Psychosocial health

Research shows that empowering individuals and providing support to migrant families leads into better integration. Since the beginning of this year Partnership Skåne has been working hard to build up and test a method with the aim of providing individualized support to migrant families. Focus is on strengthening mental health and well-being in order to increase empowerment and improve integration.

The method relies on identifying and facilitating the functioning of supportive local ecosystems, which by joining the forces of local and regional operators can provide concrete individualized support to migrants and their families.

The pilot project is being tested in Malmö as part of an EU financed project REGIN which runs until January 2022. More information of REGIN can be found at www.reginproject.eu

During the pilot project Civic and Health Communicators provide additional mental health and well-being -focused support to migrants in study circles, which is supplemented by individualized support provided by civil society organizations, municipality and public health care. IM, Save the Children and NAD act as key supporting partners to the individuals and guide them further on individual needs. Public Employment Office has played a key role in identifying individual participants.

Civic and Health communicators running study circles have gone through intensive training on migrant mental health and trauma. The training has been developed and provided by MILSA, in collaboration with SENSUS Vårsta Diakoni, and Försoningsgruppen, on assignment from the National Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. As a part of the process five films have been produced and intensively used during the peer support sessions:

The pilot project shall be evaluated by universities of Uppsala and Lund in the beginning of next year, but already now there are clear indications that the ecosystem is experienced as fruitful by both participating organizations and individuals and the model shall be spread to wider circles in the society.

For further information about the work, download the brochure (pdf) below.

IN-DEPTH EDUCATION ON MENTAL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
In the spring of 2020, the first rounds of in-depth education on mental health and well-being will be offered to civic and health communicators who have completed the MILSA course. The purpose of the in-depth education is to provide knowledge and skills to communicators to lead supportive conversation groups with newly arrived refugees who are experiencing migration-related stress. A film series has been developed to support dialogue and provide information on different topic relation to forces migration.

The pilot phase of the in-depth education will be evaluated by Uppsala University. The experiences of the first two pilot groups shall be used to further develop the working method and in-depth education, and later offered to more civic and health communicators.