We encourage undergraduate and postgraduate students to undertake research exploring the experiences of young refugees and asylum seekers and the services available for young asylum seekers in London. We have invited a number of such researchers to meet with members of the Baobab Centre.
Photo: Pierre Holtz / UNICEF CAR
Sheila Melzak, after completing a course on Narratives in Conflict with Professor Dan Bar-On in Hamburg in June 2008, has been writing reports about several children who have experienced detention in Britain and overseas and in the preparation of these reports has collected the narratives of several children aged between four and eleven about their detention experience. The plan is to continue this work and to develop research publications on this topic.
We have also been working with a specialist in Group Work and Story Therapy from Israel, Shai Schwartz, and plan to prepare a book exploring the effectiveness of this work with young asylum seekers and refugees when difficult and unspeakable themes, especially those related to extreme violence, loss and cultural transition, are explored initially in displacement through traditional stories and role play.
Members of our staff have given talks on therapeutic work with young refugees at many conferences. This year, the conferences we have attended to give lectures or run seminars include the Solace Conference in Leeds, the ACP annual conference in Edinburgh, a conference at the Tavistock Centre, a conference in Austria about the experience of cross-generational trauma and war, and a conference on clinical work across the divides in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza held at Birkbeck College and at the Royal College of Psychiatry.