Children and self-wetting

Understanding children and their caregivers’ experiences with incontinence in humanitarian contexts

This research project aimed to understand the barriers to inclusion and well-being that those living with incontinence, particularly children aged five to 11 and their caregivers, face in humanitarian contexts, so that more holistic, effective and inclusive WASH and protection programming can be developed (download the project brief). We used a participatory research method to work with children, their caregivers, and other stakeholders in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh and Adjumani District, Uganda. You can watch a video about the methodology, or download the research tools in English, Bangla, Dinka, Madi and Arabic. Below are some of the results of the project thus far.

NEW: Read the Key Findings from our project here

Blogs

2022 Hear from 5 grantees striving for better health outcomes for refugees (first example), Elrha Blog

2022 Conducting research with children: Developing the story book methodology. Elrha blog

2022 Conducting research with children: Honouring a child’s right to be heard. Elrha blog

Presentations

2023 Understanding children’s experiences of self-wetting (incontinence) in humanitarian contexts (PDF of slides – video coming soon!), Water and WASH Futures Conference

2022 How to better understand the experiences of children who wet themselves (PDF of slides), Colorado WASH Systems Symposium

2022 Understanding children and their caregivers’ experiences with incontinence in humanitarian contexts (link to video, also embedded below. Our work is presented from 35-42 minutes), WASH Cluster Hygiene Promotion Technical Working Group Speaker Series, UNICEF

See Lead Researcher, Claire Rosato-Scott, speak about the research from 35-42 mins, and answer questions from 54 mins