Working with children and their environment. Manual of psychosocial skills

A new manual developed by Terre des hommes (Tdh) answers pressing questions: which are the skills needed by professionals working with children? How can they be improved and afterwards assessed? Because today we know that special skills are required to best help vulnerable children develop their self-confidence and autonomy. The manual includes 14 psychosocial skills and monitoring indicators. The first two levels comprise nine personal and social skills, fundamental for any adult helping vulnerable children, whatever the field of intervention may be.The other two levels include five more specific methodological and technical skills addressed, amongst others, to facilitators called on to plan and set up psychosocial activities with children. Indicators are suggested for each of these 14 skills, in order to be able to assess the standard of the teams, their training requirements, and afterwards to carry out quality monitoring. This can also be a valuable aid for recruitment. 18 ready-made training modules allow development of the skills wanted. Based on a method of learning by doing, these modules propose activities where each participant can experiment with theoretical ideas such as resilience, perception or active listening, as well as more practical, playful or creative activities.