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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
Olmsted County Child and Family Services and Family
Services Rochester include "Family
Involvement in Child Welfare Practice"
with all populations in Rochester, Minnesota, including
refugees and immigrants, to provide an opportunity
for families, friends, and service providers to
come together to make decisions on children's safety,
permanency, and well-being.
Hmong Child
and Family Team Meetings are used by Catawba
County Social Services and United Hmong Association
in North Carolina to help families have a voice
and direct input into plans that are developed to
ensure the safety and well being of their children
and to strengthen the family unit.
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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.
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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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FALL
2007 SPOTLIGHT
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Three Somali children were placed in foster
care… and the agency decided to hold a Family
Group Conference to develop a permanency plan
for the children. The meeting was held in the
Community Room at their apartment building on
a Saturday afternoon and the grandmother prepared
all of the food for the conference. More than
40 family members and community supports attended
the meeting along with the social worker, guardian
ad litem, two community resource workers, two
facilitators, and an interpreter… After
developing a plan everyone was satisfied with,
the conference closed with an aunt reading a letter
the grandmother had written the night before about
the importance of bringing the children back to
their family and community, where they belong.
-- Case example from this month’s
featured promising practice,
Family Involvement in Child Welfare Practice
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Cultural competence, strengths-based practice,
and understanding and working with a child within the
larger family and community context are regarded as important
principles in child welfare practice today. Implementing
these principles, including having the knowledge and tools
on hand to do so, has, of course, proved far more challenging
for most child welfare practitioners. This is particularly
true for those working with refugee and immigrant families
who become involved with the public child welfare system.
Newcomer family and community structures are more likely
to be unfamiliar to child welfare staff, their strengths
not as easily recognized, and some may even be misunderstood
as liabilities. In this Fall 2007 Spotlight, BRYCS highlights
the culturally competent approach of a national agency,
Migration and Refugee Services of the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops (MRS/USCCB), specializing in child
welfare services to refugees and immigrants for over 30
years, in addition to featuring models being implemented,
tested, and disseminated by two major child welfare entities:
The American Humane Association (AHA) and The Annie E.
Casey Foundation (AECF). Although these three approaches
may differ slightly, they have far more in common due
to an emphasis on working together with family and community
structures as strengths and resources. Most importantly,
they offer practical tools and resources for practitioners
to use when serving refugee and immigrant families who
enter the public child welfare system. To read BRYCS Fall
2007 Spotlight, click
here. In addition, please see BRYCS' list of highlighted
resources on this topic.
To see any of the past Spotlights
or lists of highlighted resources by topic, please visit
Resources by Topic.
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WHAT'S
NEW - NOVEMBER 2007 |
ANNOUNCEMENTS
In collaboration with BRYCS, USCCB/MRS’ Children’s
Services recently completed Best
Interest Determination for Refugee Children: An Annotated
Bibliography of Law and Practice. UNHCR has developed
and is now testing a set of guidelines to assist in identifying
and finding solutions for vulnerable refugee children and
has requested the input of member states and NGOs, including
USCCB/MRS, on how to operationalize them. This bibliography
is unique in that it draws parallels between child welfare
practices with refugee children abroad and child welfare
practices in the U.S.
The U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) organized a delegation
that traveled to Istanbul, Beirut, Amman and Damascus July
2 – 13, 2007, on a fact-finding mission concerning
the more than two million Iraqis who have now fled their
homeland and taken temporary refuge in surrounding countries.
The current and escalating situation, needs assessment,
service gaps, and recommendations can be found in a recent
report titled Escaping
Mayhem and Murder: Iraqi Refugees in the Middle East.
The Center for Applied Linguistic’s (CAL) Cultural
Orientation Resource Center (COR) has just published
the latest in CAL’s Refugee Backgrounder series, Bhutanese
Refugees in Nepal. Backgrounders provide key information
about new refugee groups for U.S. resettlement workers,
with sections on the need for resettlement, culture, resettlement
considerations, and a one page statistical summary. BRYCS
will announce when CAL’s full-length “cultural
profile” on Bhutanese refugees becomes available.
EVENTS
The Beyond
the Bench XVIII Conference will be in San Diego, California
on December 12-14. The conference is devoted to children
and families in the juvenile court system and will address
issues of juvenile justice, child welfare, mental health,
substance abuse, education, community engagement, and more.
Beyond the Bench is a multidisciplinary conference that
brings together a wide range of professionals in judicial
and social services. Ken Borelli, BRYCS consultant, will
be presenting at the conference. For more information including
a preliminary agenda and presenter biographies, click
here.
Bi-Annual
Conference of the National Network to End Violence Against
Immigrant Women will be in Lexington, Kentucky on November
14-15. The conference will include sessions on issues that
affect immigrant victims of domestic violence, sexual assault,
and trafficking. It is co-chaired by Legal Momentum, ASISTA
Immigration Technical Assistance Project, and the Family
Violence Prevention Fund.
The American
Humane Association’s 2nd annual Conference on Differential
Response will be in Long Beach, California from November
14-16. Differential response, also referred to as “dual
track,” “multiple track,” or “alternative
response,” is an approach that allows child protective
services to respond differently to accepted reports of child
abuse and neglect. This conference aims to build knowledge,
disseminate ongoing practices, and provide a platform for
the exchange of ideas on a range of topics related to implementing
differential response in child welfare.
On November 29, as part of the National
Child Trauma Stress Network’s (NCTSN) Culture
and Trauma Speaker Series, Michael de Arellano will be hosting
a 90 minute presentation titled Adapting
Trauma-focused Treatments for Culturally Diverse Populations.
