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PROMOTING WELL-BEING AND RESILIENCE OF YOUNG PEOPLE DURING COVID-19:
AN INITIATIVE WITH SCHOOLS
DR. CHETNA DUGGAL and LAMIA BAGASRAWALA
School Initiative for Mental Health Advocacy, TISS, Mumbai
Introduction
The month of March, 2020 was a period of sudden setbacks and disruptions as the country was presented with unprecedented challenges in the face of a global pandemic. As India began to report an increase in the prevalence of COVID-19, a nationwide lockdown was imposed resulting in mayhem, fear and confusion for many. India, a country of over 135 crore people was forced to witness a complete shutdown, rendering large numbers of daily wage earners, migrant workers and homeless people in a state of complete loss and helplessness. As the country tried to stay afloat, it was apparent that some people and groups were more vulnerable during these times. Support for the marginalized and vulnerable groups was being mobilized. Civil society organizations and individuals across the country came to the forefront to join the state and central government agencies in their efforts to ensure safety and care for the vulnerable and at-risk groups.
During these trying times, a significant part of the population that was highly affected were children and young people of India. While children may have been less vulnerable to infection, they were experiencing increased psychological and emotional vulnerability. As schools closed abruptly in March 2020, most children had no access to any physical space beyond their homes. The rhythm of regular routine was gone, and play, learning and access to peers was also limited for many.
Children who were living in unsafe or violent homes had no place else to go. The UNICEF Monthly Report published on March 31st 2020, reported a 50% increase in calls received by CHILDLINE India, a helpline for children in distress, resulting in 9,385 direct interventions within a 10-day period from March 20-31 during the first week of the nationwide lockdown (UNICEF India, 2020). About 20 per cent of these interventions responded to child protection issues such as preventing child marriage and physical, emotional and sexual abuse, trafficking, abandonment, neglect, and child labour. The data was alarming, and it became clear that children and adolescents were an extremely vulnerable group during this time who have been affected not only by the uncertainties and anxieties of the pandemic but also by the absence of safety networks and routines that offered some stability and anchoring. However, there was a complete dearth of resources or information to support children’s well-being during this pandemic in India.
The need
Through the School Initiative for Mental Health Advocacy (SIMHA), our work has always been guided by the primary objective of advocating for children and young people’s mental health and well-being. During these changing times, it was imperative for us to acknowledge how discourses around children’s well-being were pushed further away, making it critical for us to play an active role in promoting children’s mental health and psychological needs. As the lockdown continued, the SIMHA team began to receive information about risks and vulnerabilities that children were experiencing during these times. Schools and educators started reaching out to us for support with specific challenges that they were encountering. In our work over the last three years, we have recognized the significant role that schools can play in not only enhancing children’s well-being but also supporting children who are at-risk. In view of the information we were receiving about children’s safety and well-being during the pandemic, the SIMHA team began to understand and conceptualize the needs of different stakeholders in children’s lives.
As we engaged with schools through informal conversations we recognized that many schools had devised strategies and plans to transition into online teaching and learning but a large number of schools in India were struggling with issues of accessibility. India has a complex school education system with a large network of schools managed by local governments and other affordable private schools, which operate in under resourced contexts catering to children from highly vulnerable and marginalized backgrounds. Children from these contexts had limited or no access to digital devices, internet, and electricity. In the absence of this, while few children were reachable only through regular telephone calls or messaging services, many others were unreachable. Most schools were therefore unable to resume teaching-learning activities. By early April, many children had already started moving to their hometowns as their families struggled for wages and livelihood. It became even more challenging for schools to reach out to these children and check in on their well-being. The emerging need to integrate mental health and well-being within existing structural systems was quite clear. Schools and educational systems had to become spaces that promoted and cared for the mental health and well-being of children and young people, now more than ever. Children’s well-being could no longer be seen as a secondary objective but instead a primary goal for every school.
