Production of a national self-care curriculum. Please refer to activity identifier  LB-MOI-497-DMFA-ABAAD19-21 GBV front liners In Lebanon, the Syrian crisis has been ongoing for more than 8 years, causing massive displacement and increase in demand on services, especially in terms of CP and GBV sectors. As a result, frontline staff members working in those sectors are trained on and asked to perform additional tasks regularly, which will oftentimes make them feel overloaded and burnt-out, especially when the organizations have limited resources to support their staff, and underdeveloped pre-employment preparation and stress management practices. With the goal to improve the wellbeing of CP and GBV service providers, ABAAD conducted a meeting with the Head of MoPH’s National MHPSS programme in August 2017 for the production of a national self-care curriculum for that purpose endorsed by the Ministry of Public Health. In December 2017, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between ABAAD and MoPH—the National Mental Health Program (NMHP), which defines the two institutions’ scope of work. This MOU sets the modalities to ensure that victims of SGBV receive comprehensive and equitable MH services. Moving forward, in December 2017, ABAAD signed a contract with National Mental Health Program (NMHP) to develop the self-care curriculum. As part of the strategic objective annexof the MHPSS TF related to capacity building of the staff upon their specific needs and in line with the strategic objective of the National Mental Health Strategy: objective 2.2.2 Develop a capacity building proposal tailored for non-specialized health and social welfare/protection care staff at all levels of care in collaboration with all relevant actors, the first national self-care manual for front liners working in the CP and GBV sectors was developed. This national self-help curriculum aims to build the capacities of overloaded service provider personnel and create more sustainable modalities of work, promoting rest, relaxation and wellbeing in times of increased stress and pressure. Self-care activities globally involve behavioral, experiential, psychodynamic, and systematic traditions, but the activities defined in this curriculum were based more specifically on the needs of front-liners working with vulnerable populations in Lebanon, and will be adapted to the local context. Development process Developing the self-care manual was preceded by a thorough literature review in addition to bilateral meetings with self-care experts and a needs assessment was conducted in order for the manual to be well adapted to the context of front liners and target their needs. A-Literature review The literature review was conducted before the needs assessment took place and extended until after the results of the needs assessment were analysed and all evidence based articles read and used in the manual were compiled and saved for references. B-Needs assessment The needs assessment was conducted through a qualitative methodology design consisting of 7 bilateral meetings that took place at the NMHP offices and ABAAD offices with self-care experts (MH practitioners and psychotherapists) working closely with frontlines from ABAAD to benefit from their experience in the field of self-care, in addition to 3 focus groups discussions (FGDs) with 44 frontlines from different NGO and MoSA social workers, randomly selected by their organizations through an invitation disseminated by the MHPSS task force and ABAAD in addition to an invitation sent to Social Development Centers (SDCs) disseminated by MOSA centrally. The goal of the needs assessment was to maximize the efficiency of the training and the adequacy of the manual and to adapt them taking in consideration the frontliner’s perception. The main objectives of the needs assessment were to collect from participants: - Their current knowledge about self-care - Their perceived challenges in the field - Their needs in terms of self-care - Their expectations anticipated from a self-care training Findings of the needs assessment: The questions addressed in both the focus group discussions and the bilateral meetings were similar and mainly revolving around: - The understanding of self-care - The challenges faced in the field - The self-care techniques used by individuals - The expectations from a self-care training - What do they expect from their organizations in terms of self-care After the finalization of the self-care draft manual, the document was shared with external reviewers, from UN agencies (WHO, UNRWA, UNICEF), international and national independent technical experts that led to the compilation of their comments and feedbacks and updating the document accordingly. The manual is composed of three main chapters as reflected below: - Introduction to Self- Care - Impact of psychosocial Adversity on field workers - The 4 domains of self-care: 1-Physiological 2-Professional 3-Psychological 4-Spiritual Nevertheless, the document was translated into the Arabic language and both versions (English and Arabic) were designed jointly in one document.