Improving mental health support for vulnerable children and young people
Vulnerable children and youth in Southeast Europe are exposed to high rates of mental health challenges due to the adverse experiences they might have faced. Yet, public health systems are too often ill-equipped, both in terms of capacities and resources, to meet these needs.
Our Unity in Care project will introduce new preventive mental health and psychosocial support methods that can be used by both mental health professionals and non-specialists, including local organisations. By making support more accessible and affordable, the project aims to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable children and youth.
Our impact
Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) methodologies
How can we ensure that a methodology developed for children in one country is just as effective in another? This is the central challenge of our project: adapting and contextualizing proven child protection and mental health support approaches for use in Greece, Kosovo, Albania, and Romania.
“Contextualization builds strength through collaboration, creating invested communities of practitioners, meaningful partnerships with children and youth, and platforms for previously unheard voices. It places ownership with those who possess the deepest context-specific knowledge," explains Anastasiia Doroshenko, Regional Child Protection Advisor in Europe, Terre des hommes.
The methodologies used in the project are:
- Movement, Games, Sports and Creativity (MGSC): This methodology, developed and contextualized by the Terre des hommes Foundation, uses sport, movement, games and creativity as psychosocial tools to improve the emotional and social well-being of children at risk. The main goal of the MGSC methodology is to promote cooperation, trust, participation and long-term resilience through experiential sessions.
Move on & Engage (MoE): A curriculum developed by Terre des hommes to build young people’s life skills and community engagement, empowering them to address concerns in their environment, such as those related to family, school, and community, and to strengthen their psychosocial resilience.
- I Support My Friends (ISMF): A resource kit designed to train children and adolescents to offer peer-to-peer psychological first aid and support their friends in distress. It was jointly-developed by UNICEF, Save the Children, the MHPSS Collaborative and WHO.
Twelve trainings on using these methodologies will be conducted with at least 216 mental health and non-mental health professionals in the four European countries. Those trained will go on to provide mental health and psychosocial support to over 1,300 children and young people through both group and individual sessions.
To ensure a wider impact of the project, we will create Technical Working Groups to gather and share best practices and training materials through the Child Protection Hub platform.
Listening to children as experts
A core principle of the project is to view children as active contributors to positive change, not just as people who need help. To ensure their meaningful participation, we established one International Child and Youth Advisory Board (CAB) and four national CABs. The boards are actively consulted and engaged at every stage of the project.
"It is important to be satisfied with the roles we have and to be able to take on new ones. Also, to surround ourselves with people who make us feel good about ourselves and confident. We need to have a say in the things that matter to us and be involved in decisions, otherwise, we feel we are not valued," shared a 14-year-old student who participated in an in-person contextualization workshop in Greece, exploring the Move on & Engage methodology.
Tdh has extensive experience in establishing and supporting Child Advisory Boards, offering facilitators and other interested organisations with practical guidance on how to involve children safely and meaningfully in advisory roles and decision-making processes. The latest methodological toolbox was adapted to challenging circumstances in Ukraine.