While we continued our conversations with schools, we also reviewed guidelines and information that was published internationally, and many unique challenges and needs specific to children’s well-being emerged. In the absence of school routines and restrictions on physical mobility, children with access to devices had started relying heavily on online games and social media to engage themselves and connect with friends and peers and may also experience restlessness (Kumar & Nayar, 2020). Information from international organizations were also highlighting increased risks for children with neurodevelopmental concerns (UNICEF, 2020) or other pre-existing physical or psychological special needs. The absence of routines and school structure can be extremely frustrating and confusing for children with special needs and this can further compound the distress that the parents and families are experiencing. Children who have previously experienced or witnessed trauma or children who were currently in violent or abusive environments could not access safe spaces or connect with their friends and peers. Recently there is also published data which indicates that children and adolescents in various districts of China have reported increased behavioural and psychological difficulties such as fear of family members getting contaminated, clinginess, distraction, irritability, and fear of asking about the epidemic or health of their relatives (Jiao et al., 2020) as well as signs of depression and anxiety (Xie, et al., 2020) during the COVID-19 pandemic. A study by Young Minds in UK found that 83% of youngsters below the age of 25 years concurred that the pandemic exacerbated previous mental state conditions, mostly due to school closures, loss of schedule/routine, and limited social interactions and 26% reported that they couldn't get the specified or desired psychological support in view of the COVID-19 flare-up (Young Minds, 2020).
The initiative
With these challenges in mind, we began our outreach and community work by April 9th with a key focus on advocating for children’s well-being. We reached out to the network of schools that have previously collaborated with SIMHA and shared resource compilations which had a list of documents, videos, exercises and activities for schools to support children during the pandemic. The compilation included mental health related resources compiled by international agencies like the World Health Organization and UNICEF to name a few and also contextually relevant material from organizations like Ummeed Child Development Centre and Apnishala Foundation that was specifically designed for parents, teachers and school counsellors. With the objective of initiating a conversation about children’s well-being with different stakeholders, SIMHA shared this resource compilation with over 200 schools across India. Schools started reaching out to us sharing the usefulness of those resources and were actively looking for more support to address their needs and challenges. We realized that there was an imminent need to listen to the voices from the field and create a space to advocate for children’s well-being through dialogue and discourse.
Since our launch in 2017, one of our key areas of work at SIMHA has been to strengthen capacities and competencies of school leadership teams, teachers and counsellors working with young people. We believe that children will be better supported if adults and stakeholders working with them are adequately supported. The feedback and requests we were receiving from schools in response to our compiled resource document led us to revisit our roots and strategize our response to meet the needs of various stakeholders working with children across diverse contexts within India. With the objective of creating a collaborative learning space for different stakeholders, SIMHA launched its first webinar series in April 2020. The 3-part webinar series was designed to promote the well-being of children in schools and included one webinar with each of the three stakeholder groups: school leadership, teachers and counsellors. The webinars were informed by the key principles that are core to our work at SIMHA. All webinars were designed to promote, recognize and ensure children’s safety, agency and rights at all times. The content and discussions were designed to be contextually relevant and rooted in principles of intersectionality. The recommendations and practices suggested during the webinars were trauma-informed. While we advocated for children’s rights and needs, our webinars adopted a strength-based approach which recognized the resources and skills that children employ to resist and respond during any crisis.
