Providing Online Resource and Trauma Assessment for Refugees

Stress assessment, screening procedure, unaccompanied and accompanied refugees with caregivers, online tool

• Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychotherapy at Ulm University Hospital
• Soon-System (programming of the online tool)
• German Trauma Foundation
• com.can (Competence Centre for Child Protection in Medicine Baden-Württemberg)
• kbo Children's Centre Munich
• Refugee Outpatient Clinic Aachen Hospital
• SHG Clinics Saarland
• KJP of the University Hospital Jena
• KJP of the Neuruppin clinics
• KJP Calw Northern Black Forest

01.06.2017 - 31.12.2019

The massive increase in the number of refugee children and adolescents poses a major challenge for both the people affected and the healthcare system. The aim of the project is to develop an online-based "screening tool" (PORTA) for medical and therapeutic professions that enables the uncomplicated, rapid recording of individual stress factors in children and adolescents who have experienced flight.

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) is developing various instruments and training programmes for traumatised children and young people in the USA. Such a programme has also been developed for working with refugee minors. Based on the NCTSN concept, there is now a concept for assessing stress in minors with refugee experience that has been adapted for Germany and supplemented in various places (Sukale et al. (2016, 2017).

This tool enables a simple assessment of different stress factors in the judgement of others and the self. It is supplemented by disorder-specific questionnaires in self-assessment and external assessment on the topics of trauma(CATS - Trauma Screening), depression and anxiety(RHS-15 - Refugee Health Screener, PHQ-9 - Patient Health Questionnaire-9), behavioural problems(SDQ - Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire), self-injurious behaviour and suicidal tendencies(SITBI - Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors). In addition, a screening of psychopathological abnormalities in caregivers can be carried out in order to be able to include the stress of the caregivers, especially in the case of accompanied refugees. The questionnaires are available in different languages (currently: German, English, French, Arabic, Dari/Farsi, Pashto, Tigrinja, Somali, other languages such as Russian are being worked on).

Theaim of the project is to test an online-based screening tool for medical and therapeutic professions that enables the uncomplicated, rapid recording of individual stress factors in underage children and adolescents with refugee experience.

The children and young people have the opportunity to complete the online questionnaire with support. This support is necessary if the minor does not understand the questions, but also if they appear to be under stress due to the questions.

The institution must first register on the following page: www.med.porta-refugees.de. On request to the operators, the dial-in data will be sent electronically. This makes it possible to track which institutions and individuals are using the screening and makes misuse less likely. There is also the option of a "test run" on the following page to gain experience with the programme: http://www.med-test.porta-refugees.de. Additional registration is required for this. For employees in a socio-educational context, registration takes place via the platform for socio-educational professionals (www.soz-paed.porta-refugees.de).

The questions relate to situations and experiences in the past that may still be stressful today. However, there are also questions about the current situation.

Firstly, the individual questionnaires are completed online on a PC. This takes between 30 and 90 minutes.

The data is stored on a secure computer system. They are completely anonymised and no one can identify who has completed the questionnaires.

A token is created during the survey, which makes it possible to carry out multiple measurements.

Federal Ministry of Health (BMG)