SPECIALIST teams of crisis support workers last night were helping the victims of the Dunblane massacre deal with the aftermath of the tragedy, as experts warned of the far reaching effects on families and emergency workers.
Within hours of the shootings major incident teams from Stirling - established after the Lockerbie disaster and comprising psychologists, social workers and psychiatric nurses - were on hand, and those in Edinburgh and Glasgow on stand by.
Dr James Thomson, a university lecturer in psychology and director of a trauma stress clinic said they would be under intense pressure to deal with the "high levels of traumatisation among people in the school, both children and adults".
Mrs Marion Gibson, a social worker with more than 20 years experience of the Northern Troubles, who trained some of the support workers now in Dunblane, described the "terrible uniqueness" of the shootings.
"This is the one we have all been dreading," she said last night. "It is a landmark tragedy. No amount of training can prepare for the death of so many very young children, for so much tragedy. You have to go back to the Aberfan tragedy in 1966 to find something similar."
Psychological "first aid" would be offered initially, said Mrs Gibson, who works for the South and East Belfast Health and Social Services Trust. "Love, comfort, and trust are the foundations for counselling for the future. The little children are vulnerable. They have no frame of reference, not even the language to describe what has happened."
Mrs Gibson also warned of the ripple" effect of such a tragedy which has serious consequences for those not directly touched by it and puts them at risk of post traumatic stress syndrome. She joined other experts in urging that the school becomes the focus of community mourning.
Crisis support workers will be called on to help, according to Ms Wendy Morris, founder of TACT (Trauma After Care Trust). "People are in shock. They won't be receptive to counselling when what they really need is comfort and answers to questions such as, `Where can I see my child's body?'"
The number of children involved there were 700 at Dunblane Primary School presents special problems for support workers, according to Dr Dora Black, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, and director of an NHS Traumatic Stress Clinic. "Very young children can be as traumatised as older ones. They have less cognitive understanding," she said.
However, Dr Black said that psychiatrists would draw on the pioneering work of Prof Robert Pynoos, a Californian psychiatrist who studied an incident in a Los Angeles school when a sniper killed one teacher and injured pupils, and how counselling helped them.
Preventive intervention in which children are helped to process and understand what they have seen - was the key to limiting the destructive effects of trauma and should be available to all involved, she added. Of these, a proportion would need treatment - counselling or, very rarely, drugs.
Mr Peter Hodgkinson, a director of the Centre for Crisis Psychology, whose team helped children to cope with the impact of the M40 school mini bus crash in 1993 which left 12 children and their teacher dead, said there would be a lot of "fear" among the children.
They might regress to early childhood fears of the dark or become "clingy" and not want to be left alone, he said. "It is going to be very much a test for the adults around them, the teachers and their families, to be able to deal with all of this in the right way.
The Press Association adds: According to an Aberfan councillor, Mr Dave Lewis, local residents of the Welsh town which was the victim of a school disaster 30 years ago would share the grief of Dunblane. "Both tragedies happened at school and some dreadful parallels can be drawn."