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SPECIAL FEATURE:

Promising Practices
for Refugee-Serving Programs

In this month’s Sidebar Series on “Promising Practices,” BRYCS highlights three innovative examples of child care programming provided either by or in collaboration with resettlement agencies in three areas of the country. As noted in this month’s spotlight article, a range of formal child care options may be available, but they are not always accessible to refugee families. Barriers to formal child care for refugees include lack of knowledge about child care options, cost, paper work, transportation, and a serious discomfort with leaving their children in the care of a stranger. The programs featured this month increase access to child care by helping ease the transition to formal care for both refugee children and their parents, with impressive results.

The Appleseed Learning Center (ALC) is the child care program of a for-profit agency in Cleveland, Ohio. This agency was approached by Catholic Charities’ Migration and Refugee Services in Cleveland and asked to serve Somali Bantu children while their parents attended ESL and job training. The program has since hired a Somali Bantu refugee as a daycare staff member, provides interpretation for families in Maay Maay, and currently serves 15 Somali Bantu children, who make up 25% of their total enrollment. The cost of these children’s daycare is subsidized through Cuyahoga County childcare vouchers. See their Program Description for more details.

The Catholic Social Services’ Resettlement Office (CSS-RO) of Charlotte, North Carolina assists refugee parents with the placement of their children in the local Head Start program. CSS-RO staff successfully advocated for priority placement for refugee children in Head Start, and support parents by helping with the required paper work, orientation, interpretation, transportation, and accompaniment to Teacher/Parent conferences. This year, the program expects to serve 19 refugee children from a broad range of countries. See their Program Description for more details.

Catholic Charities of Buffalo, New York (CC Buffalo) has developed a transitional childcare facility for their refugee parents while they attend ESL classes. This program helps refugee parents become familiar with the structure and routines of formal child care in a setting that allows ongoing observation and regular interaction between parents and children. This Transitional Childcare Center has made a noticeable difference for refugee families, facilitating their adjustment to formal child care, Head Start and Even Start Family Literacy programs. See their Program Description for more details.

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 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.
 

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 2006 SPOTLIGHT


Caring about Child Care for Refugee Families

In Fiscal Year 2005, 35% of all refugees admitted to the United States were below the age of 16—roughly 18,500 children.[1]

Any parent understands the complexity of finding adequate child care arrangements, and the anxiety of leaving one’s child with another caregiver. Refugee parents also face these hurdles, compounded by a lack of familiarity with U.S. child care norms and expectations, language barriers, and limited family and community systems on which to rely for help.

A new BRYCS curriculum, Enhancing Child Care for Refugee Self-Sufficiency, explores the child care issues facing refugee families. The curriculum combines useful descriptive information about the U.S. child care system, feedback from refugee serving agencies, practical recommendations for improving refugee access to child care, promising practice examples, and a sequence of training modules and handouts.

In researching this curriculum, BRYCS staff gathered feedback from 12 refugee serving agencies, as well as Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) agencies in seven states. This first-hand information provides a unique perspective on the struggles faced by refugee families seeking child care and the strategies employed to find adequate care.

This month's Spotlight and featured search focus on the newest toolkit to be published by BRYCS. The featured search lists the most up-to-date and useful resources on this topic available for free download. Additional resources available free or for a fee can be found here.

Last month's Spotlight and featured search on refugee youth and the transition to adulthood are available in the BRYCS archive.

1 - U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), Office of Admissions, Refugee Processing Center (RPC), Fiscal Year 2005. “Refugee Arrivals by Relationship to Principal Applicant and Gender, Age, and Marital Status: Fiscal Year 2005.” USCIS Statistics Yearbook, available at: http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/yearbook/2005/Table15.xls

BRYCS announces the publication of our new Toolkit/curriculum: Enhancing Child Care for Refugee Self-Sufficiency. This Toolkit was designed to assist refugee-serving agencies in dealing with child care issues facing refugees. The curriculum combines useful descriptive information about the U.S. child care system, feedback from refugee serving agencies, practical recommendations for improving refugee access to child care, promising practice examples, and a sequence of training modules and handouts.

Our previous Toolkits, Growing Up in a New Country: A Positive Youth Development Toolkit for Working with Refugees and Immigrants and Raising Children in a New Country: A Toolkit for Working with Refugee Parents are available in the BRYCS Clearinghouse and on CD-ROM. Please email clearinghouse@brycs.org or call 1-888-572-6500 (press #3 for the Clearinghouse) to request a free CD-ROM of the Toolkits.

WHAT'S NEW

Just released! The latest issue of Protecting Children, the American Humane Association’s professional journal, focuses on the intersection between migration and child welfare in the United States. The American Humane Association collaborated with the Loyola University Chicago Graduate School of Social Work to produce this seminal issue titled Migration: A Critical Issue for Child Welfare (Volume 21, Number 2, 2006). Continue to check the American Humane Association Web site Publications link for more details and for ordering information (coming soon).

