A Critical Review of the Evolution of a Multi-level Community-based Children's Play Activity Programme Run by the Family Rehabilitation Centre (FRC) Throughout Sri Lanka

This paper discusses one psychosocial intervention, a children's play activity programme, which has been run in a number of refugee camps within Sri Lanka since 1992 to the present. It is a multi-level intervention which works with children, their carers, health and education professionals and community leaders, some of whom later take over the running of the programme. The programme has changed and evolved in a number of ways as the result of participant feedback and evaluations. This paper discusses the intervention and its theoretical underpinnings. The play activity programme is one of a series of interlocking programmes run by the Family Rehabilitation Centre (FRC), a Sri Lankan non-governmental organization whose aim is to assist those affected by armed conflict in all areas of Sri Lanka irrespective of ethnicity, religion and political ideology. Objectives include promoting non-violence, ethnic harmony and the prevention of torture. The intervention is based on the FRC philosophy, which holds that well-being is multi-faceted and that psychological health is embedded in a matrix of well-being. A holistic or psychosocial model has evolved which views psychological health as being embedded in a matrix of factors. These may include social, community, spiritual, and socio-political issues. How an individual construes all these factors is likely to be important, particularly in the context of a civil war with a possible return to peace-time.