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Child Friendly Spaces: a Systematic Review of the Current Evidence Base on Outcomes and Impact

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Child Friendly Spaces: a Systematic Review of the Current Evidence Base on Outcomes and Impact Ager et al. Child friendly spaces: a systematic review of the current evidence base on outcomes and impact Alastair Ager, Janna Metzler, MarisaVojta & Kevin Savage Child friendly spaces are widely used in Introduction emergencies as a mechanism for protecting children International standards, currently being from risk, as a means of promoting children’s developed, de¢ne a child friendly space psychosocial wellbeing, and as a foundation for (CFS) programme as one that ‘supports strengthening capacities within communities for the resilience and well-being of children child protection. A systematic review of published and young people who have experienced and ‘grey’ literature identi¢ed 10 studies that disasters through community organised, met speci¢ed inclusion criteria. Each study was structured activities conducted in a safe, reviewed with respect to the potential protective, child friendly, and stimulating environment’ (Child ProtectionWorking Group (CPWG), promotive, and mobilising impacts of the inter- 2012). Programmes are typically hosted in vention. All 10 studies documented reports of a tent, or other temporary structure, and positive outcomes of child friendly spaces, particu- operate as part of a short to medium term larly with respect to psychosocial wellbeing. response (UNICEF, 2009). CFSs often However, major weaknesses in design constrain provide the opportunity for communities to the ability to robustly con¢rm change over time mobilise towards enhanced child protection (only three studies reported pre intervention base- and support capacities long past the onset lines) or attribute any such change to this inter- of disasters. vention (only two studies utilised a comparison Since its use in the 1999 Kosovo crisis, CFS with communities without child friendly spaces). programing to support the protection and Analysis suggests that: greater commitment to psychosocial wellbeing of children a¡ected documentation and measurement of outcomes and by situations of humanitarian crisis is wide- impactsisrequired;morestandardisedandrigorous spread (UNICEF, 2009). There is growing measurement of processes, outputs, outcomes and interest and adoption of CFSs as a prime impacts is necessary; evaluation designs need to intervention strategy, as evidenced by its more robustly address assessment of outcomes reference in a number of agency and inter- without intervention; there is a need to sustain agency documents guiding humanitarian engagement of children within the context of response (Kostelny & Wessells, 2008; evaluations; and long term follow-up is critical to Mad¢s, Martyris, & Triplehorn, 2010; Save establishingevidence driven interventions. the Children, 2008, 2009; Save the Children Sweden, 2010; UNICEF, 2009; World Vision Keywords: child friendly spaces, child International, 2006). protection, emergencies, evaluation, huma- In 2012 alone, Relief Web listed well over nitarian, outcome, psychosocial 100 programmes across the world utilising 133 Copyright © War Trauma Foundation. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. Child friendly spaces: a systematic review of the current evidence base on outcomes and impact Intervention 2013, Volume 11, Number 2, Page 133 - 147 CFSs in emergency contexts (ReliefWeb, CFSs are seen as a key vehicle for mobilising 2013). These included: programmes for communities around the protection and Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and wellbeing of children, and strengthening Iraq; responses to the refugee and Internally community protection mechanisms (Global Displaced Persons (IDP) situations in South Protection Cluster et al., 2011). Sudan; and interventions for the Democratic The evidence base for the outcomes and Republic of the Congo refugees in Rwanda impact of CFSs is generally considered to and Uganda. In addition to these con£ict be limited. As e¡orts are made to develop related crises, CFSs were also utilised in the standards and international guidelines to wake of a number of natural disasters, support CFS work in emergencies, it is including: £oods in Assam, India; tropical important to develop and consolidate evi- storm Kai-Tak, Hong Kong and Philippines; dence regarding the protective, promotive and typhoons Washi and Bopha in the and mobilising e¡ects CFSs have onchildren Philippines. Agencies involved included: and youth. World Vision International, ACTED; INTERSOS; Lutheran World a global agency with a major commitment Federation; Mercy Corps; Plan; Save the to child protection in emergencies, and Children; SOS Children’sVillages; UNFPA; Columbia University, an institution with a UNICEF; and War Child. World Vision