Funding News

The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy is pleased to announce its 2007 national grant competition. The Foundation's grant-making program seeks to develop or expand projects designed to support the development of literacy skills for adult primary care givers and their children. The applying organization must have current non-profit or public status, have been in existence for two or more years as of the date of the application, and include one or more of the following components: literacy for adults, parent education, pre-literacy or literacy instruction for children pre-k to grade 3, and intergenerational literacy activities. Applications are due September 8, 2006. For more information and the application package, click here. (description taken from the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy Web site)

Fresh Ideas: Community-based Approaches to Improve Care for Vulnerable Populations, from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, seeks new community-based approaches to health and health care problems that intersect with social factors such as inadequate housing, poor education and poverty. The foundation is interested in projects that serve hard-to-reach individuals and families, especially new immigrants and refugees, frail older adults and at-risk adolescents. Proposals are accepted at any time. There are no deadlines for this solicitation. (description taken from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Web site)

  Events

Mobilizing New Mentors... Through Faith- and Community-Based Collaborations, September 24-27, in New Orleans, is a training hosted by MentorYouth.com, a division of National Network of Youth Ministries and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice and The Corporation for National and Community Service. (description taken from the MentorYouth.com Web site)

Adolescence and the Transition to Adulthood, October 18-19, in Chicago, is a conference hosted by Chapin Hall’s Center for Children. This conference will consist of six in-depth panel discussions on young adults with health, mental health, and special education needs, immigrant youth, and youth involved with the criminal justice and child welfare systems. Click here to register. (description taken from the Chapin Hall conference registration Web site)

  Resources

Child Welfare

America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2006, from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, is an annual indicators report that details the status of children and families in the United States. (description taken from childstats.gov Web site)

The 17th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book, from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, reports that national trends in child well-being are no longer improving in the steady way they did in the late 1990s. Each year, the Data Book reports on the needs and conditions of America’s most disadvantaged children and families. (Description taken from the Annie E. Casey news release)

State Policies on Training for Kinship Caregivers, from the National Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning (NRCFCPP), assembles state approaches regarding training and assessment for kinship caregivers. (description taken from the NRCFCPP newsletter)

New Research

The Costs of Out-of-School-Time Programs: A Review of the Available Evidence, from Public/Private Ventures (P/PV), reviews a variety of studies conducted since 1993 in an attempt to gain a broader sense of what it costs to run out-of-school-time programs. (Description taken from the P/PV Web site)

The Family Environment and Adolescent Well-being: Exposure to Positive and Negative Family Influences, by Child Trends and the National Adolescent Health Information Center, highlights both the positive and negative influences on adolescent well-being. (description taken from the Child Trends Web site)

Positive Support: Mentoring and Depression Among High-Risk Youth, from Public/Private Ventures, examines potential benefits of matching high-risk youth with faith-based mentors. (description taken from Public/Private Ventures Web site)

Program Development

The After-School Program Toolkit, from Communities in Schools (CIS), was designed to put research into the hands of the people running after-school programs by summarizing: After-school programs found to be effective; Core elements that contribute to the success of these programs; and a body of resources to sustain quality after-school programs. (Description taken from CIS Web site)

Say Y.E.S. To Youth: Youth Engagement Strategies, from the Pennsylvania Children, Youth and Families are Resistant (PA CYFAR) Program, is a resource packet that includes research-based information and experiential activities related to youth engagement. (Description taken from the PA CYFAR Web site)

Tools

What Happens When I go to Immigration Court?, from the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children is a streaming video to help unaccompanied immigrant and asylum seeking children who are seeking safe haven in the United States understand immigration court. The video, available in English, Creole, French, Fuchow and Spanish, can be accessed from the Women’s Commission’s website and streamed from the Web site of Holland & Knight LLP. (description taken from the Women’s Commission Web site)

Mapping the Life Experiences of Refugee and Immigrant Families with Preschool Children, from the Multicultural Family Connections Program, explores factors that impede, and enhance the ability of immigrant and refugee families to adjust to life in Edmonton, Canada, and how these factors affect parenting capacity in this new environment. (description taken from resource)

Discovering Community Power: A Guide to Mobilizing Local Assets and Your Organization's Capacity, from the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute in cooperation with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, will help any organization strengthen: connections with the community’s assets; the community by investing in the community’s assets; support for current and future community based projects, activities, and proposals. (description taken from resource)

ARC, the Asylum Seeking and Refugee Children: Developing Good Practice Project Web site, is a new online resource from National Children’s Bureau in the United Kingdom aimed at practitioners and managers from: children's services, education, foster care, health sector, refugee community sector residential care, and the voluntary sector. (description taken from the ARC Web site)

COMING SOON: 

BRYCS will be publishing a child welfare manual and training guide for orienting refugee families to the U.S. child welfare system. Look for this guide on the BRYCS Web site by the end of September!
 
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