While Child Friendly Spaces (CFS) has become a standard approach to
address the protection and psychosocial needs of children in humanitarian
crises, oftentimes the ways in which humanitarian actors make use of this
intervention do not fully adapt critical continuous, context-specific analysis.
Recent broader review of the evidence base for humanitarian interventions addressing the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of displaced populations…emphasizing the need for more rigorous, mixed methods research on the effectiveness of widely-used, group-based psychosocial interventions, particularly those aimed at children and adolescents
Having identified that little robust evidence exists related to programmatic
outcomes and impacts of CFS in humanitarian emergencies, a team of
researchers from Columbia University and practitioners from World Vision,
in collaboration with Save the Children, UNICEF, and other members of the
UN GPC Child Protection Working Group, sought to contribute to this
evidence base the first robust estimate of the general impact of CFS as a
humanitarian intervention. Their findings – based on data collection and
analyses in five CFS studies: Ethiopia, Uganda, Iraq, Jordan, and Nepal – are
further elaborated in an article titled, “Child friendly spaces impact across
five humanitarian settings: a meta-analysis,” published by BMC Public Health
in May 2019. They conclude that CFS can effectively address protection
risks and threats to psychosocial wellbeing and support the developmental
assets particularly among younger children, however, there remains a need
for implementors to strengthen the mobilization of community resources
to enhance the impact of older children. This can be achieved by
strengthening contextual adaptation and quality control and monitoring
systems.
Impacts with older children, and on mobilization of community resources to support children, are notably weak, suggesting the need to consider alternative programming approaches if gains in these areas are to be secured.
With a view to continuous, context-specific protection analysis, this study
highlights the need to question assumptions on the usefulness of
interventions or other activities; start with the experience of the affected
population and identify what capacities people can bring to bear to reduce
threat, including community-based solutions that may already exist; and
contextualize the continuous analysis of risk patterns identified based on
the cultural environment to inform strategy development, program design,
implementation, and M&E.