This post is part of a series exploring data from a survey of over 800 Adult TCKs I conducted around 2019-2022. To learn more, please read this post.

Targeted TCK care is Effective TCK Care

Several blog posts in this series have highlighted data on experiences of mental health and mental healthcare among Adult TCKs. One trend I noted in my previous post was a trend in which the youngest ATCKs surveyed were the most likely to say that the mental healthcare they accessed was helpful to them, leaving me hopeful that we as a community of caregivers are improving at providing care that meets the unique needs of TCKs. I believe that the data I will be sharing in this post lends additional weight to this hope.

In addition to mental health support, the survey also asked about several types of services targeted to the globally mobile:

Cross-Cultural Training or Support
TCK-Specific Training or Support
Re-Entry Training or Support

CROSS-CULTURAL TRAINING or support

The results here were very different to the patterns seen in how TCKs experienced mental health support.

Male ATCKs were more likely than female ATCKs to say that cross-cultural training was available to them (51% vs 41%), and much more likely to say that it was helpful (74% vs 51%).
ATCKs aged 18-25 were the age group least likely to say that cross-cultural training was available to them (35%), yet when they did access cross-cultural training 56% found it helpful — second only to the 26-35 year old age group (67%).
ATCKs from business, foreign service, and military family were unlikely to report the availability of cross-cultural training (28%-29%).
When foreign service ATCKs did access cross-cultural training, they were the least likely to find it helpful (29%).
ATCKs from the Education and Humanitarian sectors were the most likely to have access to cross-cultural training (66%) and the most likely to find it helpful (78%).
Overall, 44% of TCKs said cross-cultural training or support was available to them.

More text

TCK-Specific Training and Support

When it came to training and support specific to TCKs, a lot of the same patterns held as with cross-cultural training. The main difference overall was that TCK-specific training was less common.

Again, male ATCKs were more likely than female ATCKs to say that TCK-specific training was available to them (54% vs 36%), and more likely to say that it was helpful (67% vs 53%).
On the other hand, the youngest ATCKs were the age group most likely to say that TCK-specific training was available to them (52%); 69% of them found it helpful.
While the oldest ATCKs (over 50) were unlikely to say they had access to TCK-specific trainng, when they did access this they were very likely to find it helpful (70%).
Again, ATCKs from the Education and Humanitarian sectors were very likely to have access to TCK-specific training (62%) and to find it helpful (56%).
So few ATCKs from business, foreign service, and military families had access to TCK-specific training that these sub-groups were too small for reliable data.
Overall, 41% of TCKs said TCK-specific training or support was available to them.

Re-Entry Training and Support

‘Re-entry’ refers to the experience of moving to live in one’s passport country after spending time living else where. Again, some familiar patterns emerge here.

Once again, male ATCKs were more likely than female ATCKs to say that reentry-specific training was available to them (44% vs 36%), and much more likely to say that it was helpful (78% vs 45%).

As with TCK-specific training, the youngest ATCKs were the age group most likely to say that reentry-specific training was available to them (52%); 57% of them found it helpful.
Once again, ATCKs from the Education and Humanitarian sectors were the most likely to have access to reentry-specific training (68%) and to find it helpful (57%).
And yet again, ATCKs from business, foreign service, and military families were unlikely to have access to reentry-specific training: only 19% of business ATCKs, and none of the foreign service/military ATCKs in this sample.
Overall, only 38% of ATCKs said that re-entry training and support was available to them.

Implications for future action

Training specific to a globally mobile life was perceived by TCKs as more helpful than standard mental health care. This is not to say that mental healthcare is unnecessary or unhelpful, but it is important to note that when training was designed for the types of lives they lived and the experiences they were going through, it was more helpful.

The implication, I contend, is that when mental health support is contextualised for TCK experiences, it will be more helpful for TCKs who receive it. Widespread education for mental health professionals into the prevalence of cross-cultural experiences and some of the common presentations seen in these demographics would be very useful. I also believe this education for mental health professionals will improve the rates at which Adult TCKs find mental health supports helpful.

On another note, TCKs from the corporate, foreign service, and military sectors were far less likely to have these types of trainings made available to them. (This was true for me as a corporate TCK.) I believe that any organization responsible for sending families abroad have a duty to prepare every family member to thrive in international life — not just the one they employ. These results imply that trainings specific to experiences such as cross-cultural engagement, TCK life, and re-entry after time broad can be very helpful. On the basis of these results, I contend that cross-cultural training and TCK-specific supports should be provided to all families sent abroad as a standard part of their relocation packages.

Targeted TCK Care is Effective TCK Care