May 13th Fireside Chat | What It Takes to Truly Support Young Children in Crisis

Gabriella Brent is CEO of Amna Refugee Healing Network, leading its mission to build healing-centred ecosystems for communities affected by displacement and conflict. Her work focuses on community-led, culturally rooted trauma and grief care, workforce development, and systems change. Gabriella brings two decades of experience across frontline mental health practice, organisational leadership, and regional partnerships, and regularly speaks and writes on how healing can be sustained at scale in protracted crisis contexts.

Professor Mark Tomlinson is a qualified clinical psychologist and currently the Co-Director of the Institute for Life Course Health Research Stellenbosch University. He is also Professor of Maternal and Child Health in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queens University, Belfast, UK. His scholarly work has involved a diverse range of topics such as improving early childhood development, maternal mental health, maternal and child health, adolescent health, child and adolescent mental health, and on life course approaches to understanding child and adolescent development. He was one of the co-ordinating writers of the Nurturing Care Framework. He was elected as a member of the Academy of Science in South Africa in 2017. He has published 416 papers in peer-reviewed journals, edited four books and written numerous chapters. He is on the Editorial Board of PLoS Medicine; and also Psychology, Health and Medicine.

It will be particularly relevant for those looking to move beyond programme-based approaches and toward more connected, relational ways of working.