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REFUGEE PARENT INTERVIEWS
In order to gather first-hand accounts
of parenting and resettlement challenges
and successes, BRYCS staff are conducting
a series of interviews with refugee parents.
Each interview summary will be followed
by several discussion questions, so that
refugee serving agencies can use the interviews
as a staff development tool. A new interview
will be added monthly, so check back!
 Jarsso,
an Oromo Ethiopian Father
Aline,
A Burundian Social Worker
Caridad
and Arturo, A Cuban-Chilean Family
John
and Ellen, A Liberian Family
Mary, A Sudanese Mother
Anna,
a Russian Mother
Klee
Thoo, a Burmese Karen Father
Tou
and Mee, Hmong Parents
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PROMISING PRACTICES
FOR REFUGEE-SERVING
PROGRAMS
The BRYCS sidebar series continues this month by
highlighting two child welfare training programs
that emphasize cultural competence with newcomer
populations.
The Public Child
Welfare Training Academy (PCWTA) provides core
training to line social workers, supervisors, and
managers of five counties in the Southern California
region. Currently, the PCWTA is working with trainer/consultant
Dr. Wanjiru Golly on a class entitled, "Refugee
Communities: Social and Practical Implications for
Service Providers.”
The Ohio Child
Welfare Training Program (OCWTP) is a comprehensive,
competency-based in-service training system for
staff, managers, adoptive, and foster parents in
Ohio’s 88 county Public Children Services
Agencies. Since the program’s inception in
1986, OCWTP core curriculum for caseworkers has
addressed cultural considerations in all stages
of case planning and integrated them throughout
the modules; current workshops topics include: Culture
& Diversity; Basic Spanish; The Color of Child
Welfare; Working with Families who are Muslim; and
Casework with the Immigrant and Refugee in Mind.
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BRYCS will continue to develop our “promising
practices” series in the coming months as we
share the innovative work being accomplished by programs
serving refugee children and their families throughout
the United States. Please be sure to visit BRYCS'
Targeted Resources for Program
Managers, where you will find a link to the complete
list of Program Descriptions in the Clearinghouse.
If you have a program to share, or are aware of
any creative efforts towards enhancing services
for refugee children, please contact BRYCS with
the details. We want to recognize and profile these
efforts, so that others can learn from them. We
are also interested in hearing from you about what
tools, resources or mechanisms that you would like
to learn more about. Email
info at brycs.org or call 202-541-3232 to speak
with our Outreach and Information Coordinator.
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Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services
(BRYCS) is a national technical assistance project
working to broaden the scope of information and collaboration
among service providers - in order to strengthen services
to refugee youth, children and their families. Read more about
our mission and services.
Who is a refugee?
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BRYCS is pleased to present our newest publication, Raising
Children in a New Country: An Illustrated Handbook.
This booklet was created as a tool for refugee and immigrant
serving agencies, as they help newcomer parents adjust to
the different laws, norms and practices around raising children
in the United States. Please see our Publications
page if you prefer to download the handbook in smaller
segments. To order print or CD copies of the Handbook, please
email info@brycs.org or
call 1-888-572-6500.
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Now
you can sign up online to receive the BRYCS Bulletin Alert
via email, as well as sign up for our new BRYCS Discussion
Listserv.
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WINTER
2007 SPOTLIGHT
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When the ACS [child protective services]
worker came to the house she did not speak Chinese,
so I sent my daughter to talk to her, I thought
she was a missionary. She talked to my daughter
for five or six minutes, my daughter only said
she would call me back…then I later found
out I had been reported for abuse by the school
because I punished my daughter for misbehaving.
No one ever talked to me or explained to me what
was going on, only to my daughter.
[1]
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These newcomer parents painfully convey
the cultural and linguistic barriers that can be experienced
when child welfare workers interact with foreign-born
parents. Situations like these are frustrating for both
newcomer families and for the child welfare workers involved
with them, underscoring the relevance of cultural competence
training for child welfare workers. Such training is a
necessary bridge between the assumptions and practices
of majority and minority cultures.
Given increasing diversity, and decreasing
cultural isolation—due to the forces of globalization
and migration—child welfare workers and newcomer
service providers must collaborate more in order to improve
caseworker knowledge of cross-cultural parenting practices,
and to improve newcomer knowledge of U.S. parenting laws
and norms. To read the BRYCS Winter 2007 Spotlight, click
here. In addition, please see BRYCS' lists of highlighted
resources on this topic: Child
Welfare Training Curricula for Staff Working with Refugees
and Immigrants and Resources
to Enhance Child Welfare Training Curricula.
To see any of the past Spotlights
or lists of highlighted resources by topic, please visit
the BRYCS archive.
| 1 - -- Earner, I. (2007).
”Immigrant Families and Public Child Welfare:
Barriers to Services and Approaches for Change.”
Child Welfare, 86(4). |
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WHAT'S
NEW - JANUARY 2008 |
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Check out the new BRYCS Web page describing our Technical
Assistance services, introducing our staff, and presenting
our national network of BRYCS Technical Assistance Consultants.
