Project Share

The Project Share protocol offers a tool for conducting an assessment of strengths and needs for children and parents in communities that experienced significant life threat and property damage from a disaster.

The protocol is designed to assess longer term recovery from disasters and thus should be administered 12 to 36 months after the primary tornado event.

The protocol takes about an hour and a half to conduct per family and requires participation of a child between 8 and 14 years of age and one of his/her parents. The protocol includes demographic questions, a measure of disaster exposure, semi-structured interviews with the child and parent to elicit individual recollections of the disaster and a parent-child conversation regarding the impact of the disaster on their lives, and measures of current psychosocial functioning, such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety.

The Project Share protocol can be used to gain a more comprehensive and systematic understanding of the longer term impact of disasters on children and their families, to connect parents and children with appropriate mental health treatment or social services when indicated, and to facilitate children’s communication of their thoughts and feelings about the disaster to their parents at a point in time when the acute impact of the disaster has subsided.

Click HERE to contact the Disaster and Community Crisis Center for more information about Project Share or to request a copy of the manual.