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The purpose of this paper is to identify elements of success in the family reintegration of children with street connections who have experienced chronic violence and loss in the context of poverty. This paper outlines the application of complex trauma theory into a practice model developed by the JUCONI Foundation in Puebla, Mexico to help children and families prepare and manage reintegration.

This is a 15-month qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with families and boys at three stages: preparing for return, in the first three months of reintegration and successfully reintegrated. The study comprises interviews with frontline workers and focus group discussions with the project team. In addition, six youths who did not return to their families were interviewed.

The study focuses on an attachment and trauma-based approach to family reintegration of street-connected children outside parental care. The findings highlight the need for careful preparation of both child and families (including siblings/extended family) prior to reunification. Preparation needs to focus on resolving the underlying problems that have led to the child being on the street and “phased” reintegration (beginning with visits to the family) is recommended. Follow-up visits/family work by staff are usually essential to ensure that child/youth and family adjust to each other. The theoretical framework and rationale behind the use of the tools and strategies described needs to be understood, so that they are used intentionally and consistently.

The study cohort involved only boys and other factors are likely to affect the reintegration of girls. The study took place in Mexico only and methods used by JUCONI need to be tested in other contexts.

The integration of children without parental care into families is an issue of critical interest, but there is currently very limited research or guidance on reintegration of children who have lived on the street, especially in low and middle income countries. The study should be of interest to practitioners interested in assessing whether safe and sustainable reintegration is possible and facilitating this. The paper may be of interest to practitioners working with children growing up without parental care who do not have “street connections”, but who have experienced chronic violence and loss.

This is the first study to describe the application of an attachment and trauma perspective to work with children who have lived on the street.

In the context of international assignments, repatriates are confronted with social, organisational and cultural challenges. However, the impact of community and social support on the reintegration process has gone unnoticed. The purpose of this paper is to identify the influencing factors on the reintegration process of expatriates who were sent to Asia, especially considering social support and the role of the community. In the context of the community, this paper discusses which factors influence the reintegration process after repatriates return to Germany.

In order to research reintegration problems as well as social support and the role of the community, seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with repatriates from Germany.

The central results of the study show that there are variables in different areas that influence the reintegration process of repatriates sent to Asia, which have both reintegration-promoting and reintegration-inhibiting effects. Furthermore, it was found that a lack of support from social networks in the home country has negative effect on the reintegration process causing repatriates to stay in known repatriate communities.

The results of the study demonstrate that social networks and communities in the home country represent crucial challenges in the reintegration process. Furthermore, it demonstrates the need for future exploratory research into this area to gain further insights into this topic.

Crisis services personnel are frequently deployed around the globe under highly demanding conditions. This raises the need to better understand the deployment process and more especially, sustainable reintegration after deployment. Despite recent research efforts, the study of the post-deployment stage, more specifically the reintegration process, remains fragmented and limited. To address these limitations, this review aims at (1) describing how reintegration is conceptualised and measured in the existing literature, (2) identifying what dimensions are associated with the reintegration process and (3) identifying what we know about the process of reintegration in terms of timing and phases.

Following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) protocol, the authors identified 5,859 documents across several scientific databases published between 1995 and 2021. Based on predefined eligibility criteria, 104 documents were yielded.

Research has primarily focused on descriptive studies of negative individual and interpersonal outcomes after deployment. However, this review indicates that reintegration is dynamic, multi-sector, multidimensional and dual. Each of its phases and dimensions is associated with distinct challenges.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research that investigates reintegration among different crisis services and provides an integrative social-ecological framework that identifies the different dimensions and challenges of this process.

This chapter explores how marginalized youth, specifically former child soldiers in South Sudan, struggle to access education that is crucial in their reintegration process. The chapter draws upon data from a study focusing on the reintegration process of school boys formerly associated with armed forces and groups in South Sudan, and is based on ethnographic fieldwork including interviews and observations of 20 former child soldiers in Malakal, Upper Nile State. The study identifies a number of external factors that inhibit educational opportunities for the boys in their reintegration process. These are their life experiences, the impacts of war, their socioeconomic background and the lack of educational structures due to ongoing conflict. This study describes how the living conditions that motivated the boys to join the armed group are still present after their demobilization. Thus, they not only still find themselves in poverty but the time spent in the armed group and the impacts of war have put them in an even more marginalized position today than prior to their recruitment. The study argues that access to education is crucial in order to prevent recruitment and also re-recruitment to armed groups.

The purpose of this study was to explore children’s pathways through homelessness within the South African context, with particular attention paid to pathways out of homelessness. This study focusses on factors influencing children’s successful transitions out of homelessness.

A qualitative exploratory design was used, using interviews with nine children who had exited or were in the process of exiting homelessness. Interviews were conducted at a children’s shelter in Pietermaritzburg or in the children’s home environments. Interviews were analysed thematically.

