Background and aim of the meeting

The increased digitalisation of people’s lives has brought both challenges and opportunities for social workers delivering family support to family members of radicalised individuals. For example, it brings opportunities for social workers’ practice, such as through the use of digital communication enabling social workers to connect with families in a fast and low-threshold way. In contrast, the internet is also playing a key role when it comes to people engaging with radicalised environments or conspiracy narratives.

When a family member becomes radicalised, families often struggle with understanding the connection between the online and offline reality of their radicalised family member. Here, family support services can play an important role in supporting family members by bringing this online dimension into their offline support interventions, for example by organising peer groups for parents to share their experiences with online radicalisation.

This meeting will build further on the insights from the upcoming RAN Youth & Education meeting on ‘Social media literacy: Integrate the online world in your offline pedagogical practices’ and explore which already available practices apply to family support. Second, this meeting will focus on how family support organisations can use digital and hybrid interventions (a combination of digital and face-to-face methods) to support families of a radicalised individual. We will look into current challenges for practitioners, examples of digital family support and the prerequisites for effective support: what works and what doesn’t?

The aims of the meeting are to 1) understand how social workers in family support services can best integrate the online dimension in their offline support interventions as well as how social workers themselves can ‘go digital’; 2) explore examples of digital and hybrid interventions useful for family support services; and 3) formulate recommendations for conducting hybrid family support for families of radicalised individuals.

This meeting will build on the RAN Y&E meeting (6-7 March) ‘Social media literacy: Integrate the online world in your offline pedagogical practices’, the RAN YF&C meeting ‘How to do digital youth work in a P/CVE context: Revising the current elements’ and the RAN FC&S meeting ’Supporting families in fostering resilience against conspiracy narratives’.

Practitioners and initiatives we are looking for:

• Social workers delivering family support to family members of radicalised individuals.
• Participants should have experience with issues related to family support for family members of radicalised individuals and/or digital social work.

In order to find the best suited participants, please answer the following questions: 

• What is your experience with family support for families of radicalised individuals and/or digital social work?
• What challenges do families face with regard to radicalisation and online engagements of their family members, and how do you support them?
• Do you already work with digital/hybrid interventions to support families of radicalised individuals? If so, which ones?
• What challenges do you currently face when it comes to digital/hybrid interventions?
• Would you like to discuss a specific challenge/case/situation during this meeting? If so, please describe it in a few sentences.

Deadline

If you are interested in attending this meeting, please register here and answer the questions. We will invite participants based on this information.

Please keep in mind that we only have a limited number of places available for this meeting to foster exchanges, so participation is not guaranteed.   

Please note, the meeting will be held digitally in English.   

If you have any further questions, please don´t hesitate to contact Esther Zuiderveld and Fenna Keijzer.