A Guide to Providing Emotional Support Online to Refugee Youth

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many charities became eager to digitise their services and help beneficiaries access support onlinei. As face-to-face services rapidly transitioned to digital platforms, obstacles began to arise. A recent study highlighted the challenges that charity practitioners face when offering advice and support to refugee youth online. These included building trust, providing emotional support and setting boundaries. It became evident that a training was essential for practitioners to improve their skills in this field if they were to continue working remotely.
The Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London (UEL), in partnership with the Refugee Council (RC) and psychotherapist Tiago Brandão, designed and implemented a training programme on how to provide emotional support online to staff working with unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children.
An initial needs assessment was conducted with staff and its findings were used to develop the content of the training sessions. The training was provided by Tiago Brandão who has worked closely with RC practitioners over the last few years. A post-training feedback survey was also completed. Based on the findings of the training-research project, the purpose of this booklet is to offer the RC staff and volunteers, as well as practitioners in the charity sector, examples of good practice on providing emotional support while working remotely.
The guidelines presented are general and should be adapted and considered in the context of different roles. The phrases ‘working online’ and ‘working remotely’ are used interchangeably merely to distinguish from working in the physical presence of another person.