Peer Support

Following the workshop on peer organisational counselling and burn-out prophylaxes during the IRCT alliance meeting in Brussels in October 2011, the project partners have identified the unappropriate organisational structures and the lack of supervision of caregivers as the two main stressors for rehabilitation centres. Unfortunately, these issues are not often tackled by IRCT members as they lack the awareness, the opportunity, the means and the time to do so.

Thus, in order to help preventing burn-out and vicarious traumatisation of rehabilitation centre staff and with the wish to build on existing strenghts and resources of the participating centres, the Peer Support project has been set up to allow all actors in the project to work together to achieve this aim. This project is funded by the "Pilot Project on rehabilitation of torture victims” of the European Commission.

Specific objectives:

For all centres inEurope: Increased awareness among rehabilitation centres of the impact of organisational issues on the quality of rehabilitation services; Guidance on intervision is developed and disseminated among rehabilitation centres; A network of experienced supervisors and organizational counsellors is made available to support rehabilitation centres.

For 8 selected centres within the EU: A stress & quality management strategies and tools are defined and implemented in each centre; An intervision tool is developed and, in each centre, training of future intervision facilitators is achieved; intervision sessions are installed as a regular practice in each centre;

In order to achive these objectives, the main activities of the project will be:

Raise awareness among board and management about the impact of organisational dysfunction on the services provided to the clients and select 8 IRCT member centres;
Evaluate the stress level and the stress management practices of the 8 centres (ex-ante & ex-post) and disseminate results of the ex-ante/ex-post analysis in the final report of the project.

Establish a specific plan of action for each centres by detailing a needs assessment and organisational counselling;
Train the centres staff on the issue of secondary traumatisation, stress management and strategies to avoid burn-out;
Support each centre to create their own stress management strategies and to implement them together with a monitoring system.

Develop an intervision tool including: agenda for intervision session and rules for facilitator;
Train 1 to 2 staff members per centre as intervision facilitator;
Organise intervision as a regular practice within the centres under supervision of the process via mail/skype.

Map all supervisors and organisational counsellors among the network of IRCT member centres in Europe (available, trained & experienced);
Create a network of organisational counsellors and supervisors;
Promote the supervisor network to all centres and facilitate contact.

The expected outcomes of the project are:

1. The Rehabilitation centres in Europe are informed of the process and outcomes of the project and are made aware of the importance of stress & quality management policies and processes for the ultimate benefit of the victims of torture.

2. Eight IRCT centres are participating actively to the project:

Their boards, management and staff have both internal and external exchanges on good practices for quality management and stress reduction as well as a higher level of reflection on their work with clients,
8 centres define and implement sustainable stress and quality management strategies,
Up to 2 health staff per centre are trained on how to do structured intervision and as a result, regular intervision is implemented in the centres.

3. Different communication elements are published:

Blogs from the participating centres and the IRCT Brussels Newsletter are giving regular updates on the project,
A final report including good practices, intervision tool, analysis of the Ex-ante/ex-post evaluation is published.

4. A network of organizational counsellors and supervisors, familiar with the special needs of centres working with traumatized victims of torture and refugees, is structured and available for further intervention if needed.

Timeline

The project will run from June 2012 until November 2013.

Project partners

ANTARES Foundation - The Netherlands
www.antaresfoundation.org

BZFO - Germany
www.bzfo.de

Find out more

With financial support from
the European Commission