Children and adolescents experience disasters and other complex hazards and damage differently from adults. They have special needs and needs depending on their age and level of development. They are also particularly vulnerable when it comes to the psychological consequences of such events.

Recent national events, such as the floods in Lower Bavaria in May/June 2016 and the shooting rampage in Munich in August 2016, have highlighted this fact. Both events affected a significant number of children and young people.

Against this backdrop, the need for age-specific psychosocial emergency care (PSNV), such as crisis intervention teams and emergency chaplains, but also psychological first aid by medical and/or police forces, becomes apparent. Similarly, coordinated medium- and long-term care by appropriate psychosocial services appears urgently needed.

On the basis of the current state of knowledge, however, it is not possible to provide empirically substantiated answers to which offers are actually helpful, which measures can be implemented concretely and which preconditions for their implementation in administrative, organizational and operational terms are first created and which can be implemented in German civil protection.

The project »Child and Catastrophe (KIKAT) – Emergency Psychosocial Care for Children and Adolescents in Complex Danger and Damage Situations« aims to close this research gap. The aim is to further develop the overall PSNV system with regard to the specific target group of children and adolescents and to make recommendations aimed at providing adequate psychosocial care.

Project Description

The project »Child and Catastrophe (KIKAT) – Psychosocial Emergency Care for Children and Adolescents in Complex Danger and Damage Situations« takes up the threads of previous systematic research on the subject of Psychosocial Emergency Care (PSNV) in Germany. Particular account is taken of the results from the so-called network projects of the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences and from the consensus process of the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) on quality assurance in the PSNV. In addition, KIKAT is deepening previous findings on psychosocial care for children and adolescents and adolescents and developing their psychosocial care and adolescents and developing their approaches the project will be