An ecological framework was used to frame the factors influencing children’s pathways in, through and out of homelessness in the children’s narratives. These included institutions, relationships and intrapersonal strengths and resources. The study suggested that constructive relationships with shelter staff and parental figures, as well as intrapersonal strengths, were the most prominent factors in children successfully negotiating their way through their homelessness. The importance of a relationship with the paternal family within some African cultures was also a point of leverage.

Implications for policy and practise include the need for systemic change, as well as greater support for shelters and shelter staff. The issue of rivalry in the shelter context and the role of the paternal family in the reintegration process require more research attention. The research is limited to homeless children in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

This study provided feedback to the shelter regarding their strategies for assisting homeless children off the streets. It further provided evidence for the importance of the work of the shelter, to strengthen advocacy efforts. This may be useful to others in similar circumstances.

This study highlights the importance of macrosystemic interventions in the efforts to assist homeless children, while at the same time not ignoring the inter and intra, personal elements to enhancing their well-being.

This paper is singular in its exploration of factors influencing children’s successful transitions out of homelessness within the South African context.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss five recent papers on military people and those close to them, and to suggest how taking into account their families and sense of social inclusion is key to mental well-being.

There are four papers about military people’s adjustment when they return from a war zone, often with experience of traumatic stress. A fifth paper discusses getting soldiers back to war when they experience traumatic stress.

The studies on reintegration into civilian life focus mainly on the family. They suggest that involvement of the spouse or close partner in treatment may be crucial. The military person and their family are faced with forging new roles and ways of doing things. Joint treatment may best help them do this and functioning well as a family with everyone feeling they belong. The fifth paper argues for similar kinds of social support and sense of belonging, but to the military rather than the family, to support return to battle.

Few studies to date have included military people’s spouses or intimate partners. These studies either include these contacts or pay attention to the social context when considering military people returning home or experiencing traumatic stress and injuries. Attention to the social context may protect social inclusion when military people return home, or support their military role. The potential contribution of working with that context has lessons for civilian mental health services in preserving social inclusion.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the reintegration process of Wounded, Injured or Sick Employees (WISE) of the Dutch Military Armed Forces.

The research method is an exploratory, qualitative case study. A purposive sampling was drawn, including 10 WISE, and 6 reintegration stakeholders. A total of 16 interviews were conducted to explore the individual, organisational and socio-environmental factors that influence reintegration of WISE.

Findings show the importance of involvement and participation of members of the social environment in the reintegration process. Findings show that the complexity of the plethora of WISEs' injuries and disabilities requires a more person-centric reintegration approach with personalized-customized provisions, rather than a policy-driven approach to the reintegration, in order to enhance the reintegration experience and to arrive at beneficial individual and organisational reintegration outcomes.

This cross-sectional study on a limited sample of WISE and reintegration stakeholders does not allow for making inferences about the long-term effects of the reintegration process on reintegration outcomes of the wider population of WISE. Future longitudinal research, encompassing a larger sample, could examine the long-term career, organisational and societal implications of reintegration of WISE within and outside the Military Armed Forces.

This paper presents a “Wounded Warrior Workplace Reintegration Program”, aimed at deriving beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders involved in the reintegration trajectory.

This paper contributes to the literature by presenting a Model of Occupational Reintegration of WISE that considers the factors at an individual, social-environmental, and institutional level as determinants of successful reintegration.

Reintegration programs have emerged as part of the regimes of care for survivors of human trafficking. However, empirical analysis of the reintegration outcomes for survivors remains limited in the African context. Hence, this paper aims to examine the challenges and opportunities of reintegration assistance programs for survivors of human trafficking in Nigeria.

Drawing on qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with repatriated women who have accessed reintegration assistance in Nigeria, and data was analyzed using thematic analysis.

The findings suggest that while the reintegration programs might address the procedural aspect of reintegration, the achievement of substantive reintegration remains incomplete. This is because of the structural conditions of the context within which reintegration is supposed to occur.

There is a need to take seriously the distinction between the reintegration of survivors into a new community or a former community in the design of a regime of care for survivors of human trafficking in Africa. Crucially, the focus on procedural reintegration should not also divert attention away from the structural conditions and reforms needed to ensure survivors achieve substantive reintegration.

This paper contributes to the limited literature on life after trafficking and demonstrates the strengths and limitations of reintegration programs as a regime of care for survivors of human trafficking. In addition, this study empirically grounded the theoretical distinction between different aspects of the process of reintegration.

The purpose of this paper is to understand deeply the important elements of the reintegration phase of recovery.

The participants were 14 people suffering from addiction to drugs, who met the criteria for substance use disorder according to the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fifth edition. The data obtained by semi-structured interview were qualitatively analyzed by interpretive phenomenological analysis.

The results highlight the importance of relationships in therapy, identity reshaping, a deeper understanding of the causes of substance use, the importance of boundaries, the critical parameters of the transition to regularity and the important role of emotions.

The results are discussed on the basis of the enhancement of the therapeutic interventions that are followed at the reintegration stage, taking into account not only the peculiarities of this phase but also social factors such as stigmatization.