BRYCS is seeking your input for our Spring 2008 Web site
update on school adjustment! Does your school or agency
have materials for orienting refugee and immigrant youth
to the schools, such as handbooks or videos? Does your school
or agency have a program to facilitate the social integration
of refugee and immigrant youth? If so, please email info@brycs.org.
BRYCS has been working on updating our Promising
Practices in the Clearinghouse – over 60! Each
month, we will list the programs that have been newly updated.
This month, we have updated the South
Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) program Arise, a program
for youth providing leadership development, academic support,
and artistic opportunities, among other services.
Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning’s new
ELT
Publications Library lists English Language Teaching
publications that are available for immediate download.
This includes the Spring Institute publication, Refugee
Children with Low Literacy Skills or Interrupted Education:
Identifying Challenges and Strategies, which has
been popular with BRYCS’ audience.
John Dau, one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan”
who was featured in the film “God Grew Tired of Us,”
is a semi-finalist in the “Volvo for Life Awards”
competition. John is one of ten semi-finalists in the “Quality
of Life” category. The awards honor individuals who
have done exceptional work for their communities. To see
John’s
profile, click the “Quality” category and
look for John’s name).
EVENTS
The 22nd
Annual San Diego International Conference on Child and Family
Maltreatment will be held in San Diego, CA, on January
28 – February 1. Among the sessions is a Global Institute
on child trafficking.
Children
2008: A Call for Action—Leading the Nation for Children
and Families, the Child Welfare League of America’s
2008 conference, will be in Washington, DC, on February
25-27. BRYCS staff will host an exhibit table with materials,
including our new illustrated
parenting booklet. Watch for more information in February.
TRAINING
Partnering
with Parents, a project of the Iowa State University
Extension, consists of a series of 11 interactive training
modules based on principles of family centered practices
and parenting education theory and research. The series
runs from January 14 through June 20, 2008, and is available
online, or face-to-face for Iowa residents. These training
modules are for those who work with parents and provide
skills and knowledge on planning, implementing and evaluating
parenting education programs. Registration deadline is January
7, 2008. (Description summarized from source).
FUNDING
The
Reiman Foundation focuses its giving on three main areas:
healthcare, education, and children’s initiatives.
There is no specific application form and no set deadline.
They simply ask that the application be specific enough
to give a clear picture of the intended project, why you
are proposing it, who will benefit from it, and how it will
be administered. (Description summarized from source.)
The NEA Foundation
offers a number of grants
to educators. Learning
and Leadership Grants provide opportunities for teachers
and staff to engage in professional development. Awards
are given to individuals in the amount of $2,000 and $5,000
for groups. Student
Achievement Grants are for $5,000 to improve the academic
achievement of students by engaging in critical thinking
and problem solving that deepen knowledge of standards-based
subject matter. The deadline for both grants is February
1, 2008.
FOR REFUGEE AND IMMIGRANT YOUTH
Taking
On Too Much: I Can't Stop Trying to Prove Myself,
an article written by immigrant youth Ilya Arbit, is about
his experience with role reversal and striving to achieve
his goals. Read this moving first-person account of taking
on an adult role to help his parents, and taking on multiple
responsibilities to prove his worth as an immigrant.
Four
Feet, Two Sandals is by Karen Williams and Khadra
Mohammed, Executive Director of the Pittsburgh Refugee Center.
Based on Khadra’s experience with Afghan refugees
living in refugee camps in Pakistan, this story sheds light
on the plight of refugee children living without basic needs
in camps worldwide. (Description taken from source.)
NetAid is accepting applications for their Global
Action Awards program. These awards honor U.S. high
school students who have led a project that had a direct,
positive impact on people in developing countries or that
raised awareness about global poverty. Honorees receive
$5,000 for higher education or a charitable cause of their
choice, and are honored at a ceremony in New York City.
Deadline: January 31, 2008. (Description taken from source.)
RESOURCES
Integration
Muslim
Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream,
from the Pew Research Center, studies a national sample
of 1,050 Muslims living in the United States in an attempt
to measure the demographics, attitudes and experiences of
Muslim Americans. The study builds on surveys conducted
in 2006 by the Pew Global Attitudes Project of Muslim minority
publics in Great Britain, France, Germany and Spain and
follows on Pew’s global surveys conducted over the
past five years with more than 30,000 Muslims in 22 nations
around the world. The full report is available in English,
with a report summary available in Arabic.
Immigrant
Integration in Low-income Urban Neighborhoods: Improving
Economic Prospects and Strengthening Connections for Vulnerable
Families, a recent report prepared for the Annie
E. Casey Foundation by the Urban Institute, addresses how
immigrants are integrating in U.S. inner cities. Immigrant
families have emerged as an important, vulnerable population
given that a large number of children, 3.5 million, are
living in immigrant families with incomes below 100 percent
of the federal poverty level. The report draws on a survey
of residents in ten vulnerable urban neighborhoods to examine
the financial well-being and economic integration of families
of different racial, ethnic, and nativity status. (Description
summarized from source.)
