Empowering migrant and refugee families with parenting skills Erasmus Project

Project Title

Empowering migrant and refugee families with parenting skills

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Integration of refugees; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

According to UNHCR in 2016, 65.6 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide because of human rights violation, including conflict, violence. More than 5,000 migrants and refugees died in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach Europe in 2016, mainly through Greece and Italy and for the first month of 2018 almost 500 died. Children of migrants and refugees are the fastest growing segment of the child population in many countries. All children fleeing conflict, especially those traveling alone are vulnerable to abuse of different kinds: sexual and labor exploitation including trafficking, being sold and being coerced into marriage, in their homes, communities, society or in places where migrants and/or refugees reside – including reception centers, refugee camps or informal settlements at source, transit and destination countries.
IENE 8 contributes to the need of protecting and preventing unwanted situations within the migrant and refugees’ families, focusing on children.
The overall goal of the project was to create an online curriculum, including learning tool/guide for health professionals and volunteers to enable them to provide support and knowledge and skills on parenting and child-family health care needs under unique and difficult conditions.
The objectives of the project were to:
a) Review of the literature on the needs of migrant and refugee families with children on parenting skills, focusing on factors that provide resilience, as well as those factors that disempower parents and children during refugeedom
b) Develop a curriculum for nurses and other health professionals and volunteers, to enable them to provide support, knowledge and skills on parenting and child-family health care needs, under extreme and unique conditions
c) Develop bite-size learning units for parents to enable them in improving knowledge in regards to parenting and support of their children and family.
d) Provide training for nurses and other health professionals and volunteers
e) Use Khub to share stories from professionals regarding their experience and training refugee and migrant families with children on parenting related matters.
f) Disseminate the results and the outputs of the project through workshops, webinars, national seminars

The target groups included: Health and social care professionals, volunteers that are working with migrants/refugees, migrant and refugee families and children.

Overall, the project developed 20 online bite-size learning tools for professionals, volunteer and parents and collected 27 stories from parents on parenting challenges and achievements. Most of them were from Syria, others from Afghanistan, Iraq and so on. All these are uploaded on the Knowledge Hub of IENE projects (http://www.ienerefugeehub.eu/).
The pedagogical approach of co-production through co-creation principles and evidence from IENE projects was used.
The project enhanced the development of intercultural competences in professionals and volunteers, involving academics, educators and civic society, all of which contributed to the development and implementation of all activities of this project. The project emphasized the use of an open, innovative learning tool, based on the principles of peer learning and support, co-creation and effective utilization. The project is in line with the European Commission’s policy A European agenda on migration.

The new curriculum and training tools support migrant and refugee families on parenting skills. Khub is enriched and increased its usability as a collective multilingual learning tool with enormous benefit for professionals, volunteers and migrants. Further, the curriculum, bite-size learning tools form a paradigm and a good practice for effective use of technologies and pedagogies in training health professionals and volunteers in the vital issues of migration, integration and healthy community, regarding parenting skills and psychological support of migrant and refugee families with children. This is considered an added value of the project to the local and EU community.

Project Website

https://ienerefugeehub.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 154121 Eur

Project Coordinator

TECHNOLOGIKO PANEPISTIMIO KYPROU & Country: CY

Project Partners

• MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY HIGHER EDUCATION CORPORATION
• Asociatia EDUNET
• ASSOCIATION DOCTORS OF THE WORLD-GREEK DEPARTMENT
• ETHNIKO KAI KAPODISTRIAKO PANEPISTIMIO ATHINON
• St. Augustinus Memory-Zentrum
• C&B SOC. COOP. SOC.