JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Promoting social-emotional capacities in refugee children may be an opportune, strengths-based avenue to nurture their resilience, coping strategies, and mental health outcomes. However, limited culturally adapted initiatives adopt this approach.

Objective:

The current pilot study assessed the feasibility and efficacy of a social-emotional training for refugee caregivers of children aged 2–12 and service providers who support refugees.

Methods:

The virtual three-week training included 26 Middle Eastern refugee caregivers and 24 service providers. The training was evaluated using a pre-, post-, and two-month follow-up design. Caregivers and service providers reported their understanding of social-emotional concepts, use of training strategies, and mental health. Caregivers reported their children’s social-emotional capacities and mental health.

Results:

Results revealed that caregivers’ and service providers’ knowledge of social-emotional concepts increased significantly from pre- to post-training and service providers’ knowledge increase was sustained at the two-month follow-up. Caregivers and service providers both reported high levels of strategy use. Further, two markers of children’s social-emotional development (i.e., emotion regulation and sadness over wrongdoing) improved after the training.

Conclusions:

The findings highlight the potential of strengths-based social-emotional initiatives to support refugee caregivers’ and service providers’ abilities to provide high-quality social-emotional care to refugee children.