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Immigration and Refugee Service
(LIRS)
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 SPECIAL FEATURE:

Promising Practices
for Refugee-Serving Programs

BRYCS is pleased to introduce the second installment of our “promising practices” Sidebar Series. In this series, we highlight programs serving refugee families that demonstrate “promising practices,” or strategies that can be shown to be effective in moving a program towards its goals, and that can be promoted and replicated by other programs in the field. This Sidebar Series is an effort to document programs, strategies, and activities that WORK.

This month, BRYCS recognizes the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma’s (HPRT) Health Promotion Program. This program is not only exceptional in its approach to promoting health and providing access to care in a variety of ways--indigenous, Western, and through the use of trained interpreters--it has also been instrumental in building capacity in and establishing strong partnerships with the refugee communities it serves. Strong evaluations of this program’s efforts have demonstrated positive results that are sustained over time.

The HPRT Health Promotion Program, currently funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is a continuation of a formal and informal 20+ year collaboration between HPRT and the Vietnamese American Civic Association of greater Boston (VACA) and the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association (CMAA). The goals of this program have been to identify Vietnamese and Cambodian torture survivors suffering from depression or under-treated depression, to understand how this affects their overall health status, and to develop innovative and collaborative strategies for increasing the health of these survivors. The Health Promotion program has developed a holistic curriculum for these communities that integrates the concept of mental health--or how trauma affects the overall health of the individual, the family, and the community--throughout a range of medical conditions. Evaluation results demonstrate a sustained reduction in participants’ depression and increased confidence in caring for their own health.

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. This list includes additional programs that address holistic health and community collaborations.

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 clearinghouse at brycs.org or call 202-541-3232 to speak with our Outreach and Information Coordinator.  You may also submit your program using our Web form.

SUGGEST A
CLEARINGHOUSE
RESOURCE

The BRYCS project is acquiring and centralizing resources concerning refugee children, youth, and families.  We are interested in print and non-print resources, Promising Practices, descriptions of programs for refugee youth and children, and other resources of interest to the refugee-serving community. 

The resources we collect and present through the Clearinghouse are often accompanied by descriptions from BRYCS, and include, when available, the full text on the BRYCS website.  BRYCS will continue to update the clearinghouse as new materials are acquired, reviewed, and included.

Please join us in making this possible by suggesting relevant resources. Click on the “Suggest a Resource” link on the BRYCS homepage, or call toll-free 1-888-572-6500—press #3 after the prompt. Or send an e-mail to Outreach & Information Coordinator at clearinghouse at brycs.org.
 

  
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?

AUGUST 2005 SPOTLIGHT

Refugee Health and Wellness

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.[1]

BRYCS' Spotlight this month provides an overview of health issues for refugee families and lists practical resources for those who serve them. Like the World Health Organization's definition above, we take a holistic approach to health that incorporates physical, mental, and social well-being - an approach likely to resonate with most refugees' world views. Despite being at increased risk for some health problems, refugees frequently encounter barriers to health and mental health care in the United States. While some barriers are practical and more broadly shared, such as cost and location, others are more specific to refugees and other immigrants, and include language and subtle cultural differences stemming from very different conceptions of health, illness, and healing.

One very innovative and effective method for increasing access to health care for refugees is the development of strong partnerships between health centers and refugee communities. A newly published toolkit - a collaborative effort between the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and their Federal partners in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration/Refugee Mental Health Program, and the Office of Global Health Affairs - offers step-by-step guidance on how to develop such a collaboration, and is highlighted later in this article. In this month's Sidebar on "promising practices", we feature a health center with a long history of successful collaboration with refugee communities as a replicable model.

The Need for Health Promotion:  Although refugees’ backgrounds may vary considerably (by country of origin, level of education, use of Western health care systems, exposure to infectious diseases, and experiences of physical and psychic trauma, etc),[2] they all share the same experience of being forced to flee their home countries, unable to return due to a well-founded fear of persecution.[3]
[1] Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948. The Definition has not been amended since 1948.
[2] For more information on health risks, see http://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/refugee_health_problems.htm.
[3] For more on "Who is a Refugee," go to http://www.arlingtonrefugeeservices.com/new_page_3.htm.

