Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation

Trauma and Transition Programme

from victim to survivor – healing is possible

About us

Vision

A functional democracy where violence is contained and people and communities thrive in a peaceful, caring and safe society.

Strategic programme areas
How we work and with whom
The TTP: then and now

The Trauma Clinic of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation has been offering a trauma counselling service since the early 1990s.

It was set up to offer a free counselling service for victims of political violence. Clients came to the Trauma Clinic because they had been raped, tortured, detained, lost loved ones, or suffered the impact of other kinds of brutality under the label of political violence. Many thousands of people suffered trauma at the hands of the apartheid government's overt and covert forces. Others suffered trauma through conflict between or within warring political structures and organisations, some in the liberation movements at home and in exile.

Political violence and its effects are still experienced by many South Africans. The Trauma Clinic provides counselling for such survivors, an example of this being our work with ex-combatants.

Since the mid-1990s we have seen a shift from political violence to criminal violence within the country. Resultantly, the Trauma Clinic has seen increasing cases of domestic violence, rape and other sexual assaults, child abuse, murder, armed robbery, car hijacking and the trauma of being a direct victim or witness to such events.

From the late 1990s the Trauma Clinic began counselling refugees and asylum seekers. This included both individuals and groups from various African countries facing violent conflict in their home country and xenophobia here in South Africa. Refugees – children and adults – have become an important project focus for us, along with juvenile offenders, ex-combatants, and the elderly (see Projects).

As one of the oldest and most established units offering trauma counselling in South Africa, the Trauma Clinic has considerable expertise in trauma work and has become a national leader in clinical interventions and trauma management education. Between 2001 and 2006 the Trauma Clinic consolidated its work by repositioning itself as the Victim Empowerment Programme (VEP). The VEP encompassed a broader perspective to ensure that victims of trauma are treated with respect and dignity.

Recently the programme has positioned itself within the trauma field and working with societies in transition. As of November 2006 the programme adopted a new name: the Trauma and Transition Programme. TTP has five strategic programme areas including, the Trauma Clinic, Torture, Crime and Violence, Refugees and Unresolved Trauma. TTP increasingly engages in research within its strategic programme areas. TTP is also involved in lobbying and advocacy relating to refugees, ex-combatants, survivors of crime and torture in South Africa, the region and internationally.

Our funders

Our work has been made possible over the years by generous funding and support from:

Trauma Clinic Services

Introduction

The Trauma Clinic is a department of the Trauma and Transition Programme. The Trauma Clinic helps people deal with traumatic experiences. We offer short-term counselling and long-term trauma therapy. Where necessary, we refer clients to legal and other specialist services. We also offer specialist services for the psychiatric management of traumatised clients.

The Trauma Clinic offers a free counselling and debriefing service to individuals and families who have been exposed to violence, though we charge for corporate debriefings. We offer counselling in all of South Africa's official languages.

Overview of services
Arranging counselling with our Trauma Clinic
  1. Phone us on (011) 403-5102 during working hours from 08h30 to 17h00.
  2. Our intake worker at reception will receive your call and ask how she or he can be of assistance.
  3. You will be asked to briefly explain the nature of your problem and how it has affected you. This will help our intake worker to determine the best way that the Trauma Clinic can help you.
  4. The intake worker take note of this information and ask for contact details.
  5. At a case allocation meeting the clinical coordinator and the team will determine which trauma professional (TP) will assist you.
  6. That trauma professional will contact you to make an appointment.
  7. You will meet with the TP.
  8. At your session with the TP, she or he will be able to offer you the space to talk about what has happened. She or he will discuss the kind of counselling process to follow. If necessary, she or he may refer you to another organisation.

Should another service provider want to refer a client to the Trauma Clinic, they need to phone our receptionist to book an appointment, and send a referral letter with the client.

Capacity building and training
Introduction

We offer:

Internship and student placement programme

Each year, the Trauma and Transition Programme provides internship and student placement programmes for an intern psychologist and social work students from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Projects
The TTP Ex-Combatants Project

Our Ex-Combatants Project arose as a result of research done by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation on the demilitarization and reintegration of ex-combatants in South Africa.

This project involves the provision of individual and group counselling to ex-combatants, and research. We hope our research findings will play a significant role in facilitating the reintegration of ex-combatants into societies both in South Africa and in other countries that are recovering from armed conflict. Psychosocial support is also provided for participants to address their psychological and emotional issues.

