Mind the Gap - Transatlantic Collaboration

Mind the Gap Academy Mission Statement

Over the last three decades, we have experienced and witnessed the breathtaking changes in pediatric and psychiatric care for children and adolescents. Such changes mirror societal transformations in communities and have been driven by multiple discourses and negotiations, reflecting different, even contradictory perspectives.

For us, since 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international human rights agreement setting out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children, has been guiding these necessary discourses and negotiations. Originally, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is built, on the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child drafted by Eglantyne Jebb, adapted in 1924 by the League of Nations and again re-worked and adopted in an extended form by the United Nations in 1959.

These adaptations are proving the ongoing need to re-visit the concept of child’s rights in context with societal transformations. In the Academy Mind the Gap, Think-Tank for Transcultural Pediatrics, health care professionals with various training backgrounds are coming together for introducing a life-long continuous education program, for members of the medical and education systems and communities, within the framework of a postgraduate course to approach the ‘different’ child with ‘different’ behaviours in a participatory translational, transcultural, and transdisciplinary way. The title Mind the Gap invites us all to reflect our thinking and acting. All lectures, seminars, self- and group learning exercises are built on the Rights of the Child and driven by the main leitmotif question are we offering the best care for the best interest of the affected individual? We deeply believe that the discourses around this leitmotif question will bring not only involved stakeholders (e.g. parents, teachers) and communities but also the children and youth together under an applied ethics framework and exceed nation, population and religion based limitations.

Introduction Video

Team Biosketches

Organogram

Project Overview - Long Version