Background to the Research

• In September 2000, a 5-day conference was held in Cape Town and a one-day seminar for policy makers was held in Belfast in January 200. In both events people from SA and NI came to discuss the impact of violence on the lives of children and young people and best practice in working with children and young people growing up in such societies. This report brings together the papers presented on both these occasions.
  

Research Approach

• Within the report, the 16 papers are presented in full and cover various issues relating to education, therapy and community.
• Contributors come from SA and NI and range from academics to community workers.
  

Main Findings

Education

Ronelle Carolissen et al

• Gangs and violence in the community is rife in SA and the government has been keen to address these issues through various violence prevention programmes.
• COPES is based at Lavender Hill, 40 km outside Cape Town, and seeks to help the local community address and redress the extent of violence in their area by working with parents and children.
• It does this by enhancing children's numeracy and literacy skills; helping teachers to manage classrooms more effectively, and helping teachers and pupils develop social skills that give them alternatives to violence as a response to conflict.

Tony Gallagher

• Research in NI shows that sectarianism and the Troubles are a major issue for pupils in their day-to-day lives. Even where schools avoid the subject of sectarian violence it remains a key issue for pupils both inside and outside school.
• Post the Good Friday Agreement, and despite the inclusion of Education for Mutual Understanding in schools, the key challenge for schools remains the need to provide a context in which young people are encouraged to discuss the past and the possibilities for the future.

Education

Kerry Gibson

• Research in SA demonstrates that political conflict damages individuals and groups.
• Professionals seeking to address the emotional effects of conflict must explore the ways in which they themselves, and their relationship with the communities within which they work, has been shaped by the conflict itself.

Rafiq Lochart

• The conflict in SA denied black children the right to basic mental health by denying them a sound physical constitution; nurturing family life; positive schooling and apprenticeship and supportive, stable and safe communities.

Nuala Murray

• Music therapy can play an important part in addressing the needs of children affected by the Troubles in NI. It provides an accessible language and safe containing space where feelings can be expressed, explored and contained.
• Music can integrate people who have been isolated from one another.

Community

Martin Murphy

• The NOVA project began in 1999 in the Greater Craigavon area of NI in order to provide therapeutic support within context of community initiatives.
• The project sought to make community groups aware of the individual and family services available to them.
• Families and individuals who had been affected by the Troubles were able to get access to services to help them deal with trauma.

Kirsten Thomson

• SA is providing a place of asylum for refugees from conflict in neighbouring countries. Refugees undergo much trauma when they flee to SA as they have probability experienced atrocities and abuse in their own country.
• They face much poverty and alienation, living as they do, at the margins of South African society.
• The Trauma Centre in Cape Town concentrates on the mental health problems of refugees and seeks to help them by assessing those factors which are most likely to deepen or alleviate trauma and intervening to address these factors.