National network to assist workers
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
An Oxford project is working to set up a national network for mental health professionals who work with refugee and asylum-seeking children.
The Children's Society's Harbour Project in Oxford has received £90,000 over three years from the Department of Health to look at developing the English network, which would be used to share good practice.
Linda Wisheart, the project's programme manager, said: "Mental health workers in this field tend to be relatively isolated with groups of children in different places. It will allow them to have more contact."
The money will also mean the project can develop preventive mental health services for unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children.
The Harbour Project is a school-based mental health service for refugee and asylum seeking children in Oxford. It works with 36 schools, offering direct therapeutic work with children.
It is supported by two psychiatrists from the University of Oxford, which initially started the Harbour Project in 2001, before the Children's Society took it over in 2006.
