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.

Considering children's credibility at IGC

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In June, Zoe Given-Wilson was invited to speak at a meeting of the IGC, an international, intergovernmental group of immigration policy makers who meet regularly to develop strategic thinking and share knowledge and best practice about migration around the world.

At their latest meeting, the group were particularly concerned to address the increasing numbers of children arriving in North America and Europe, fleeing conflict and other dangers such as gang violence or persecution. Many are trafficked, and some travel ahead of parents. All are vulnerable because of their age. Most protection mechanisms developed by governments to assess asylum applications and provide sanctuary are designed primarily to deal with adults, and have to be adapted to meet the needs of children.

by monique kittan @ flickr.com

Zoe was invited to speak after her review of the literature on child and adolescent psychology and child development was published as a chapter in the CREDO report Heart of the Matter. The report examines the key issues to take into account when assessing the credibility of children and young people making applications for asylum. Zoe’s research is being recognised at high levels as an important reminder of the need to take an interdisciplinary approach to protecting unaccompanied children seeking asylum. In her presentation, Zoe talked about the key factors that need to be taken into consideration when making credibility assessment in children – both those relating to the child, including both normal child development and autobiographical memory; and those relating to decision making, the assumptions that underlie the judgements of decision makers, and the need to ensure that these are in line with scientific evidence for what we know about child development, and memory.

Zoe will be speaking at the London launch of Heart of the Matter on 25 June, with fellow contributors S Chelvan of No 5 Chambers, and Debora Singer of Asylum Aid.

Guest post: 'Your Grandmother's Middle Name was Rose'

CSEL friend and colleague Jennifer Verson of Migrant Artists Mutual Aid writes below on the impact attending a CSEL session on psychology and memory had on her work as an artist...

Digested: The importance of looking credible: the impact of the behavioural sequelae of post-traumatic stress disorder on the credibility of asylum seekers

Behaviours such as averting one’s gaze, fidgeting, and hesitant speech are commonly interpreted as signs of dishonesty, yet they are also symptoms of PTSD. What, if any, are the effects of this overlap on credibility assessment in the asylum process?

Associate Researchers Hannah Rogers and Simone Fox, and CSEL Director Jane Herlihy have recently published a new study in Psychology, Crime and Law, investigating whether observable symptoms of PTSD can be confused with perceived cues to deception, and how such confusion, where it arises, affects the assessment of an individual’s credibility in the context of a mock asylum interview. You can read through our digest below. If you would like more detail or to cite the paper in the future, click here to access the full paper (£), or here for a pre-print copy. (Image credit: Tori Rector)

DON'T MISS THE LAST SEMINAR...

... in our joint seminar series with the Refugee Law Initiative!

On Tuesday evening, Feb. 26th,  Professor Chris Brewin will present  cutting edge science on psychological trauma and memory.  Dr Stuart Turner will show how this work is crucial to making high quality decisions about people seeking state protection.  Judge Catriona Jarvis will share her responses to the presentations and reflections on this approach to refugee decision making.  Click here for details and to join us.

COMING SOON! Major review of autobiographical memory and emotion, emotional disorders, culture and deception. Now 'in press' with Applied Cognitive Psychology.

CSEL in Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter

The May edition of the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter has just been published, and features an article by Clare Cochrane and Jane Herlihy on how understanding psychology canhelp make asylum decisions fairer. The article is an introduction not only to CSEL’s key research in this area, but also to psycho-legal issues more generally, and while CSEL’s work addresses the UK asylum system, the article raises wider issues that apply to asylum and sanctuary-seeking anywhere. 

The Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Network is part of Fahamu, an organisation that supports social justice networks across Africa and internationally. The newsletter is read by legal practitioners and others working on refugee and asylum issues around the world, with a particular focus on sharing knowledge and experience among practitioners who don’t have easy access to academic institutions or professional networks.

latest e-newsletter now available

Read our quarterly CSEL e-newsletter here.
Please email c.cochrane@csel.org.uk to be added to the distribution list for future CSEL e-news - or with any comments, responses or questions.

Rape Crisis - Hope and Heroines

Last month I gave a workshop at the annual conference of the Rape Crisis Federation of England and Wales. It was amazing and inspiring to be among these women who dedicate their lives and free time to supporting women surviving experiences of violence – especially as they do it all on a shoestring.

