Event
UNESCO and partners conduct workshop on mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in Fiji
As part of its ongoing work on mental heath and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in the education sector, UNESCO and regional partners have collaboratively developed a practical draft assessment tool aimed at supporting Ministries of Education in Asia-Pacific to review and assess their readiness and response efforts at addressing learner and teacher needs in mental health and psychosocial well-being.
The assessment tool will serve to generate national rapid assessment reports which, when used by Ministries of Education and their partners, will further inform efforts to integrate MHPSS in medium- and longer-term sector planning, policy and programming.
A key activity for validating the draft assessment tool and for guiding its finalization is to ‘test’ it in country-level workshops that engage a diverse cross-section of education sector personnel to reflect on education sector MHPSS programmes in their respective countries.
Two country contexts are serving to sample and provide feedback on the tool as part of a consultation workshop activity. The first country ‘test’ for these purposes was in the Philippines, completed in June 2023, which is now being followed-up by the current activity in Fiji. Collaborating partners for the Fiji workshop are the UNESCO Regional Office in Bangkok, the UNESCO Regional Office in the Pacific, the Ministry of Education Fiji, and the World Health Organization (WHO) Representative Office in the South Pacific. Together they will host a stakeholder consultation and workshop for testing a draft Review and Assessment Tool for education sector approaches to addressing learner and teacher MHPSS needs.
Engagement of governmental education and non-governmental sectors as key partners in the development of the assessment tool is a result of several contributing factors: 1) recent local evidence generated on the situation of adolescent MHPSS needs and responses by governments and other actors; 2) MHPSS needs of school-attending young people as prioritized in government policies, strategies and sectoral workplans, including the education sector; and 3) interest in and agreement by the education sectors in both countries to partake in the testing of the tool, with a view towards applying its findings to next steps in their MHPSS response.
About the MHPSS review and assessment tool
The Review and Assessment of MHPSS in the Education Sector (RAMES) tool has been designed as a simple, multi-tab Excel-based tool that is intended to support a facilitator-led consultation with education sector personnel at all levels of the formal education system with regards to the sector’s MHPSS provisions at policy and programme levels (including mechanisms and services available in schools). The assessment criteria in the tool have been drawn from, and are aligned with the latest evidence-informed guidance on education sector-provided and school-based MHPSS programmes and systems, including, among others, Strengthening Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Systems and Services for Children and Adolescents in East Asia and the Pacific Region. Regional Report (UNICEF and Burnet Institute, 2022) and, Making every school a health-promoting school: global standards and indicators for health-promoting schools and systems (WHO and UNESCO, 2021). The assessment criteria in the tool are intended to help review and asses education sector MHPSS programme and systems strengths and gaps across four broad domains: (i) Regulate: Regulation of MHPSS through laws, policies, programmes, data, monitoring and financing; (ii) Prevent: Prevention of poor mental health and psychosocial well-being through teaching, learning and a whole-of-school approach; (iii) Respond: Respond through early identification, screening, referral, case management; and, (iv) Promote: Promotion of MHPSS through advocacy, communications and stakeholder enagagement.
The purpose of the RAMES tool is therefore to:
- Review school-based and education sector-led MHPSS programmes based on international evidence and good practice;
- Provide status data to inform improvement or reform of programmes;
- Assess programme effectiveness by focusing on health and well-being data and other social criteria (such as gender and violence) when looking at its strengths and weaknesses;
- Inform planning, debate and advocacy by capturing, synthesizing and presenting available data on education-sector-provided MHPSS systems and services that is accessible to different audiences.
RAMES is not intended to assess, count or otherwise measure impact, reach or quality of implementation of MHPSS programmes or initiatives in schools or other learning settings.
Objectives
The Fiji consultation and field test workshop aims to accomplish the following:
I. Orient participants with the draft MHPSS review and assessment tool, including its objectives, structure and functionality, and facilitate hands-on use of the tool’s components to ultimately solicit feedback on user experiences
II. Invite participants’ perspectives on the overall relevance and feasibility of the draft assessment tool expressly in the Fiji context, and invite their first-hand recommendations for improving the tool’s design, content and potential usage
III. Outline a common vision of MHPSS in and through education, identifying the strengths, gaps and challenges in the current MHPSS initiatives and policies of the Fiji Ministry of Education, based on the results of the MHPSS draft assessment tool
IV. Generate recommendations on how to improve the existing MHPSS initiatives and policies of the Ministry of Education, including in collaboration with other sectors and partners, based on the findings of the MHPSS Assessment tool
Format
The workshop is designed as an in-person event spanning three and a half days. It is participatory in nature, combining small group activities with facilitator-led plenary discussion. The agenda of the workshop is purposely designed to mirror the intended workshop structure for the eventual use of the tool at national level, in Fiji, as a facilitator-led rapid diagnosis conducted by education sector personnel and key partners of their MHPSS system’s comprehensiveness, capacity and needs in the Fiji education sector.
Participants
The workshop will engage approximately 65 participants hailing from the Fiji education sector and its key partners working to deliver inclusive quality education. Drawn from the Fiji Ministry of Education, participants will span the different levels of the education sector and cover the multiple components of a comprehensive education sector programme on MHPSS. Participants will include, for instance, personnel with responsibility for the following areas: sector policy, planning and monitoring; school quality/school inspectorate; school curricula, pedagogy, and learning assessment; teacher education and training; school leadership; school health programming (including service access/delivery components); student protection and well-being; teacher’s working conditions and well-being; and teaching and counselling. Key partners external to the Fiji Ministry of Education who serve critical roles in MHPSS programme delivery will also be in attendance.
Dates
7–10 May 2024
Location
The Pearl Resort Hotel, Pacific Harbour, Fiji Islands
Agenda
Click here for the workshop agenda.*
This document will be accessible for around three months after this announcement was first published. If you have difficulties accessing the document, please write to: ehwb.bgk(at)unesco.org
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