strong tradition of applied ¢eld research alone established CFSs in emergency res- in humanitarian contexts, have initiated ponses in the Philippines, India, Lebanon, a series of structured evaluations of CFS Uganda, DRC, Niger and South Sudan over interventions as part of a wider CPWG the course of 2012. agenda regarding CFS and related com- There are a number of factors that have munity based child protection support. contributed to the frequent adoption of a To ensure that these studies are fully CFS model in humanitarian emergencies. informed by existing knowledge of CFS out- These include: potential for rapid deploy- comes and impacts, a systematic review of ment; relatively low costs; and scalability the current literature was completed. and adaptability of activities to diverse contexts (UNICEF, 2009). The inherent Methodology £exibility of a CFS model, although From April to July of 2012, the authors originally intended for children aged 7 to undertook a systematic review of literature 13, potentially accommodates children of describing CFSs, or equivalent inter- all ages (Global Protection Cluster et al., ventions, within humanitarian contexts. 2011; UNICEF,2009). Inclusion criteria for the review were:1) the Guidance on CFSs generally suggests publication referenced CFSs or equivalent such interventions being of value with interventions within an emergency context; respect to three major objectives. First, CFSs 2) the publication provided data relevant are seen to serve as a protective mechanism, to outcomes and impacts of CFSs (either protecting children from abuse, exploitation baseline information and/or some assess- or violence. Second, CFSs are considered ment of outcomes); and 3) the publication as a means to provide psychosocial support was published within the last 15 years in to children, strengthening their emotional the English language. To supplement this wellbeing, social wellbeing, and/or skills review of published sources, we solicited and knowledge (Ager et al., 2011a). Third, ‘grey literature’ (unpublished agency reports 134 Copyright © War Trauma Foundation. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. Ager et al. Table 1. Search terminology used in review by core theme Key search term Child Friendly Spaces (CFSs) Evaluation Humanitarian Synonyms Safe spaces Outcome Emergencies Child centredà spaces Impact Disasters Emergency spaces for children Con£ict Safe play areas War Child protection centres Refugee Psychosocial spaces Displaced Psychosocial intervention(s) à Both British and American spelling variations were used. and other documents) and reviewed them related to ‘Child Friendly Spaces’, ‘Evaluation’ within the same inclusion criteria. and ‘Humanitarian’ (see Table 1 for synonyms Table 1 summarises the search terminology of search terms used). These searches used to identify CFS studies, and Figure 1 identi¢ed a total of 7,225 items, with 5,220 details the selection process of papers duplicates, that represented a literature of through di¡erent stages of review, using 2,005 articles. these criteria. We identi¢ed relevant litera- Abstracts of all 2,005 articles were reviewed ture by searching structured bibliographic for relevance by the ¢rst author, which sources, including Medline, PubMed, Psy- identi¢ed 53 papers as potentially ful¢lling chINFO and Scopus, using the search terms inclusion criteria. Full versions of these 7225 studies 22 documents identified through provided by NGO keyword search contribution 22 documents 5220 duplicates 2005 studies selected selected for abstract excluded for abstract review review 1952 studies 53 studies selected 18 documents 4 documents excluded on basis of for full text review on selected for full text excluded on basis of abstract review the basis of abstract review abstract 3 studies and 7 NGO 11 NGO documents 50 studies excluded documents included excluded upon full upon full text review upon full text review text review Figure 1: Overview of selection of papers during review process. NGO (nongovernmental organisation). 135 Copyright © War Trauma Foundation. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. Child friendly spaces: a systematic review of the current evidence base on outcomes and impact Intervention 2013, Volume 11, Number 2, Page 133 - 147 papers were obtained, detailed review of Africa (Kostelny & Wessells, 2008; Desse- which led to three of these studies being mie, 2010), and one each in the Middle con¢rmed as meeting inclusion criteria. East (Save the Children, 2011) and Oceana To identify relevant ‘grey’ or unpublished and the Caribbean (Mad¢s et al., 2010). literature, over 60 NGOs active in the Of the remaining papers, one addressed use of CFS in emergency contexts were a CFS intervention in a Serbian refugee set- contacted by email through relevant huma- ting (Ispanovic-Radojkovic, 2003); another nitarian networks (including
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