New website offers help to caregivers, youth dealing with stress during COVID

University of Regina assistant professor Lise Milne with the faculty of social work notes the strain of COVID-19 is a lot even for people working mainly from home.

For teachers, stresses often layer as they not only worry about their own health and that of their family but try to ensure the physical and mental well-being of the students in their charge.

Milne and Nathalie Reid with the U of R-based Child Trauma Research Centre were already planning a website intended to compile the vast amount of research and best practices for those who work with children and youth. Then COVID-19 hit, and the need for the website became more obvious than ever.

“When you're really in the midst of and busy attending to children and their needs — and particularly children from vulnerable contexts — it's really challenging to find the time to go and evaluate and locate and find resources and supports,” Reid said.

She and Milne, along with their teams, took it upon themselves to compile those resources, sorting through hundreds of pages of literature and research and boiling it down in a way that would be both useful and readable to those visiting the site.

“It was really overwhelming ...,” Milne said. “It was an incredible amount of work, a lot of dedication from all of our team members. But I think the end result, we're really proud. It took over our lives, but in the end, when you really look at it, I think it's not just research for the sake of research. This was research for the sake of helping practitioners, service providers, caregivers in a way that will improve individuals' lives.”

The Digital Connections Hub website — made possible through grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation — officially launched this week at childtraumaresearch.ca.

The site touches on a variety of themes, from mental health and substance abuse to the protection of young people and how to effectively talk to them about various issues. Sections contain posters and briefs, with many translated into French.

Milne and Reid note the research compiled on the site goes far beyond simply pointing out the problems that exist. It also provides help and advice to deal with those problems.

“Yes, it's important for us to understand what the research is saying about what the traumatic impacts could be, but also what some possible solutions and responses would be so that people have concrete ideas about what to say, about how to respond,” Milne said.

While a lot of work has already gone into it, Reid notes work continues — and likely always will.

“We're pretty excited,” she said. “We're very committed to this and we're committed to the idea that it's not stagnant, that it is continuously emergent and evolving and responsive and proactive. We are in the midst, I think, of this experience. And so being in the midst, things shift and change and so we are continuously monitoring and scanning and looking and updating and adding ... It's going to continue to grow.”

Although the goal was to help youth and those working with them, Milne and Reid said material on the site can benefit everyone.