At Enfoque Ninez we provide direct care for children and adolescents who have been separated from their families due to violence or neglect. We also know that the well-being of caregivers directly impacts the children and adolescents they care for. We believe that spaces for reflection and support for people in charge of the care and protection of children and teenagers are essential.
With this in mind, in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, we initiated the “Caring for Caregivers” project. This project sought to create spaces for individual and group therapy for caregivers working in shelters in order to better understand how they handled the changes generated by the pandemic and to generate a support network.
The project worked with eight female caregivers and one male caregiver, a shelter staff psychologist and three directors of three shelters. A team of three psychotherapists led the process. The spaces were designed to be flexible and to meet the needs of the caregivers as they emerged.
The caring relationship between a caregiver and the children and adolescents they support is interdependent – all parties have the right to be cared for. Children and adolescents need available adults to support their development, and the emotional availability of adults does not depend only on the will or desire to do the job as well as possible; it also depends on the human limits of people, which can be affected by fatigue, stress due to overwork and lack of support and accompaniment.
Read more about our Caring for Caregivers project in the practitioner guidance paper attached.
Do you have any comments you can share with the community relating to our work, or learnings about how your organisation supported mental health during the pandemic? Please share, or post any follow-up questions for us at Enfoque Ninez below - we'd love to hear from you.
The attached resources are part of the How We Care series, an innovative space for those working with children and families to share practice. By practitioners, for practitioners. Learnings from 2 other Family for Every Child members, on this theme, have been shared here.