Zero
to Three’s National Training Institute will be
November 30 – December 2 in Orlando, Florida. This
multi-disciplinary conference will engage early childhood
development specialists through session topics such as infant
mental health, early development and learning, early intervention,
and program design/leadership/policy.
The 8th
Annual National Youth Development Symposium will be
held in Chicago, IL on December 3-6. This is being co-sponsored
by National
Association of Workforce Development Professionals and
the National
Youth Employment Coalition and will include resources
in the fields of youth development, workforce development,
and education. Many refugee and immigrant youth take jobs
to help their families financially and to gain skills as
they prepare for adult employment.
FUNDING
Tolerance.org,
a web-based project of the Southern Poverty Law Center,
accepts grant applications year-round. The Teaching
Tolerance Grant Program offers grants of $500 to $2500
to preK-12 classroom teachers for projects designed to reduce
prejudice among youth, improve inter-group relations in
schools and/or support educator professional development
in these areas. Proposals from other community organizations
and houses of worship will be considered on the basis of
direct student impact. The Mix
It Up Grant Program offers grants of $500 to support
youth-directed programs and projects that address social
boundaries in schools or communities. A “Mix It Up
at Lunch Day” will take place on November 13. You
can make a difference just by taking a new seat in the cafeteria!
"By making the move, students can cross the lines of
division, meet new people and make new friends." Use
the Mix
It Up Survey (PDF) to see what social boundaries exist
at your school.
FOR REFUGEE YOUTH
Visit the Web site of Awer
G. Bul – one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Through
paintings, documentaries, and music, he tells his story
about the war, his journey to the United States, and his
never-ending desire to give back to the community in the
best way he knows how: ART.
RESOURCES
Integration
Building
Community Strength is a report about community-based
organizations serving South Asians in the United States
produced by South
Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT). The report
seeks to synthesize the results of a needs assessment conducted
by SAALT while highlighting best practices and recommendations
for stakeholders to better assist South Asian organizations,
and by extension, the South Asian communities served (description
taken from report).
In a recent report by Utah’s United
Way of Salt Lake, Building
on Common Ground: A Framework for Immigrant Integration
concludes that helping immigrants and refugees integrate
and thrive in our communities is vital for the long-term
prosperity of our states. In just the past two decades,
Utah has experienced an influx of foreign-born residents.
Child Welfare
Child Sexual Abuse Fact Sheet: For Parents, Teachers, and
Other Caregivers from the National
Child Traumatic Stress Network defines child sexual
abuse, debunks common myths, and indicates how to help protect
children and respond to abuse disclosure. In addition, Promise
Video: Dealing with Child Sexual Abuse is an online
video that was developed to provide more information on
the impact of child sexual abuse and emphasizes the importance
of including parents/caretakers in treatment. You must fill
out a brief survey prior to accessing the video.
Evidence
Based Practice in Child Welfare in the Context of Cultural
Competence is a report from a meeting held in June
addressing the topics of evidence based practices and cultural
sensitivity in the child welfare system. This report details
the presentations at the meeting, along with questions,
implementation and the community response. The second half
of the report includes a participant activity about cultural
competency evidence based practice in child welfare services.
Every
Child Deserves a Permanent Family is a publication
from Generations
United that discusses Latino children in the foster
care system, focusing on federally funded subsidized guardianship
as a permanency option for the children. The report discusses
Latino youth compared to the overall population of children
in foster care, along with the family and cultural backgrounds
that make family guardianship a positive option for the
children as opposed to remaining in foster care and living
with non-family relatives.
Education
The
Harvard Family Research Project presents Tomasito’s
Mother Comes to School, a Spanish/English storybook.
This online illustrated resource about family involvement
at school is "designed to engage children and their
families. For educators, the printable online storybook
is an easy-to-use family involvement tool that supports
literacy." (description quoted from Web site.)
The Center
for Applied Linguistics has produced an Evaluator’s
Toolkit for Dual Language Programs to assist staff
in dual language programs that serve English language learners
(ELLs) to understand how to meet assessment and accountability
guidelines. The toolkit will help in establishing an evaluation
question, what data to collect, how to develop a spreadsheet,
how to analyze your data, and how to present them.
Health/Mental Health
New
Insights on how Mental Health is Influenced by Culture and
Immigration Status from the National
Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) Science
News Science Update of July 11, 2007 is a description
of a special issue of Research in Human Development
(Volume: 4, Number 1-2, 2007) that focuses on the findings
of NIMH-sponsored research of mental health among minority
populations in the United States and the role that culture,
race and ethnicity can play. Articles can be purchased at
http://www.leaonline.com/toc/rhd/4/1-2.
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. (Publisher's description)
Youth
The PACER
Center’s National Center for Bullying Prevention
provides free
handouts for English, Spanish, and Somali speaking parents.
Topics include talking to your children about bullying,
talking with school administrators, record-keeping and bullying,
and IEPs and bullying. PACER has also created an animated
anti-bullying Web site for elementary school students.
Playing
for the Future: The Role of Sport and Recreation in Supporting
Refugee Young People to 'Settle Well' in Australia
was developed in 2007 through the Centre for Multicultural
Youth Issues (CMYI) in Australia. The Multicultural Sport
& Recreation Project aims to increase the number of
ongoing sporting opportunities for refugee and migrant youth.
Though the initiative and resulting report are from Australia,
it includes ideas that may be applicable to those working
with refugee children in the U.S.
BRYCS' Winter Spotlight - Coming
in December:
Visit www.brycs.org for information
on cultural competency training for child welfare staff
working with refugee and immigrant children, which will
include a Spotlight article, Promising Practices, and a
List of Highlighted Resources. |
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