WeACT
Psychological support is urgently needed, yet there are simply not enough specialists to go around. WeACT is a tool that assesses the competencies of non-specialist mental health workers to improve the quality of the support they provide to children.
Why
Worldwide, there is a shortage of mental health workers - with a global average of just 14 specialists available per 100,000 people. For children affected by conflict and crisis, this gap is often even bigger.
In many places affected by conflict and crisis, millions of dedicated teachers, social workers and humanitarians work to fill this gap, but often without the relevant training required to ensure children receive quality care.
Research shows that WeAct is a promising tool for monitoring the quality of mental health care
A study to evaluate the feasibility of WeACT in Gaza in 2021 demonstrated positive results on the reliability and utility of the tool. WeACT holds promise as a tool for monitoring quality of care when implementing evidence-based care at scale.
Latest news from WeACT
- Mental health and psychosocial support
Play. Connect. Thrive: War Child, Supported by the LEGO Foundation, Launches New Initiative to Revolutionise Partnerships and Reach More Children Affected by Conflict
War Child is taking major steps forward with how it scales effective support for children in conflict thanks to a new iniaitiave supported by the LEGO Foundation and implemented in collaboration with Save the Children Nederland.
- Mental health and psychosocial support
Competency-based training and supervision: development of the WHO-UNICEF Ensuring Quality in Psychosocial and Mental Health Care (EQUIP) initiative
EQUIP is a free resource with a digital platform that can be used to guide competency assessment. This paper describes EQUIP's 5-year development (2018–23) and the rationale supporting its contents and use.
- Mental health and psychosocial support
Assessment of service provider competency for child and adolescent psychological treatments and psychosocial services in global mental health: evaluation of feasibility and reliability of the weact tool in Gaza, Palestine
The objective of this study was to evaluate the reliability and utility of the newly developed Working with children – Assessment of Competencies Tool (WeACT) to assess service providers’ competencies in Gaza, Palestine.
