The National Director of SOS Children’s Villages in Rwanda Jean Bosco Kwizera explained that trauma can cause serious problems to children and the community.
The trauma-informed care training aims at building capacity and empowering Senior Management and National Management teams to understand trauma-informed care and how it can affect children, explained Jean Bosco Kwizera during his welcome remarks of a four-day workshop on Trauma Informed care for the Senior Managers and coordinators of all projects at SOS Children’s Villages in Rwanda.
The workshops have been organized by Dr.Teresa W. Ngigi an international Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Expert who specialized in Trauma Informed Care based at SOS Children’s Villages in Italy.
The National Director explained ”As a leading childcare organization, we should understand trauma-informed care, symptoms of trauma, how we can support each other to heal and put into practice the outcomes from the training for the interest of vulnerable children. Trauma affects the brain and can cause serious problems for the children and the community.
Dr.Teresa emphasizes that as long as trauma affects our daily lives and the well-being of our children, it should be everyone’s business.
“We should shift to asking a child what is wrong with you to what happened to you. Usually, when a child is exposed to toxic stress it affects the brain of the child.
When a child is developing, three parts of the brain develop which are the brainstem, limbic system and cortical area. The time a child faces a traumatic situation it affects the growth emotionally, physically and mentally.” Dr. Teresa explained.
She added that when a child faces danger his/her brain reacts in different ways mainly the brain goes for fight, flight, freeze or fawn. “Most of the time a child’s brain reaction is to freeze.
If it is a time incident happens, when the danger disappears the child goes back to normal but if the traumatic experience continues the brain of the child remains in the survival mode sacrificing the other parts of the brain because he/she needs to survive.”
SOS Children’s Villages in Rwanda is implementing Mental Health and Psychosocial support services aiming at building Mental Health competencies to support vulnerable children and youths aged 10 to 18 years.
In the community, SOS Children’s Villages in Rwanda worked with 32 schools in the districts of Gasabo, Gicumbi, Kayonza and Nyamagabe and trained 65 school-based counsellors who facilitate weekly support group sessions with children and youths where they develop coping strategies to deal with hardships and challenging situations.