Understanding the problems facing ex-combatants
As part of the counselling and healing process, the group of ex-combatants with whom we work is encouraged to talk about their emotions as well as practical issues that affect them. A broad range of issues have emerged through the therapy – from feelings of isolation and anger, to the difficulty of finding or keeping a job.

The healing power of therapy
Ex-combatants have found that dealing with their post-traumatic stress symptoms in counselling has helped them to better understand their feelings, and through this to feel more confident about themselves. This has led to many positive spin-offs both practically and personally, including integrating back into their families and communities, overcoming some of the psychological symptoms, and being more successful in getting and maintaining jobs.

The Refugee Project
The Trauma Clinic has been working with refugees since 1997. We have used various approaches to help refugees, through both individual and group psychosocial interventions. We also lobby government around the plight of refugees, based on our experience and research.

Refugees and asylum seekers face many difficulties related to leaving their country of origin and the integration into a new one. The Trauma and Transition Programme plays a role in helping refugees and asylum seekers work through their experiences in a containing and supportive environment. Some of the difficulties refugees and asylum seekers face include:

One of the TTP's specific project involvements since 2001 has been working with the Johannesburg-based Bienvenu Shelter, which offers assistance to refugee women and children who are asylum seekers in South Africa.

In addition to assisting refugees and asylum seekers who come to the Trauma Clinic for individual counselling, we run weekly group therapy sessions at the Bienvenu Refugee Shelter. One is a support group for mothers and the other is a group for children aged between five and seven years old.

The Bienvenu Shelter was set up in 2001 by the Jesuit Refugee Service and the Scalabrini Sisters to respond to the plight of traumatised women and children refugees from various African countries. It is a temporary shelter for women and children refugees who stay for between three and six months while they look for alternative accommodation and try to gain some skills and facilitate integration into South African society.

Most of the refugees who come to the shelter have experienced traumas that they have not been able to deal with. Many have family members who have been killed or are missing, some women have been abandoned by their partners, some children come alone – in addition to which they arrive in a foreign country with no money or possessions. The majority of refugees are from war-torn countries such as Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. There are also refugees from Rwanda who experienced and witnessed atrocities during the 1994 genocide.

Research

The Trauma and Transition Programme, conducts research related to its strategic programme areas: refugees, torture, unresolved trauma (including ex-combatants), crime and violence, and the trauma clinic.

Current research includes:

Through our research, TTP is translating the wealth of data we have collected into research products that will offer insights into the nature of traumas experienced, and the responses required to bring about healing. The increasingly complex nature of trauma in South Africa calls for an evaluation and review of models of intervention currently in use.

The TTP uses its research for advocacy and lobbying work concerning victims' rights and needs. For example, our work on victim awareness and trauma management in the Metropolitan Police Services was presented to all the metropolitans' senior leadership. They are consequently receiving increasing requests for trauma awareness and management training from their frontline workers.

Trauma in transition
South Africa is an embryonic democracy and a country in transition. Given our high levels of interpersonal, group and community violence it has become necessary to understand the shifting forms of conflict and violence in the country. From this we can develop intervention strategies that balance the needs of victims, communities and offenders within a human rights framework.

The TTP's work with survivors of violence, both young, old and other vulnerable groups such as women and children, refugees and asylum seekers, ex-combatants, and young offenders, will help inform policy and practice that is essential for the nations' collective mental health.

Torture

Our torture work started in the late 1980s when most of our clients were survivors of political violence. In the 1990s the Trauma Clinic continued to work with torture mainly through our refugee project. In 2001 TTP's torture work continued through psychosocial interventions with ex-combatants who were survivors of torture. In 2004 our torture work was advanced through our partnership with RCT (Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Survivors). Through this partnership we have conducted a research study on the health needs of exiled torture survivors in South Africa. In 2007 TTP, in partnership with RCT is conducting a project called "profiling torture in South Africa". This project focuses on lobbying and advocacy around the ratification of OPCAT in South Africa, and conducting a media review on the prevalence of torture in South Africa. The project also includes capacity-building on working with torture survivors for legal, health and psychosocial service providers. The final component of the project focuses on the monitoring and evaluation of psychosocial interventions with survivors of torture, which will include a development of an electronic database at the Trauma Clinic and an establishment of the national torture reference team in conjunction with Themba Lesizwe.

Contact

Street Address: 4th Floor, Braamfontein Centre, 22 Jorrisen Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

Office hours are weekdays from 08h30 until 17h00.

Postal address: PO Box 30778, Braamfontein, 2017, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Phone: (011) 403-5102

Fax: (011) 403-7532

E-mail: info@csvr.org.za

Team Members Include:
 
 
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