This month's featured search highlights resources that explore refugee health issues.  Last month's spotlight highlighting the out-of-school time and youth programs is available in the BRYCS archive. The accompanying featured search is available through the BRYCS archive, along with past resource lists.

WHAT'S NEW

  "Reach Out! A Guide to Medicaid and SCHIP Outreach to Immigrant Families"

"Reach Out!", from the sponsors of Children's Health Matters, Catholic Charities USA, is a user-friendly guide for planning outreach and enrollment activities to immigrant families. The "Reach Out!" guide can be ordered from the Childrens Health Matters website.

  The "Lost Boys of Sudan": Functional and Behavioral Health of Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Resettled in the United States

The idea for this study came from a meeting with LIRS and USCCB's Unaccompanied Refugee Minor (URM) programs in 2001, and Dr. Paul Geltman and his colleagues worked closely with our two agencies to conduct his research. LIRS and USCCB staff provided him with access to the URM sites, the survey collected data on the health of the Sudanese youth as well as on URM program effectiveness, and local staff worked closely with these youth to enable them to complete questionnaires at a very high rate. Information about the study, an abstract, and ordering information are available in the BRYCS Clearinghouse.

  Guardianship Guidelines Updated

Guardianship Information by State, which provides an overview of guardianship laws with links to state specific information, has been updated with new state links.  This resource is one of a number of resources in the BRYCS Clearinghouse, including the BRYCS’ Fact Sheets on guardianship at Guardianship: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Guardianship FAQ Summary.  

  Parents' English Proficiency Tied to Children's Health

Limited English Proficiency, Primary Language at Home, and Disparities in Children's Health Care: How Language Barriers Are Measured Matters, by Glenn Flores, M.D., Milagros Abreu, M.D., Sandra C. Tomany-Korman, M.S., July 2005: Speaking a language other than English at home and having limited English proficiency are both associated with health care disparities. New research shows, however, that parents' English proficiency is the more useful of the two factors for measuring the impact of language barriers on children's health and health care. Read more about this study.

  Illinois Offers Free School Impact Multimedia Tools

Illinois Refugee Children School Impact Grant partnership has developed and made available a multimedia Video Tool Kit for educators and refugees. Each tool kit includes a DVD with In Our Country: Educating Newcomers in America in English, Arabic, Somali, Mai Mai, Swahili, and Spanish; and the "Welcoming New Learners: A Professional Development Tool" in English and Spanish. Both are closed-captioned in English. The tool kit also includes a VHS tape of the "Welcoming New Learners" video in English, and a user guide. In Our Country: Educating Newcomers in America is designed for refugee parents, students, and their new classmates.   Welcoming New Learners: A Professional Development Tool is meant for teachers, social service agencies, and administrators of programs working with new refugees and immigrants. The user guide includes suggestions for training others with the videos. The Illinois State Board of Education is distributing the Video Tool Kits free for educational purposes while supplies last, and may reprint it in the fall.  The ACF/DHHS Web page has more information on RCSIG grants.

  DOJ CRD Offers New LEP Materials From the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division

Breaking Down the Language Barrier: Translating Limited English Proficiency in Practice - This English language Web video explains the language access requirements of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI) and Executive Order 13166 through vignettes that expose the problems resulting from the absence of language assistance.  Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean versions are expected in the near future. Contact the Divisions Coordination and Review Section (COR) at 202-307-2222 to request a copy in a particular language. An LEP Know Your Rights brochure is also available, in Arabic, Cambodian, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

Limited English Proficiency Resource Document: Tips and Tools from the Field - Additional technical assistance tools include brochures and a LEP video, which is an excellent companion to CORs general Title VI video.

  New Federal Grant Writing Toolkit

The ARC Federal Funding Toolkit was created by the Accessing Resources for Community (ARC) and Faith-Based Organizations Initiative, with support from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) National Training and Technical Assistance Center (NTTAC), to assist community and faith-based organizations with the Federal funding process.

COMING SOON:  This month, we featured a holistic health approach to refugee well-being, providing related resources and a replicable model. Join us next month when we continue our focus on health and mental health by highlighting interventions developed for refugee children through the work of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
 
 
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BRYCS is a joint project of LIRS and USCCB/MRS and is supported by the
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