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Supporting Children Affected by War: Towards an Evidence Based Care System

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Mental Health of Refugee and Conflict-Affected Populations

Abstract

One in ten children globally lives in an area affected by armed conflict. Armed conflict has both direct and indirect effects on children’s social, emotional, and educational outcomes, and impacts can occur at multiple levels of the child’s ecosystem- the individual, family, community, and society. This chapter will provide an overview of the impacts of war on children, outline existing intervention research and sector standards, and provide recommendations and future directions for research and implementation. The chapter will then detail War Child Holland’s research and development agenda which aims to develop a multi-sectoral, multi-level system of care for children affected by war that addresses children’s needs across different ecological levels. This system of care is complemented by mechanisms to ensure access and quality of care. The chapter describes how evidence-based principles can be developed and implemented in such a way that they are scalable and can achieve actual real-world impact, despite the complexities and challenges of working in low-resource humanitarian settings.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Mark J. D. Jordans

  2. Research and Development, War Child, Amsterdam, North Holland, The Netherlands

    Mark J. D. Jordans, Myrthe van den Broek, Felicity Brown, April Coetzee, Rinske Ellermeijer, Kim Hartog, Frederik Steen & Kenneth E. Miller

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  1. Mark J. D. Jordans
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  2. Myrthe van den Broek
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  3. Felicity Brown
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  7. Frederik Steen
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  8. Kenneth E. Miller
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Correspondence to Mark J. D. Jordans .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Nexhmedin Morina

  2. School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Angela Nickerson

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Jordans, M.J.D. et al. (2018). Supporting Children Affected by War: Towards an Evidence Based Care System. In: Morina, N., Nickerson, A. (eds) Mental Health of Refugee and Conflict-Affected Populations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97046-2_13

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