The registration process for the webinar required participants to complete a registration form which asked for their specific needs, concerns and challenges during the current crisis. This information provided a glimpse into some of the needs and we designed the 3 webinars to address these needs too. Through this first webinar series, we created the first of its kind virtual platform for school leaders, teachers and counsellors to come together and discuss challenges and needs related to students’ mental health and well-being during the pandemic and lockdown. The webinars were designed to present a whole-school response to mental health needs of children and adolescents. The WHO whole-school mental health approach was referred to as a guiding framework in developing the strategies and frameworks presented in the webinars. Through the webinars safe and collaborative spaces were created for participants to share the mental health and psycho-social challenges that children may be experiencing during these times, the impact on their well-being and learning and the role that different stakeholders can play to support children. For the school leaders, the webinar focused specifically on the need for strategic action at a whole-school level with a focus on integrating mental health within school policies and protocols during the pandemic. Specific action steps like focusing on children’s well-being during parent communication and creating forums and platforms to listen to the mental health needs of teachers and staff were also discussed. The webinar also invited participants to share ways in which they have been responding to these challenges thereby encouraging shared learning and sense of collective responsibility. The webinar for school teachers emphasized on the importance of children’s well-being and recognizing how the uncertainties and anxieties of the current times influence learning processes. We also shared a framework with teachers that offered an overview of the different action steps they could take to give prominence to mental health of children within their classrooms. The third webinar was designed for school counsellors and it focused on providing a contextually relevant framework informed by trauma sensitive school practices. The framework offered a few recommendations for school based practices that could help promote students’ well-being in the midst of a crisis. These webinars received an overwhelming response from over 124 schools across 10 States and 02 Union Territories of India. Participants shared how the webinars were not only informative but also helped them reflect on their existing practices and build perspective on the changing nature of their roles during these times.
As we concluded the first webinar series, we also took a deeper look at the various needs that had emerged during these three webinars. School leaders shared their unique challenges as they navigated through pressures and demands from various stakeholders, especially school management and parents. Teachers shared that they were facing challenges like sustaining student engagement in online classrooms, increased absenteeism during online classes and also difficulties with parent engagement and responsiveness. Teachers also shared that they were also struggling with challenges that came along with the transitions to online teaching-learning like redesigning curriculums and lesson plans and working from home. Many teachers also shared that their well-being had taken a back seat since schools were also demanding a lot more from them. The picture was more complex for teachers, some of whom shared their own experiences of living in violent or abusive home environments. School counsellors shared that they were feeling confused and did not seem to have the skills required for online counselling. They shared that reaching out to students who may be at-risk or supporting students with special needs through tele- and online counselling was challenging. Counsellors also shared that the current times were already difficult and offering counselling services was also taking a toll on their own mental health. The challenges and concerns that were shared by different stakeholder groups demanded that we continue our work to address these emerging needs. We therefore devised a three pronged strategic approach to address the needs that schools across India were presenting with during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown: advocacy for children’s well-being, knowledge and skill building for all key stakeholders and reflective practice and self-care.
During this time, as we began designing our capacity building programme to meet the aforementioned objectives, we were also planning a 3-part webinar series on “Self-care” for the Adhyayan Quality Education Services Pvt. Ltd. Adhyayan is an education movement of Indian and international educationists, dedicated to improving the quality of leadership and learning in schools. Adhyayan approached us with specific needs that had emerged during their programmes with school leaders and teachers during the pandemic. They shared that leaders, teachers and counsellors were all experiencing distress and required support with their own health and well-being. Since this was aligned with the objectives we had put forth, SIMHA offered to curate a three-part webinar series with one webinar for each of the three stakeholder groups: leaders, teachers and counsellors. The SIMHA team planned this webinar series as workshops that incorporated narrative and arts-based practices that encouraged reflective discussions. The webinars were designed to create a safe space for participants to reflect on their own well-being and deconstruct the meaning of “self-care” during such uncertain times. The webinars, attended by over 124 participants from 7 States across India, received phenomenal feedback as participants left feeling heard and rejuvenated.
Webinar series for teachers and counsellors
With the successful completion of six webinars in April, we were geared to launch our capacity building programme in May 2020. The programme was aimed to address the needs of school teachers and counsellors during the pandemic. We launched two series of webinars: a 4-part professional development web-series for counsellors working with children and adolescents and a 3-part web-series for teachers. Similar to the initial webinar series on “Promoting well-being of students during the COVID-19 pandemic” and “Self-care”, both the webinar series, for teachers and counsellors, emphasized child rights and safety, and were designed to be trauma-informed and strengths-based. Taking into account the feedback and responses we received during the first six webinars, we continued to ensure that our pedagogy was collaborative and involved a mix of didactic information sharing and participant interaction. The webinars also included reflective processes and encouraged participants to share with one another. We ensured that webinars were a space for learning, reflection and discussion by leveraging technology to share information, invite participant views through interactive polls and create a space for shared reflection by using break-out rooms and other platforms like the Padlet. Participants were also encouraged to share feedback for every webinar through a detailed Google Form which also guided our planning and facilitation for future webinars.
