Additional Ressources

Here you will find two guides, an article of mine about courses with adults, information about the distribution of the Trauma Booklets, and references to further work by experts.

Supporting traumatized children in everyday educational settings?

Here are my two guides:

Helping through Understanding Part 1
Trauma sensitivity

Offering courses for adults — including those using Theme-Centered Interaction (TZI) — and wanting to adequately support participants with war and refugee experiences?

You can find an article on this here:

Susanne Stein “TZI and Trauma-Sensitive Pedagogy”

in: Theme-Centered Interaction 02/2017, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Publishing Group

Summary

More and more people are fleeing from war and existential need. Many have become our neighbors in recent years. We encounter them, individually or in groups, in our courses, classes, and events. The author presents her thesis: The attitude and method of TZI can make a significant contribution to helping uprooted and possibly traumatized people: stabilization, stabilization, stabilization. However, without basic knowledge about trauma and trauma-sensitive behavior, we may further burden refugees, even with the best of intentions, or miss simple opportunities for stabilization. Often, it is just a small step from TZI to trauma-sensitive pedagogy.

Interested in knowing who is already using or providing the Trauma Booklets?

Here is some information about that:

Numerous organizations, alongside many experts, local initiatives, and church communities, reference the Trauma Booklets, including:

Save the Children e.V., Schulpsychologie.de, the Lower Saxony Institute for Early Childhood Education and Development (nifbe), the Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW), the Goethe-Institut, the Pedagogical Therapeutic Institution (PTE), the Hamburg Authority for Labor, Social Affairs, Family, and Integration, the Thuringian School Portal, the German Association of Psychotherapists (dptv), Caritas, the Diaconal Work, and many more.

In Greece, Professor Anastasia Kalantzi-Azizi, emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Athens, has been particularly committed to refugees for many years and has used the Trauma Picture Books. Here is her feedback:

“One of the greatest challenges in providing psychosocial support to severely traumatized children is emotionally connecting with them and creating a mutually positive relationship. The TRAUMA PICTURE BOOK by Susanne Stein offers an ideal tool for our work with these children. My colleagues and I translated the Trauma Picture Book into Greek and used it with refugee children at the Agios Andreas camp near Athens.

Based on these experiences and feedback from those working with children and their families in refugee camps, we developed a three-hour seminar and offered it to NGO staff. Additionally, the Trauma Picture Book has been presented at conferences, symposia, postgraduate university programs, and more.

The positive feedback we have received so far gives me confidence that the Trauma Picture Book is fulfilling its purpose of providing relief.” Contact: kalantzi@psych.uoa.gr

Another report about the Trauma Picture Book project in collaboration with the German Friends of the University of Haifa was published here: http://www.uni-haifa.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Haifa_NL-1_21.pdf

Tara Shawkat Ercosman, educational specialist and trauma counselor, not only made important contributions to the Trauma Picture Sheets but also conducted training courses in Iraq using the Trauma Booklets.

With the help of the Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW) and the JK Foundation for Competent Parenting and Mediation, as well as the Lernwerkstatt Zwickau e.V., we were able to print and distribute several thousand copies to various countries.

If you wish to further explore the topic of trauma and trauma assistance, here are some particularly helpful resources from experts:

A working group from Act Now, an Austrian refugee aid organization, has published professionally sound and easy-to-understand booklets for adolescents and their supporters in multiple languages for free download:
https://www.trauma-surviving.com

With the workshop partners Marianne Alkhelewi-Brainin and Gundi Vater at the third NOW Conference in Vienna, January 2017

Dr. med. Andreas Krüger, a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry, provides fundamental information on “trauma” and “trauma consequences” in children and adolescents. Highly recommended: Powerbook – First Aid for the Soul Volumes 1 and 2, Hamburg 2011. His training courses can be found on the following website: www.ipkj.de

And here is the link to a film with Dr. Andreas Krüger on child trauma therapy: https://www.daserste.de/information/reportage-dokumentation/dokus/videos/wie-kinder-wieder-lachen-lernen-hilfe-nach-dem-trauma-100.html