Rainhill gran thanked by Prince William for Israel/Gaza work

Psychotherapist Barbara Smith from Rainhill was scrambled to Tel Aviv to offer specialist counselling to British nationals leaving Israel in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attack.

The 68-year-old was later deployed through the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) to help Brits escaping Gaza into Egypt.

Brave Barbara – who previously helped survivors of the Mumbai 2008 and Tunisia 2015 terror attacks – was personally thanked by Prince William when he visited the British Red Cross headquarters in London last month.

She said: “Prince William expressed genuine interest in hearing how British nationals had been affected by the crisis and the specific psychosocial support we were able to provide through the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

“He was very gracious. I’d imagined there would be a panel of us and I might be asked one question, so I was stunned when it was just the Prince and myself chatting for 15 minutes.

“I’ve literally been on both sides of the fence of this awful conflict. I told him how I’d met a woman from a kibbutz who had witnessed a family member murdered in the October 7 attack and had managed to hide from the attackers in her home.

“Equally, a lot of the people that we supported coming out of Gaza through the Rafah Crossing into Egypt had seen people killed in front of them or had been walking past bodies on the road.

“The Prince asked me, ‘How do people get over this? Can they get over it?’. I mentioned a piece of research that I tell all of my clients, that we have evolved to expect trauma, we are programmed to endure it, and we are programmed to recover, otherwise we’d have died out as a species.”

Red Cross team - including Barbara - with Foreign Secretary James Cleverly (Image: Red Cross team - including Barbara - with Foreign Secretary James Cleverly)

The UK Government has more than trebled its aid funding for the Occupied Palestinian Territories to more than £100million this financial year – with £70million announced since the crisis erupted in October.

The UK Government is working with aid agencies including the British Red Cross, UNICEF, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Egyptian Red Crescent Society (ERCS) to respond to critical food, fuel, water, health, shelter and security needs in Gaza.

Barbara is a mental health expert based at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and has been volunteering for the British Red Cross since 2006.

She led British Red Cross psychosocial support teams deployed through the FCDO to Tel Aviv and Cairo as part of the UK Government’s efforts to help over 1,000 British nationals and their dependants return safely to the UK.

Barbara said: “We were flown out to Tel Aviv on the same military plane as then-Foreign Secretary James Cleverly just four days after the October 7 attack.

“It is fantastic that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office turn to the British Red Cross to offer this crucial expert support for people going through the most distressing situations imaginable.

“Just having someone there to discuss how they are feeling, letting them talk about their experience, acknowledging what they’ve been through, and offering support, can make such a massive difference to a person’s longer-term recovery.

“What do you say to anyone who has witnessed the worst of humanity? When we’ve been through a trauma, our minds and bodies can respond as if it is still happening, and this can lead to PTSD.

“So, your body can struggle to catch up with the idea that you are safe now. We can help people to get ‘grounded’ in the present.

“If we ask, ‘At which point did you know that you were safe?’, it is a reminder of their present relative safety.

“My role was largely helping people to contain their difficult feelings while also offering practical support.

“When we’re in crisis, it can be difficult to think straight and so that kind of support and advocacy can be invaluable.

“It’s not about unpacking the trauma in a major way with people waiting at an airport to fly home unless they are clearly in need of sharing details of their experience with you.

“You help them to hold it together, to contain it, to feel safe, and point them to where they can get expert help when they’ve been safely returned to the UK.”

Barbara added: “In Tel Aviv, there were air raid sirens wailing, and we could hear rocket fire. The girl who had witnessed family members killed in the kibbutz understandably told us ‘I do not feel safe’.

“Even people who had not been directly caught up in the attacks were dealing with the trauma of leaving a place that had been home for years. They were scared. An elderly couple explained to me that they did not want to leave but they had lived through the Yom Kippur War and simply could not risk being caught up in something similar again.

“The British people coming out of Gaza were dealing with a more complex type trauma because by that stage they had been trapped for weeks, and often under attack, before they had got to safety.

“There was a man that kept showing me a video of his house burning down just saying over and over ‘This is my home’. He had four kids and they had lost everything.”

Gran-of-three Barbara – who also helped Brits being evacuated from war-torn Sudan last year – admits her family and friends worry at times about her international work.

She said: “I am 69 this year, but I genuinely do not feel scared on deployments like this because I know the training and preparation that goes in.

“We were issued with body armour in Tel Aviv in case things escalated. The air raid sirens went off regularly and you had 90 seconds to get down to the basement.

“If you were in transit, the driver would pull over and you had to get out and lie flat on the floor. A colleague saw a rocket actually fly overhead when they were out and about, so you were conscious of the dangers.

“I remember when I went to Mumbai after the terror attack in the hotel and my daughter saying, ‘Oh my God, you are going there’. I said, ‘It’s okay, we are going with the government’ and she said, ‘Oh my God, that’s worse’.

“My daughter jokes with me now and says, ‘When are you going to learn to knit?’. She offered to set up an adventure assault course in the back garden and my friends say the same thing.”

She added: “The only time I was afraid was when we were asked to do a Covid deployment to help British nationals trapped on a cruise ship off of Cuba.

“It was right at the start of the Covid crisis I remember emailing our then operational manager and saying, ‘Send me to a war zone, a terror attack, anything, but I am so afraid of this deployment because of my age’.

“This was pre vaccination. I hadn’t been out of my home. I also knew that my family would have really struggled with that.

“It was such a dilemma for me because I didn’t want to let anyone down, but they had no problem taking me off the rota for that one. We are never under any pressure to do what we do. We do this because we are humanitarians with skills that can make a difference.”

Around 150 tonnes of UK aid, including more than 13,000 blankets and 840 family-sized tents, entered Gaza last week.

In addition, a full field hospital, provided by UK Aid funding to Manchester-based frontline medical charity UK-Med, was also deployed last week.

Foreign Secretary David Cameron said: “Too many people in Gaza are suffering. No one should be without basic amenities like shelter and bedding, and everyone deserves the dignity that basic hygiene kits provide. Our largest aid delivery, combined with a new UK funded field hospital, will save lives. “But an immediate pause in the fighting is the only way to get aid into Gaza in the quantities desperately needed. This will also allow for the safe release of hostages. “We could then work towards a sustainable, permanent ceasefire, without a return to destruction, fighting or loss of life.”