Mindful Sheltering: how can the Shelter and Settlements sector recognise and enhance its impact on mental health in humanitarian crises?

Sue Webb and Emma Weinstein Sheffield write:

“Improved shelter conditions can save lives, reduce disease, increase the quality of people’s lives, help mitigate the impact of climate change ... and ... contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals”

Recognition of the linkages between adequate housing and health has been gaining ground in high income and development settings in recent years and is now having an impact on humanitarian discourse and practice. Adequate housing for people displaced by disaster and conflict can help to protect them from respiratory borne infections like COVID-19 and mitigate other housing related risk factors for physical ill-health like household air pollution, overcrowding, thermal extremes and poor access to sanitation. Inadequate housing also impacts mental health both directly and through the stress related to physical ill-health. Inequalities in access to adequate housing and green spaces are particularly acute in humanitarian settings, where people living in overcrowded buildings and camps are at greater risk from a multitude of health issues, and have limited power to influence improvements to their living conditions. Awareness of these issues and related knowledge gaps prompted further investigation within the humanitarian Shelter and Settlements sector, responding to a need to uncover and better articulate the impacts of existing Shelter and Settlements practice on mental health and well-being and to plot a path towards more deliberate and documented beneficial impacts.

COVID-19: What are the implications for humanitarian shelter?

Sue Webb and Emma Weinstein-Sheffield write:

Key messages: 

1. The current COVID-19 pandemic amplifies existing humanitarian and development challenges, including those relating to housing.
2. Shelter practitioners need to be aware of the immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19, including the economic impact on renters and marginalised groups and should address these risks as best they can during the peak of the crisis.
3. Immediate risk mitigation should include addressing overcrowding, poor ventilation and access to sanitation and hygiene facilities and will require close coordination with the WASH and health sectors.
4. The pandemic highlights how poor-quality housing and settlement planning increase the risk of communicable diseases and exacerbate some non-communicable diseases. There is a need for further research on the potential beneficial health impacts of humanitarian shelter responses. 

Work in Progress: Shelter self-recovery

The majority of people affected by conflict and disaster ‘self-recover’: they rebuild using their own resources with little or no support from outside agencies. In the context of ever-increasing need for humanitarian assistance and grave constraints on humanitarian funding, there is an imperative to understand how communities self-recover and how best to improve support for that process.

At the first of this semester’s Work in Progress seminars, Bill Flinn (CARE International UK) will be introducing the ‘Self-Recovery from Humanitarian Crisis’ project, a research collaboration between CENDEP and CARE, with other humanitarian partners. Funded by a Global Challenges Research Fund Translations Award grant, this project aims to understand the priorities and agency of individuals, families and communities who are rebuilding their lives after natural disaster and conflict. The project will co-develop best-practice guidance for the support of that self-recovery process and investigate the wider impact of shelter humanitarian interventions, using longitudinal and action research fieldwork in Indonesia, Venezuela and Malawi. The guiding principles of the project’s research are that:

• ·       Self –recovery is an inevitable process. So we need to understand how best to support this process.
• ·      The agency of families and communities is of paramount importance. They have a right to choose and their priorities will vary from family to family and also over time.
  

Bill will elaborate on what his previous work with CARE in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 taught him about the lived experience of people after disaster and how they prioritise their recovery pathways.

Charles Parrack (CENDEP) will discuss the importance of partnerships between academic institutions and humanitarian practitioners. Sue Webb (recent DEP student working as research assistant) will outline initial findings on the connections between shelter and health. The seminar will consist of a short presentation followed by open discussion of the themes introduced.
The seminar is at 16.30-18.00 on Thursday 6 February in room JHB303 in the John Henry Brookes building, Headington Campus. (The full list of seminars for this semester is here.)

Cendep Wins Research Award for Innovative Research Solutions to Help the World's Most Vulnerable People

Charles Parrack writes:

Earthquakes, storms, floods, and conflict cause untold damage to housing, infrastructure, services, agriculture and livelihoods. Householders themselves are invariably the first to respond, and the majority - 80 to 90% - receive little or no assistance from the international community and they become the main drivers of their own recovery process. This process has been termed 'self-recovery'.

This project, led by the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice at Oxford Brookes and CARE International UK and in partnership with Catholic Relief Services, Habitat for Humanity, CRAterre and the British Geological Survey, builds on previous research focused on understanding how housing self-recovery works to develop guidance and tools, which will help operational agencies support the process.

The Funder, UK Research and Innovation, made the following announcement:

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has awarded 18 international partnerships, £14.8M – shared between UK HEIs and global research partners. They are specifically aimed to deliver scalable solutions to issues faced by low and middle-income countries.
  
The projects have been funded as part of UKRI’s GCRF Innovation and Commercialisation Programme, developed to fast track promising research findings into real-world solutions.
UKRI Director of International Development, Professor Helen Fletcher, said:

“This is a really exciting opportunity to fund 18 projects through the Global Research Translation awards. Each and every one will make a massive difference to peoples’ lives in communities spread across the world to ensure some of the most challenged communities have a brighter future.

“Over the next year and a half, UK researchers will work with their international counterparts, policy makers, businesses and local organisations to turn promising research into solutions that can be taken forward through various pathways such as spin-out companies and social enterprises to make a positive difference to people who live with the reality of challenges such as climate change, poor sanitation and disease every day.”

https://www.ukri.org/news/innovative-research-solutions-identified-to-help-the-worlds-most-vulnerable-people/

For more information contact Charles Parrack cparrack@brookes.ac.uk

Shelter community of practice meets in Geneva

Each October in Geneva there is a gathering of the shelter community of practice. The Global Shelter Cluster invites cluster coordinators and shelter practitioners to come and discuss ongoing shelter operations and what we can learn from them, as well as to continue to discuss and develop strategy and policy on shelter after natural disaster and conflict. In the same week, Shelter Centre hosts a meeting to reflect on current issues for the sector, focused on international NGOs and research centres.

Charles leads a break out discussion on evidence at Shelter Centre meeting

Charles Parrack from CENDEP attended the Global Shelter Cluster meetings as part of Global Shelter Cluster working groups on Shelter Projects, State of Humanitarian Shelter and Settlements, and Promoting Safer Building, as well as the Environment Community of Practice. He also presented CENDEP research on safer self recovery at the Shelter Centre meeting.

One of the most important items to be discussed by the community of practice was the upcoming Sphere Project revisions. It is a great opportunity for the operational agencies to contribute to writing standards for shelter which, due to the adoption of Sphere by so many in the humanitarian system, will influence shelter practice globally.

The Shelter Projects working group has recently overseen publication of the latest volume of Shelter Projects, a compilation of shelter case studies that is becoming a very useful piece of the evidence needed to inform policy and practice. Charles has been influential in this project by working with the operational agencies to raise the quality of the evidence by introducing peer review and methodological rigour.

The State of Humanitarian Shelter and Settlements is an initiative of the Global Shelter Cluster to provide more detailed information and analysis on current shelter practice. It is at the start of the process currently.

Promoting Safer Building is a new working group focused on making sure that effective build back safer messages are identified swiftly for adoption by operational shelter clusters.

At the Shelter Centre meeting Charles presented CENDEP research on the scarcity of good evidence on safety in self recovery shelter programmes. He called for the community of practice to develop better evidence gathering practice, and to co-produce this research along with academic partners. He stated that research will not be successful unless both partners are involved. The practitioners have the depth of contextual knowledge, access and relationships with stakeholders, but time and capacity for research is scarce. Academics can ensure methodological rigour and analytical consistency.