International projects

Due to the war in Ukraine, a large group of refugee children have been stranded in the neighbouring countries and are trying to regain some of their lives there.

Through collaborations with CNPAC and ERIKS, we developed our 5-part resilience module specifically for refugee children in Poland and Romania.

We also arranged to have our popular Window of Tolerance animation to be translated into several languages.

Together with UNICEF Netherlands, we offered assistance to the government of Aruba and NGOs in Aruba in the development and implementation of the safety code (reporting code in the Netherlands) on violence against children, called Codigo di Proteccion. Augeo gave advice on implementation and developed various supporting materials, including an animation (www.codigodiproteccion.com). Content has also been contributed to meetings or meetings have been organised for knowledge sharing on experience expertise, youth participation, implementation training and reporting code in hospitals.

Since April 2022, we have a follow-up cooperation project with Aruba and Curaçao in a follow-up EU project. UNICEF Netherlands developed and is implementing this project together with the national governments of Aruba and Curaçao, NGOs and Augeo.

The following will be developed within the project:

In this project, we work intensively with the national project leader and sector project leaders.

For the development, a content/focus group is formed with broad representation: trainers Supervisor di Codigo and project leaders Codigo di Proteccion from different organisations and sectors, national project leader, ‘kindertelefoon’ and delegate from Hias -migrants and LGBTQI+-.

In a partnership with the Government of Sint Maarten and UNICEF The Netherlands, we work together on improving the child protection system on Sint Maarten.

For the preparation of an advisory report to the now established interdepartmental working group, UNICEF NL and Augeo Foundation visited and interviewed 30 professionals at their work locations In May 2019. Together with these stakeholders, a number of quick wins were formulated.

In 2020, 2 online magazines were made in cooperation with UNICEF The Netherlands and the Child Protection Working Group for knowledge sharing among professionals working with children. The first issue appeared in May 2020 with the title Let's tackle child maltreatment together. Topics included risk factors for child safety, impact of domestic violence, but also the impact of COVID on children's wellbeing and safety and the challenges of providing online education. Interviews, articles, personal stories and infographics were interspersed.  This first edition was also published in a printed magazine. The second edition, 'Being prepared for hurricanes', responded to the topicality of hurricane season.

In the autumn of 2020, all those involved worked on a multi-year cooperation between the Government of Sint Maarten, UNICEF The Netherlands and Trustfund of the World Bank. The objective is to further support the Government of Sint Maarten in strengthening the education and child protection system. Augeo has been asked for technical support including further editions of the Growing-up Safe magazine and the provision of online capacitiy workshops for the Child Protection Working Group. Topics of the online workshops are: Lessons learned from implementation reporting code in The Netherlands, Development of Child check procedures for organisations who meet parents in high-risk situations, like police, mental health organisations and the emergency department, Examples of projects to strengthen social support for maltreated children: Handle with Care – Buitenhuis project, Methods for safety planning and training of professionals to work together in a multi-sectoral integrated response after a report of child abuse, How to embed the voice of children as hands-on experts, Methods to detect cases of abuse and neglect - medical professionals

For an impression of the online magazine: https://www.growingupsafe-sxm.com/

Augeo has created an online training package for English and German speaking hospitals. A webpage has been set up to share the experiences of tackling child abuse in Dutch hospitals.

The Universitätsklinik für Kinder- und Jugendheilkunde in Vienna and the Academic Hospital in Paramaribo, among others, started training doctors and nurses in 2019.

In Suriname, the e-learning was combined with a face-to-face course that was given by Dutch doctors. The European Medical school in Germany also uses the combination of Augeo’s e-learning with a face-to-face course to train their students.

Together with Erasmus Medical Center and MC Haaglanden, we performed a survey to evaluate the different policies to recognise child maltreatment in Emergency Departments (EDs) in Europe in order to define areas of improvement. It is a cooperation project with EUSEM, EuSEN and REPEM, who distributed the survey. In total 185 completed surveys, representing 148 hospitals from 29 European countries were analysed.

Together with the Erasmus Medical Centre and MC Haaglanden, we conducted a survey to evaluate the different policies for recognising child abuse in emergency departments (EDs) in Europe and to define areas for improvement.

It is a collaborative project with the European professional associations for Emergency Medicine Physicians and Nurses EUSEM, EuSEN and REPEM, who distributed the survey. A total of 185 completed surveys were analysed, represented by 148 hospitals from 29 European countries. The results were published in the scientific journal PLOSONE.

In 2020, a follow-up questionnaire was developed to investigate the barriers and facilitators to toolkit implementation. Due to corona, the release of this questionnaire has been delayed , but results will soon be presented.

Our courses on trauma-sensitive teaching to refugee children are also implemented internationally. For example, the course was part of a European research program and has been translated into Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian.

Within the European Horizon 2002 project RefugeesWellSchool - Psychosocial support for adolescent refugees and migrants in schools, the translated courses have been included within one of the interventions, the in-service teacher training (INSETT). The aim of this intervention is to increase teachers' understanding of how refugee / migration experiences can affect adolescents' psychosocial well-being and functioning when resettled in a new country.  The intervention took place in Sweden, Finland and Norway and was completed this year. In 2021 the results of research on the effectiveness and implementation processes are expected. Meanwhile, the course is already being offered more broadly to teachers on how to support refugee youngsters.

In Germany, a partnership with the Freudenberg Foundation, two National refugee organisations (BumF and BAfF) and the German Education Union (GEW) has been set up, with which the refugee course has been translated into German, adapted to German context and has been brought to the attention of German teachers.