The webinar series for teachers included three webinars dedicated to promote well-being of all students, support specific students at-risk and promote self-care and well-being of teachers. The first webinar aimed at integrating emotional well-being with teaching-learning practices during the pandemic. This webinar guided teachers on specific emotional needs that children across different age-groups may present with during these times and offered specific strategies to create safe spaces for emotional expression. Through various hands-on activities and sharing of resources like classroom activities, worksheets and videos, the webinar presented participants with ways to promote children’s well-being during synchronous and asynchronous teaching. The second webinar in this series focused on specific skills required to respond to students who may be at-risk or in distress during the lockdown. Specific indicators to assess and identify vulnerable students through online/ telephone/ chat communication were also discussed. Through the use of polls and case vignettes, teachers reflected on the various ways in which they can respond to students’ distress and offer appropriate support. The webinar also highlighted specific protocols to be considered while responding to students who are/were witnessing or experiencing violence/ abuse. The third and last webinar in this series was designed as an experiential workshop that created a space for teachers to reflect on their challenges, their emotional needs during this time and connect with their values, intentions and aspirations. Through discussions, arts-based activities, the webinar offered participants a space to reflect on their journeys as teachers and identify pathways to enhance their well-being. The third webinar series was attended by over 88 teachers from 42 schools across 10 States and 01 UT within India. Participants found all three webinars to be extremely relevant, contextual and informative. Some of the participants also shared how they had started employing some of the recommended strategies and action plans with their students.
Webinar series for counsellors
While we were facilitating the web series for teachers, we had also initiated the 4-part webinar series for counsellors. This series was developed in response to the absence of any specific resources or training within India for counsellors working with children and adolescents during a pandemic. The series was therefore curated as a professional development series with each of the four webinars covering pertinent topics relevant to the current needs. For this series, SIMHA invited resource persons with relevant expertise to facilitate the webinars. Towards the end of every webinar, facilitators responded to case related queries and questions posed by participants.
Counsellors from different regions had reached out to us asking for support as they transitioned into online and telephone service delivery. Counsellors working with schools shared their helplessness at not receiving clear guidelines and protocols on the same. The first webinar in this series, therefore, was on conducting online therapy for children and adolescents. The webinar presented a framework for conducting online sessions for children and adolescents, taking into consideration specific developmental needs and challenges. This webinar also introduced participants to various platforms that can be employed for counselling online and also highlighted specific features and tools available on these platforms. Through this webinar, counsellors were also taken through a detailed understanding of the process of online counselling, including simple and effective ways to create a therapeutic frame and effective strategies and activities that could be used with children of different ages. Second in this series was a webinar designed for counsellors supporting children at-risk. The webinar focused on specific factors and experiences that could challenge children’s safety and place them at-risk such as witnessing and/or experiencing violence or abuse, neglect, as well as factors like increased use of digital devices, increased gaming, substance use and/or self-injury. For this webinar, risk assessment protocols and strategies were discussed in the context of online and tele-counselling.
Webinar for working with children who have experienced trauma
Our third webinar was aimed at working with children who have experienced trauma. During the pandemic, as we mentioned earlier, children who may have already experienced trauma may need additional support, especially as they may not have access to their safe spaces and might find it challenging to cope. The webinar focused on different theoretical and conceptual frameworks to understand trauma including the polyvagal theory. The neurobiology of trauma was explained and participants’ perceptions about trauma were also explored through intermittent polls. This webinar also outlined trauma-focused interventions, with an emphasis on the process of stabilization while working online with children who might have experienced trauma.
