Frontline Capacity Building - CSEL Serving the Voluntary Sector

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By Dr. Jane Herlihy

CSEL plays an important ‘back-office’ role to the many professionals who are working directly with people asking for protection in Europe. An example of this is our training sessions for the Freedom from Torture medico-legal report team. When a doctor assesses an individual asylum-seeker they gather important clinical evidence about that person, and psychological research evidence can complement and support this clinical evidence by giving a broader picture of what effects are likely, or possible.  For example, a man might have inconsistent memories of his torture in detention, and research shows reasons for inconsistencies in people’s memory for traumatic experiences.

Earlier this month I was invited to run a workshop on research evidence for doctors and psychologists writing medico-legal reports in The Netherlands.

iMMO is the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights and Medical Assessment (Instituut voor Mensenrechten en Medisch Onderzoek).  iMMO consists of volunteer doctors and psychologists who contribute to the protection of human rights, especially by making medical assessments of suspected victims of torture and inhumane treatment.  The 45 assessors are trained by iMMO and perform assessments working independently within the framework of the Istanbul Protocol.

Dr. Jane Herlihy at iMMO

I was invited to attend iMMO’s regular study day in the beautiful medieval city of Utrecht. I spoke briefly about the notion of using the breadth of psychological evidence to support medico-legal assessments. I then ran quickly through CSEL’s existing research studies, outlined our recent studies (on overgeneral memory, and on credibility judgments about people with PTSD & Depression), and discussed potential new studies. We then spent some time thinking about different types of autobiographical memory in different cultures, working from a paper by Markus & Kitayama (1991), which reviews the robust evidence for differences between individualist, or independent cultures and collectivist, or interdependent cultures in terms of how events are described and recalled.

It was great to work and think together with these dedicated professionals, and to hear about the pressures of policy changes that they have to contend with. We talked about how these pressures interact with their focus on ensuring that individuals seeking protection get the best possible decisions in their cases, taking into account their medical and psychological needs and difficulties. We had a very fruitful exchange – they were very interested in encouraging our research – and I do hope that we will find ways to continue this connection.

Children's Credibility - a Multidisciplinary Approach

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Last week Dr. Zoe Given-Wilson presented her chapter in the second multidisciplinary training manual of the Credo project, at the joint launch at No. 5 Chambers with Asylum Aid and UNHCR London. Thanks to the Credo project Zoe has been able to complete a thorough review of the psychology literature on issues facing young people seeking asylum, including the development of autobiographical memory (some aspects don’t develop until as late as our 20s!), the effects of trauma on children, and how depression and anxiety can affect how they present in the asylum procedure.  This work underpinned her contributions to UNHCR’s final report of the project and her chapter in the training manual.

Pink Sherbert, Creative Commons

CSEL’s research initially focused only on adults seeking asylum, but over the years we often had requests for equally sound research about children. Thanks to the Credo project we were able to engage Zoe, a specialist in children and young people, to allow us to cover this less well understood group.

Zoe’s re-appearance from her maternity leave last week also marked our successful bid for funding for Zoe to write up and submit her work for peer-review and publication in the scientific literature.  Once her two papers have been published in high-impact scientific journals they will be available for citing and using in decision-making, case-work, training, and support work for young people in need of protection from persecution.

As with our adult research, through the Evidence into Practice training workshops and other presentations and ad hoc training, it will be crucial for us to be able to disseminate this work on unaccompanied children seeking asylum as widely as possible - to ensure that decision making for them is also based on the best quality evidence available. We will need to secure support to maintain our capacity to do this. If you can help us undertake and maintain this work, please get in touch.