The
Housing Pathways of New Immigrants, a recent report
from The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, explores the arrival
experiences and settlement stories of new immigrants to
the United Kingdom. Researchers interviewed newcomers to
the U.K. from Liberia, Pakistan, Poland and Somalia, exploring
immigrant housing options and choices, and their experiences
of living in different situations, the importance of residential
location to their settlement experience, and engagement
and interaction with the housing system and resulting patterns
of residential mobility and immobility. The report also
discusses the relationship between family change or family
breakdown and the newcomers’ housing experiences.
Child Welfare
Culturally
Competent Practice With Latino Families, a training
curriculum developed for the Georgia Division of Family
and Children’s Services, provides participants with
an introduction to the basic concepts of culturally competent
practice, and specific skills and knowledge for culturally
competent practice with Latino families. Upon completion
of the training, participants will be able to identify the
basic concepts of cultural competence, and understand the
current demographics of Latino populations throughout the
nation, the complexity of diverse Latino populations and
the phases of the migration experience. (Description summarized
from source.)
Bridging
the Cultural Divide: Building a Continuum of Support Services
for Latino Families, from the Committee for Hispanic
Children and Families (CHCF), critically examines the needs
of Latino families, the current gaps in the continuum of
child welfare services, and funding inequities. In this
report, CHCF offers six recommendations to address these
issues.
The
Social Ecology of Acculturation: Implications for Child
Welfare Services to Children of Immigrants can
be found in Volume 29 of Children and Youth Services Review.
Child welfare agencies in the U.S. are seeking to respond
to the needs for linguistically and culturally responsive
services for children of immigrants and their families as
this population continues to grow. This article seeks to
explain intergenerational–intercultural conflict,
the influence of ethnic networks, and the ways in which
public policy shapes the context of parenting within immigrant
families. (Description summarized from source.)
Education
Registering
Students from Language Backgrounds other than English,
from the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional
Assistance, is a resource for schools with refugee and immigrant
students. This report seeks to alert administrators, school
staff, and database managers to variations in the naming
systems of other cultures; to help these groups accommodate
other cultures and identify students consistently in school
databases; and to provide knowledge of other cultures’
naming conventions and forms of address to assist in interacting
with students and their family members. (Description taken
from source.)
The LEP
Partnership is a U.S. Department of Education initiative
to improve assessments of English language proficiency,
reading, and mathematics for Limited English Proficient
students. As part of the LEP Partnership, the Department
of Education will provide technical assistance and support
to States working on a continuum of strategies for assessing
LEP students in the content areas in order to support the
development of models and options that might work best for
States and their diverse LEP student populations. The U.
S. Department of Education has initiated work on six technical
assistance projects to help States improve assessments
for limited English proficient (LEP) students. The LEP Partnership
has put together an annotated
bibliography on their framework.
Understanding
Latino Parental Involvement in Education, by the
Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, examines Latino parents’
perceptions of their participation in the education of their
children; schools’ and teachers’ expectations
of parental involvement; programmatic initiatives addressing
parental involvement in education; and Latino students’
perceptions of the role of parental involvement in their
education. The findings of this study indicated that divergent
definitions and perceptions of parental involvement in education
exist among the different stakeholders. Moreover, the findings
revealed that schools lack clear organizational goals and
objectives on how best to involve parents in the schools.
(Description taken from source.)
No
Name Calling Week, January 21-25, seeks to focus national
attention on the problem of name-calling in schools, and
to provide students and educators with the tools and inspiration
to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate name-calling
in their communities. (Description taken from source.) A
resource kit is available for purchase, but numerous resources
are available as free downloads, including lesson
plans for grades K-8. Lesson 1 for middle level youth
includes first person accounts of bullying as described
by an Iraqi boy and a Thai girl, along with discussion questions.
Health/Mental Health
Adapting Trauma-Focused Treatments for Diverse Populations,
a
video presentation by Michael de Arellano as part of
the NCTSN Culture & Trauma Speaker Series, is now available
for viewing online. The presentation includes a discussion
of why adaptations may be helpful when working with children
from diverse cultural groups and a sample adaptation of
an intervention that has been developed for Latino children
and families. The PowerPoint
presentation and handouts are also available online.
Children
at War by P.W. Singer is a comprehensive examination
of the use of children as soldiers around the globe. The
author explores the evolution of the phenomenon, shows how
and why children are recruited, indoctrinated, trained and
converted to soldiers, and then lays out the consequences
for global security, with a special case study on terrorism.
The book ends with an outline of a response that can end
the use of child soldiers. (Description summarized from
source.)
Program Development
A
Basic Guide to Program Evaluation is available
from the Free Management Library, which is a free, online
library that includes information on fundraising, volunteers,
public policy, and more. This publication provides guidance
toward planning and implementing an evaluation process and
covers many kinds of evaluations, such as goals-based, process-based,
and outcomes-based.
COMING SOON:
BRYCS is pleased to announce the debut of its new Youth
Arts and Voices Web page coming this February! This Web
page was created to provide refugee and immigrant youth
an opportunity to share their voices and to showcase their
creativity and talent. This Web page will also bring together,
in one location, many resources on expressive arts.
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