Special Freebie: Support Pack for Welcoming Refugee Children

Special Freebie: Support Pack for Welcoming Refugee Children has been created by early years experts Canavan Byrne. The document is intended as a Support Pack/Guide for Early Years and/or School-Age Settings and Services, including Primary/Secondary Schools who may be preparing to welcome (or have already welcomed) Ukrainian children into their care rooms and classrooms.

It includes over 50 pages with the following contents;

1. An Introduction - The Context
2. How to talk to children about war - a guidance piece by Dr. Mary O'Kane.
3. How Children can be supported in the room.
4. Emotions Chart (Ukrainian).
5. The "I can" Wheels of Regulation (Ukrainian).
6. 20 Printable Classroom Visuals for non-English speaking children.
7. 20 Printable Visuals to aid communication with non-English speaking parents/guardians.
8. A Child's Perspective Story about The Journey from Ukraine to Ireland (see below for narrated/video version)
9. A blog written by a parent whose child is anxious about the war.
10. Readily available FREE e-learning course for Practitioner and teachers: Welcoming Ukrainian Children (click here to register immediately)

This pack recognises our support as educators extends to supporting the families, parents/guardians and/or caregivers of these children. Consistency and routine (particularly in Early Years and School Age Education) is vital to all children. This is despite the adversity, sudden changes, potential loss, and the many other challenges they may have faced recently.

Special Freebie Includes Visuals to Enhance Communication

Routine can provide a huge amount of comfort and healthy distraction for children. Especially those who have experienced unprecedented change and disruption in their young lives. Parents and guardians will naturally be keen to settle their children into educational and peer-group settings.

Children and their families will need as much support and reassurance as possible from their children’s educators and care teams. Language may naturally be a cause for difficulty in communication. Therefore, this pack also includes visuals with ‘phonetics’ to help educators pronounce some basic but crucial Ukrainian words. This will enable educators to enhance communication, both with children and adults.

A big thanks to the entire team at Canavan Byrne for making this pack possible in such a short space of time. Thank you to all individual contributors, in particular associate trainers! See below YouTube video;  'A Child's Perspective Story about the Journey from Ukraine to Ireland'. This is included in the free guide as text.

Furthermore, you can continue to download last week's Friday Freebie: How to Speak to Children about War Leaflet for Parents here!