Experiential workshop on self-care and support
The last webinar was designed as an experiential workshop on self-care and support for counsellors during the pandemic. This webinar was interactive, reflective and created a space for personal sharing and discussions. Through various reflective processes and arts-based activities, this webinar created a space for counsellors to reflect on their own well-being during this pandemic and the impact it has had on their personal and professional journeys. As facilitators, this webinar was an extremely humbling experience as participants invited us into their life stories and experiences of hope, pain, gratitude, helplessness, despair, optimism and uncertainty. It was a reminder that support and compassion can go a long way even for mental health professionals and the series concluded with exchanges of gratitude as participants left us with requests for more webinars and similar learning spaces.
SIMHA was able to reach 271 counsellors affiliated with over 164 schools and organizations from India, Nepal and Indonesia in these four sessions. Feedback for this webinar series indicated that the content and case discussions were extremely helpful and enriching for the participants.
The reach
Over the course of these two months, we have conducted 4 series of 13 webinars for school leaders, teachers and counsellors with the objectives of advocating for children’s well-being, building competencies to support children’s well-being during a pandemic and engaging in reflective practice and self-care in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through these webinars, we have reached out to over 600 participants from over 140 schools across India, Indonesia and Nepal. Within India, our webinars received participation from across 18 States and 02 Union Territories.
The way forward
The feedback we received only strengthened our intentions and enthusiasm to continue the work we have been doing to foster schools as communities of care. We are aware that with the pandemic still impacting our lives, normalcy and routine are not going to return in the immediate future. There are questions on when schools will reopen, when our young people will be back in classroom spaces and when teaching-learning will happen in person. As schools prepare for the next academic year, SIMHA plans to continue supporting school leaders, teachers and counsellors to facilitate the well-being of young people through these transitions by advocating for and building safe and nurturing communities that promote resilience.
Conclusion
Schools have a huge potential to develop into communities of care that build resilience and promote well-being of young people. Research has indicated that a positive and safe school climate, considerate and safe learning spaces, and trusting and respectful relationships with teachers can be critical in promoting resilience among children experiencing adversity. Over two months of engagement with different stakeholders of the school community, we recognize the crucial role that mental health professionals can play in advocating for the well-being of children and adolescents with school leaders, teachers and counsellors, especially during a crisis such as the current pandemic. Advocacy efforts, combined with presenting frameworks and resources and creating spaces for dialogue, can create pathways for integrating mental health into teaching-learning spaces and can contribute to the safety and well-being of our young people.
About SIMHA:
The School Initiative for Mental Health Advocacy (SIMHA) is an initiative of the School of Human Ecology, Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Through its three pronged approach of advocacy, research and capacity building, SIMHA endeavours to improve mental health systems within educational institutions across India. Over the last three years, through on-field research and multiple stakeholder interactions, SIMHA has established a contextually relevant framework for whole-school mental health practices in schools in India, based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) whole-school mental health approach. SIMHA connects with schools that wish to create a safe, emotionally healthy environment for students and promote the mental health and well-being of students and educators.
References:
Jiao, W., Wang, L., Liu, J., Fang, S., Jiao, F., Pettoello-Mantovani, M., & Somekh, E. (2020). Behavioral and Emotional Disorders in Children during the COVID-19 Epidemic. The Journal Of Pediatrics, 221, 264-266.e1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2020.03.013
Kumar, A., & Nayar, K. (2020). COVID 19 and its mental health consequences. Journal Of Mental Health, 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2020.1757052
UNICEF India. (2020). UNICEF India COVID-19 Pandemic Monthly Situation Report No. 1. UNICEF India.
UNICEF Serbia. (2020). Children with autism and COVID-19. Retrieved from UNICEF Serbia: https://www.unicef.org/serbia/en/children-autism-and-covid-19
Xie, X., Xue, Q., Zhou, Y., Zhu, K., Liu, Q., Zhang, J., & Song, R. (2020). Mental health status among children in home confinement during the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak in Hubei Province, China. JAMA Pediatrics. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.1619
Young Minds. (2020). Coronavirus: Impact on Young People with Mental Health Needs. UK: YoungMinds. Retrieved from https://youngminds.org.uk/media/3708/coronavirus-report_march2020.pdf