Children and young people affected by disasters – lessons on impacts and recovery
Australia is experiencing more natural disasters, more frequently. As evaluators, we’re working on an increasing number of programs in disaster preparedness, recovery, and resilience. To build my knowledge about ‘what works’ I attended a fantastic webinar held early in 2024 by the Australian Institute of Family Studies called ‘Supporting family and child mental health in the face of severe weather events and disasters’. The panel included people with lived experience of the Black Saturday bushfires, a paediatric psychologist, a social worker with expertise in community recovery and a digital health expert. I’ve been thinking about the lessons from this session ever since, and wanted to share what I heard.
Every child is different, and every experience is different.
Every child will experience a disaster differently. Even children in the same household who have a shared experience of the disaster, can react to it in wildly different ways. It’s essential for people supporting children’s recovery to listen to their unique strengths and needs, and to adjust the support accordingly. With that said, the principles of safety, connection, calmness, agency, and hope are universal principles that underpin recovery work.
Children are not little adults.
Children build their understanding and make sense of their experiences by looking at the adults around them, and the images and stories they hear, and they fill the gaps with their own imagination. This can mean their understanding of what’s happening is even scarier than the reality.
We can help children ‘pre-process’ and build resilience to natural disasters before they happen. For example, it’s helpful for children to know what natural disasters are and what might happen in a disaster. There are lots of helpful story books on this topic. Children may feel more comfortable knowing the adults around them have a disaster plan, and that they’ll use this plan when—and if—it’s needed.
Scary experiences don’t go away.
Bron Sparkes, who survived the Black Saturday Bushfires with her husband and two young children, reminded us that children revisit and re-process traumatic experiences as they age, with the benefit of the additional developmental insights. The information, support and resources that are helpful for a younger child may be less helpful when they are older.
The body keeps the score. Movement, talking, art and play helps.
Children often process experiences through their bodies, rather than by speaking or thinking about them. Approaches that blend talking, art, play and stories tend to work best for children. This might involve thinking about what the child wanted to do but wasn’t able to do in the disaster experience, for example, wanting to run away, but being stopped to keep them safe.
It takes a village.
The key adults in children’s lives play a significant role in helping children to regulate and process their emotions after a disaster, to feel safe again and to return to a state of calm. Most adults will need support to help children do this, including to build an understanding of how disasters impact children, support on how to access resources through local services, and parenting skills training. It can also be helpful for adults to connect with others who have shared experiences of supporting children after a disaster.
I look forward to integrating what I learned into our evaluations that focus on disaster preparedness, recovery and mental health and resilience.
The webinar also mentioned the below fantastic resources available from some of the presenters’ organisations.
- The Community Trauma Toolkit – with resources for different contexts, from health and social service practitioners to educators, parents and carers, and community leaders: https://emergingminds.com.au/resources/toolkits/community-trauma-toolkit/
- Developmental Perspectives – useful information on how mental health issues (such as trauma from disasters) might present in children of different ages https://emergingminds.com.au/our-work/guiding-principles/developmental-perspective/
- Birdie’s Tree – free online storybooks and resources to build resilience in natural disasters https://www.childrens.health.qld.gov.au/our-work/birdies-tree-natural-disaster-recovery
