West Bank, Palestine, to alleviate traumatic symptoms for children.

The development component involved implementation of a ‘trainer of trainers’ programme in which 20 school counsellors were trained in the Recovery Manual in August 2009. They will subsequently train another 230 school counsellors. The research component of the pilot study will be an evaluation of the impact of the Recovery Manual delivered by the 20 school counsellors.

The research design builds on previous studies which have evaluated the effectiveness of the Recovery Manual. A pre-post test waiting list comparison group design was utilised. The sample size will be around 200 students aged 14 to 15 years of age. Equivalent numbers of students will be allocated to an intervention and comparison condition through randomly allocating 10 schools to an intervention group and 10 schools to a waiting list comparison group. All Recovery Manual sessions will be audio taped with a random sample of 1% analysed for programme integrity purposes.

The Children’s Impact of Events Scale, the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS), the Birleson Depression Scale-Questionnaire, the Traumatic Grief Inventory for Children and the Impact on School Performance Scale will be used to measure changes in children’s symptoms in PTSD, anxiety, depression, grief and performance in school respectively. The Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire for parents, teachers, and young people will also be administered.

One focus group will be held to explore students’ subjective experience of the delivery of the Recovery Manual and their perceived benefits and any negative consequences. The focus group will contain 10 to 12 children and will be audio recorded for analysis purposes. Another focus group with 10 to 12 randomly school counsellors will be held to ascertain presenters’ perception of what worked, what did not work, benefits for children and any negative consequences for children.

This project is nearly completed.