26 Nov 2024
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Professor Monica Lakhanpaul is an academic and clinician whose research promotes citizen science. She uses structured and participatory methods to co-design interventions for the advancement of population science. Here, she outlines a programme she is working on with NIHR ARC North Thames using these methods to support the health of children of families seeking refuge and asylum in the UK and living in temporary accommodation.
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Temporary accommodation can challenge young children’s health, development, safety and sense of belonging
The first 5 years of a child’s life is a critical period. This time will shape a child’s cognitive, educational, and physical development for the rest of their lives.
To set children on a positive course during this time, it is vital that children can be kept self, healthy and educated. But what happens when this is severely challenged by a family’s living situation?
As a Consultant Paediatrician and UCL Professor of Integrated Community Child Health, I have rarely seen such acute challenges to providing a safe, healthy and developmentally-supportive environment for children as temporary accommodation.
Often there are limited facilities for cooking a nutritious meal, and hardly any space to play. There is noise, which makes sleep hard and schooling harder. There is damp, poor lighting and ventilation, and unsanitary conditions.
When it comes to families seeking asylum and refuge in the UK, often they are far from the cultures they know, and separated from their families, communities, and familiar systems of support.
We’re co-designing a parental support programme that is tailored to these needs
Given these challenges, our PSP-REFUGEE project is exploring how to best support parents of under-5s who are seeking refuge in the UK and are currently housed in temporary accommodation.
The goal is to co-design with families a programme of support for parents. This support programme will be tailored to work with the strengths found in families’ cultural heritage in order to respond to these resource-limited environments.
Despite all the ways their environments work against them families in such circumstances show immense resourcefulness in caring for their young children. This is especially true when they receive appropriate support.
Our project is exploring how to enhance this support. We are seeking to address a gap in evidence around how to tailor parental support specifically for families seeking refuge and asylum and living in such resource-limited settings.
Through a programme of workshops with families, literature reviews, and interviews, we will explore ways of parenting within temporary accommodation that helps families draw on their culture heritage to help their children flourish.
This evidence will allow us to design a parental support programme that is tailored to meet the specific needs of these families and that draws on the strengths they may already hold.
The benefits of a taking a strengths-based approach
When circumstances are challenging, it can be tempting to fixate on what is lacking. We believe that the benefits of exploring and supporting parents’ strengths can:
- Create more effective, culturally competent parental support programmes
- Build competence among professionals to meet the needs of these families, creating an approach that is less top-down and more family-led
- Help foster their trust and engagement between families and services
- Promote confidence and belonging among families by connecting with and elevating their cultural strengths
This latter point is foundational to how we’ve designed the research. We're using trauma-informed theatre approaches to explore families’ needs and experiences in a way that avoids an extractive dynamic and instead offers parents the space to tell their stories and explore their own strengths and resources.
For example, they might have limited access to books, but they were brought up hearing stories through song – so they can sing to their children to develop language skills.
Using their traditional slings and swaddles may help soothe their children and keep them safe in an overcrowded space.
The programme will speak to parents and discover what approaches they may feel drawn to based on their history, culture and upbringing.
In doing so, we will create a co-designed programme of support that empowers asylum-seeking families to navigate barriers to care. This in turn will help reduce future economic hardship, and struggles with health, well-being, housing and education.
Fundamentally, providing families with greater support will benefit the health and well-being of children as they grow.
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