The Antares Foundation conference of 2004 was organised in conjunction with CDC( www.cdc.gov) and Cordaid (www.cordaid.nl ). Its findings are summarised below.
- The guiding principles and indicators of the Minimum Standards Guidelines document were reviewed and revised to ensure that the document could be equally applied to the psychosocial care of both expatriate and national staff, emergency and development projects, long and short term deployments.
- The Model was evaluated with suggestions to simplify the matrix of the framework and to adopt terminology that was already familiar to the NGO community. The organizing levels of ‘individual’, ‘team’ and ‘organization’were endorsed. It was recommended that the Model be encompassing of the full breadth of precursors of stress and adopts a dual protective and risk factor orientation to psychosocial care as well as being flexible to accommodate aspects of both national and expatriate staff issues.
- The Longitudinal Research project proposal was outlined and recommendations were made to modify the proposal to incorporate research into the psychosocial issues of national as well as expatriate staff. Suggestions for engaging NGOs in the study through existing networks were made.
- A greater cohesiveness between the Minimum Standards, Model and Research working groups was unanimously suggested.
- A groundswell of action by the Antares network to lobby contacts within NGOs to commit to becoming involved in participating in research, engaging with the Minimum Standards Guidelines and trialling the Model is considered an essential next step.
- The need for a greater inter-connection between existing and emerging international initiatives with the Antares projects has been acknowledged.
- A strengthening of the working groups incorporating new critical perspectives and increased participation by new members to the groups was welcomed.
- The importance of continuing to raise awareness of the issues facing humanitarian staff was acknowledged as critical to ongoing support for the work undertaken to date.
For further details, please contact the Antares Foundation
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