Table 2 Practical recommendations
From: The impact of emergency aid work on personal relationships: a psychodynamic study
Arising from the narratives, the following practical recommendations for the sector are offered: | |
1. | Structured training and psycho-education during induction of expatriate aid workers on the relational challenges of international humanitarian work, including opportunities for workers to assess areas of potential vulnerability and explore creative coping strategies. |
2. | Annual psychological assessments designed to review levels of resilience and coping, with a particular focus on the maintenance of relational resources. |
3. | Assessment with senior management of deployment rosters to allow workers enough time out of the field to build and maintain secure relational support structures. |
4. | Regular facilitated workshops/retreats both at headquarters and in the field, where workers can reflect in a secure and protected space on the impact of the work, share relational dilemmas, explore possible ways forward, and create robust peer support networks. |
5. | Funding permitted, access to longer-term counselling support that allows individuals to maintain contact with the same therapist over time in order to promote a sense of relational reliability and continuity. |
6. | A follow-up project is recommended to monitor and evaluate the impact of this kind of enhanced support on levels of engagement, productivity and staff retention. Inviting a larger sample of aid workers to complete attachment style questionnaires as part of the study could also provide a much clearer picture of relational needs, which could then be used to tailor training programmes. |