ABSTRACT
orcid.org/0000-0002-6778-4976In the past couple of years, Serbia has been a transit country for most refugee children travelling through the “Balkan route”. As part of the response to the refugee crisis in Serbia, Save the Children International has offered certain services aimed at providing psychosocial support (PSS) to the refugee children. Creating a framework for and practice of a contextually appropriate PSS programme that will adequately address children’s needs, take into account their perspectives and enable their active involvement is a great challenge, especially since PSS services have been developed in highly changeable circumstances, with diverse groups of children who are always ‘in flux’. This makes understanding perspectives and experiences of refugee children particularly important. This chapter presents the results of research with refugee children aimed at exploring their perspectives and experiences within the PSS programme. The field research involved semi-structured interviewing, with the help of an interactive poster that served as a kind of a ‘story board’ which facilitated and documented children’s narration in dialogue with the researcher. The analysis revealed that children expressed the need for close, caring relations with field workers based on mutual respect and partnership; they emphasised the importance of a relaxing and welcoming atmosphere in the spaces organised for them; the opportunities to be creative and express themselves and also to learn and acquire new skills. Starting from the perspectives and experiences of refugee children, the present study enabled the mapping of some important values and principles crucial for further development and transformation of the existing PSS services towards the creation of safe and nurturing spaces for them.