The CSEL workshop aimed to introduce some facts about women seeking asylum in the UK and to get participants talking about how rape crisis centres can support women seeking asylum in the UK.

The Refugee Council has estimated that as many as 80% of women refugees in the UK have experienced sexual violence; and many women seek asylum in the UK having fled from countries where rape is commonly used as a weapon of war. Yet women find it very difficult to talk about experiences of sexual violence – as our own research has shown – as has research into this phenomenon amongst non-refugee women in the UK, and refugee women in other countries (Marion Tankink has written an excellent and really interesting paper on why women stay silent about these experiences). So you can imagine there’s quite a need amongst refugee women in the UK for the specialist services of organisations like rape crisis centres.

Yet many rape crisis centres and other sexual violence services report that they don’t see a lot of refugee women.

Some rape crisis centres have addressed this problem proactively: Bradford Rape Crisis has set up Project Jyoti, which is run by and for Black and ethnic minority women; Leicester Rape Crisis has changed its name to Jasmin House and recruited Muslim women to do outreach work with Muslim women’s groups in Leicester; and another project is planning to train refugee women as specialist councillors to work particularly with women seeking asylum.

See what I mean about inspiring?

Clare

c.cochrane@csel.org.uk

Taking Care of Ourselves

The last module in our training seminar is about self-care – how to look after yourself; prevent burnout and traumatisation in yourself; and spot the signs of it beginning. The module begins with a quick overview of the difference between ‘burnout’ and the kinds of traumatisation effects that you can experience when you work closely with traumatised people, discussed in this text on ‘compassion fatigue’ (if you decide to buy the book, go through the button on the CSEL website!) This is a chance to get a discussion going in the group about how we can spot the signs, or even better, prevent burnout – and what personal and professional solutions there are.

We include the self-care module because we think it’s vital to understand that these things can happen, learn to recognise the symptoms, and share ideas of how we can take care of ourselves and take preventive action.

Usually training groups are quite mixed and include a few therapeutic professionals, who have extensive experience of formalised structures to help, such as regular supervisions. But many smaller, grassroots, or traditional voluntary sector organisations don’t have these structures. Some really creative ideas have come out of these mixed group discussions, for example, the suggestion that organisations in one region get together and hold an away day focused on self-care and peer support.

I know that this part of our training is vital, because however long I schedule for this session, and however careful I am to make sure we have time to discuss it at the end of the afternoon, there is still never enough time. People always want to talk for longer than we can carry on!

Well nearly always... At one session I encountered almost the opposite phenomenon: after talking about the difference between ‘burnout’ and ‘secondary traumatisation’, I opened the topic for general discussion about taking care of oneself. A couple of people spoke, then – silence. And then the group began to discuss something completely different. I wondered if this was a kind of collective avoidance tactic – changing the subject rather than talking about something sensitive and difficult.

What all of this suggests – both talking as though the floodgates have been opened, and avoiding talking about it – is that looking after ourselves is a much bigger topic than we are even able to acknowledge.

For more information about compassion fatigue, see Charles Figley’s website.

Clare Cochrane
c.cochrane @ csel.org.uk

Chair of Trustees receives award and speaks of work with UN

Also in Montreal....

Chair of Trustees, Stuart Turner was awarded the Sarah Haley Memorial Award for Clinical Excellence.  This is an award given annually by the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS; see http://www.istss.org/) to a clinician or group of clinicians in direct service to traumatized individuals.  Previous winners include Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Stuart also spoke at the conference about his work this year with the United Nations.  ISTSS has Special Consultative Status with the United Nations and Stuart is one of the three ISTSS representatives who are taking this work forward.

CSEL in Canada & the US

Last week Jane presented data from our study of decision-making assumptions (Herlihy, Gleeson & Turner, 2010) at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies annual meeting in Montreal, in a session with Derrick Silove of UNSW, Sydney, Australia.  A summary of CSEL's work was also published in Traumatic Stress Points, the society newsletter, just before the conference.  Download the newsletter here - the article is on pages 5&6.

Annual Report now available

Go to About Us to download a copy of our latest Annual Report. It tells you about our work and achievements in 2009 (our year end is September 2009). Do send any thoughts/feedback/comments to j.herlihy@csel.org.uk.

Welcome!

Welcome to CSEL's blog.  This is where we will keep you up to date with the centre's latest work and any training or other events that we are planning.