engleski

Developing a range of activities in response to various needs of refugees

In this paper psychosocial project activities for refugees will be described as a pyramid in which different levels of professional assistance are provided for different proportions of a population. The first level of assistance with goals to provide social and emotional support and to assess sources of stress and difficulties in adjustment was offered through regular visits by team members to individuals and families. The second level of assistance was aimed at structuring leisure time during the period of exile. Our experience was that programs which structured leisure time improved the quality of life in exile, contributed to normalization of life and helped the psychosocial adjustments of children and adults. The third level provided specific help to individuals and groups in order to improve their psychological functioning. This type of assistance was provided in numerous ways including supporting children and adolescents with school problems, providing social skills training for children and facilitating groups for individual development and support for adults. The fourth level of assistance refers to the individual counseling and psychiatric attention that was required by a comparatively small proportion of refugees. We have realized the importance of planned evaluations to measure the success of our responses to beneficiaries’ needs and the achievement of the program goals through our activities. The initial evaluation was an identification of the needs which was later followed with a process of formative evaluation and then a final or summative evaluation. The formative evaluation gave us feedback about whether we were responding to the psychosocial needs of our beneficiaries and if we were successfully providing our psychosocial interventions. This information helped the providers to be more sensitive and flexible in the implementation of the activities which increased the motivation of the beneficiaries as well as the providers. The final or summative evaluation provided information about the achievements of our goals and about ways to asses the usefulness and efficiency of similar activities with other groups of beneficiaries. The final evaluation was also a source of information about some newly identified needs of potential beneficiaries. These needs were responded to by planning some new activities for the future which made the psychosocial program more comprehensive and more available to families and communities.

psychosocial assistance; range of activities; evaluation

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