CAN offers two training programmes:

-   CAN Methods Course

-   Treatment of Children suffering from PTSD

CAN Methods Course is the main course based on research undertaken by CAN in Lesotho, Eswatini, Uganda and Kenya into methods that have proved effective in enabling the needs of children to be met in their own families and communities. The course offers ideas for empowering good community-supported family care of vulnerable children and those in need, especially when the economically active adult population has died. Project methods are divided into categories and related to underlying psychological and sociological theory. These include effective projects that have encouraged:

-   community development, 

-   economic empowerment, 

-   appropriate agricultural methods that provide food security, 

-   child protection programmes, 

-   provision of education and health care, and psycho-social support, 

-   rehabilitation of street children, 

-   return of children in institutions to their families, 

-   alternative care of children where this is absolutely essential,

-   and relevant catalyst projects.

During the course students are given an opportunity to consider which of the approaches might be best applied to assist children in need in their locality. Projects are planned on the course to develop in the future, either as individuals or in groups.

Treatment of Children suffering from PTSD course was developed specifically at the request of organisations in the countries concerned because they believe many children in Africa have been traumatised, often following the loss of both parents as a result of AIDS or other illnesses. This course includes a highly effective method of treating PTSD in children known as Children's Accelerated Trauma Therapy (CATT). It was developed by Carly Raby who has patented the method. The founder of CAN is licensed to treat children with CATT and teach the method to volunteers who become CAN Extension Workers and attend this course. This allows them to use the method to treat those suffering from PTSD.

On the course the students plan projects to treat children with PTSD in their locality, which they hope to develop in future.

Feed back on the two courses and the work of CAN has been good or excellent for all components of both courses and comments enthusiastic. Suggestions made have, where possible, been acted upon to improve the course delivery for the future.

TRAINING COURSE 1 CAN Methods: Effective methods of facilitating good community-supported family care for orphans and other children in need

In addition to physical needs, children have emotional, psycho-social, ethical and educational needs. These are interdependent. Since research of the World Health Organisation in the 1950s, it is now accepted that meeting the early attachment needs of children is critical to their development and mental functioning. A child whose attachment needs have not been adequately met will not only not develop healthily mentally but will also be unable to make use of educational opportunities available to them to learn and may also fail to thrive and grow normally physically. They are unlikely to be able to develop into healthy, coping adults and may suffer mental health difficulties or turn to crime. Continuity of attachments as well as the quality of the attachments are important. To meet a child's psycho-social needs, it is most important for the child to grow up in a loving family

African culture has developed naturally and successfully to provide for psycho-social needs and promote resilience to hardships. Traditionally African children belong to the extended family not their parents and are the responsibility of the whole community overseen by the village chief. 'It takes a village to rear a child'. A child's attachment needs are generally well met by child-centred care with close, quality relationships with family members, and other supportive relationships within the wider family. Such shared care provides continuity when the mother cannot always be present. Furthermore, reciprocity of obligations between a child and members of the extended family and community who have contributed to their care or education provides economic incentives for excellence in child rearing.

Considering economic difficulties faced, this system has been highly successful for centuries in generally meeting the needs of all children, including orphans, within the family and community and should be valued and developed to meet new challenges. However, pressures of increased geographical mobility, poverty, westernisation and institutionalisation of children have eroded these systems. The unprecedented pressures of the magnitude of the AIDS orphan crisis with the loss of so many parents to AIDS, threatened the total destruction of this system ̶ with consequences disastrous both in human and economic terms ̶ with thousands of destitute children and vulnerable adults, and progress towards all development goals reversed.

It is important to prevent this destruction by the dissemination of innovations and methods which have been used successfully to resurrect and empower good community-supported family care and child protection in some areas, so these ideas and methods become available to benefit children in need elsewhere. This would enable the excellent cost-effective and culturally appropriate African community-care systems to develop to meet new challenges and be available for the benefit of future generations. The aim of the Care Africa Network methods course is to help to achieve this goal.

Course Content

This course seeks to disseminate and relate to psychological and sociological theory a range of effective ideas and methods that have been collected from four countries to promote good community-supported family care of orphans and children in need and protect them from abuse. This includes methods of promoting community care and economic empowerment to enable extended families to continue to care for orphans and children in need, as well as methods which help communities and families to meet the whole range of children's needs ̶ physical, emotional, psychosocial, educational and ethical including their needs for protection from abuse and empowerment for the future. The course encourages participants to assess the needs of children in their area and the difficulties involved in meeting them and to consider which of the methods used successfully elsewhere would be most relevant to meeting these needs. Then they make plans for projects to benefit the children concerned and for their subsequent implementation (see the aims of the training course).

Course materials

The course materials consist of a methods manual and slides of the course).

TRAINING COURSE 2 The treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in children using Children's Accelerated Trauma Therapy (CATT)

As CAN was requested to provide a training course to enable treatment of the many children reported to be suffering from trauma in Africa, the founder undertook extra training in treating children with PTSD and also teaching this. Then she developed a training course, which she first taught to the National Health Service in UK, then adapted for teaching in Africa to CAN Extension Workers. It includes CATT as well as other ideas and methods which have been found to be effective.

Children's Accelerated Trauma Therapy (CATT) method

CATT is a child-friendly adaptation of the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) protocol utilising a play/art method and is based on scientific evidence on the effects of trauma in the brain. It works by transferring the memory of the traumatic event from the amygdula to the hippocampus so that it can be subjected to logical thought. It has been successful in 100% of the cases where the founder has used it to treat children with PTSD (see table of treatment results). Children report that their PTSD symptoms disappear immediately after the core treatment session and, once the symptoms have gone, other secondary severe mental health difficulties are usually quickly resolved.

CATT has been highly successful when used in Rwanda for treating PTSD following the genocide there and has been adopted as the official method of treatment in that country. It has been used successfully in the UK and random control trials are now underway in Uganda (see evidence basis for CATT).

This dramatically effective method needs to be made available for the benefit of traumatised children elsewhere in Africa.

Aims and objective of CAN training course

The aim of the course is to train CAN Extension Workers in Africa in the assessment and effective treatment of children suffering from PTSD using CATT, working in partnership with relevant others as agreed with the child. Then to help them to challenge situations they have previously avoided due to their PTSD symptom and, once cured, achieve the goals they set for themselves. The course is designed for participants to become practitioners since the restrictions of the patent have prevented them being able to train others in the procedure (see objectives of CATT course).

Post-event evaluation of this CAN training course constitutes an important feature to ensure an appropriate evolution of the course. Accordingly, evaluation forms are provided to participants as well as feedback forms concerning the work of CAN. Both were very positive about the method and the course, all components of which were voted very good or excellent.

CRIES-8 (Child Revised Impact of Events Scale) is an effective measure of PTSD completed by the children developed by The Children in War Foundation. PTSD checklists can also be used to help identify whether a child has PTSD and, after treatment, whether it has been cured. Participants have been asked to send feedback regarding treatments they have delivered and some very successful results have been reported (see description of CRIES, CRIES-8 assessment form, PTSD check list form).

A link to the training manual the founder has written cannot be included due to restrictions of the patent.