BRYCS - Bridging Refugee Youth and Children's Services

ANNOUNCEMENTS

New BRYCS Discussion Listserv! Just like you, thousands of refugee resettlement staff, child welfare workers, teachers, and other service providers around the country are working with refugee and immigrant children and their families. Surely, you have met some of these colleagues at conferences and perhaps you have even followed up with a few. Yet, how many times have you wished you could consult with someone who is on the ground, struggling with the same challenges as you and you didn't have anyone to email or call? Over the years, one of BRYCS' main roles has been to help facilitate these connections, but now, it just got easier. Have a question for your colleagues in the field? Sign up to be a part of BRYCS' Discussion Listserv and thousands of professionals will be at your service. You will not be sent multiple emails per day; all incoming emails will be screened and sent out as periodic digests. Subscribe to the Listserv!

Next month, BRYCS newest publication, Raising Children in a New Country: An Illustrated Handbook will be available for free download! Click here for more details.

Child Welfare and the Challenges of New Americans: Growing immigrant populations are creating questions for child welfare policy and practice by Sonia Valazquez, Ilze Earner, and Yali Lincroft was recently published in Child Welfare League of America's Children's Voice magazine. In addition, there is a sidebar on Helping Immigrant Families in Federal Custody Julianne Duncan. Though the full text of this article is not yet online, please visit the magazine Web site to order a printed copy.

The Unaccompanied Refugee Minor (URM) Foster Care Program of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has produced a new brochure and flyer on their program. If you work with a foreign-born child who needs a safe and stable living environment and are not familiar with the URM programs, these materials can provide answers to questions about services, eligibility, and how a foreign born child can access the program.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) can provide supplemental food to children this summer who qualify for the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs during the school year. For information on how your organization can participate in the SFSP and help close the summertime hunger gap, please refer to the SFSP Toolkit.

EVENTS

The National Conference of State Legislatures 2007 Annual Meeting [LINK http://www.ncsl.org/annualmeeting/] will be in Boston on August 5-9. This is the largest, most prestigious, and balanced meeting of state lawmakers and staff from around the nation. Leaders from American Humane Association and Annie E. Casey Foundation, along with a BRYCS representative, will be presenting on behalf of the Migration and Child Welfare National Network. The presentation is on “Serving and Protecting Children of Immigrants” and will be August 6. We hope to see you there!

Join BRYCS at the Somali Studies International Association 10th triennial conference in Columbus, Ohio on August 16 -18. BRYCS will present on education and child welfare issues pertaining to Somalis in the United States. The Directors of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Somali Family Care Network, and the National Somali Bantu Project are among the invited speakers. Scholars and professionals across disciplines are invited to attend as well as to present their work at the conference. Click here to register.

The California Department of Social Services' Refugee Programs Bureau will hold the 2007 Refugee Summit, "Working Together: We Achieve Our Success!" in Long Beach, California, on September 5-7. The Summit will feature plenary sessions with keynote speakers, a town hall meeting led by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, workshops on a variety of topics, forum discussions, and exhibits. Participants from federal, state, and local government agencies and various organizations from the refugee service provider community are expected to attend.

Youth, Education & Law: Current Issues, New Directions, hosted by the American Bar Association, will be held in New Orleans on September 6-8. The conference will cover youth rights, juvenile justice, and civic learning as well as immigration, including its impact on immigrant youth, families, and communities.

The 12th International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma will be in San Diego, CA on September 15-20. This conference is a unique forum for people from all disciplines and philosophies to gather together to exchange information. The conference covers all aspects of violence, abuse and trauma prevention, intervention, and research. This includes intimate partner violence, child maltreatment, youth violence, judicial issues, sexual assault, disabilities, treatment of offenders, elder abuse, trauma, and more.

Your Money or Your Mission: Decision-making for Nonprofit Sustainability will be held September 26-29 in Arlington, VA. Put on by the National Center on Nonprofit Enterprise, this conference will focus on the three principal dimensions of sustainability: securing resources, planning, and managing strategic risk.

The 12th Annual New England Conference on Multicultural Education will be in Hartford, Connecticut on October 11. This conference is ideal for Pk-12 teachers, higher education faculty, and others interested in educational equity. The workshops include parent involvement with immigrants, learning about cultures through music, learning about the immigration debate through theater, and more!

FUNDING

Make It On Your Own Awards will be given out by the Case Foundation to inspired individuals and passionate teams who are connecting people to discuss what matters, find smart solutions, and take action. The top 20 finalists will receive grants of $10,000 and the top four finalists will receive $25,000. The initial application of five basic questions is due August 8.

Access to Artistic Excellence, a grant from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, funds projects that provide short-term arts exposure or arts appreciation for children and youth, as well as intergenerational arts education. The deadline for applications is August 13.

The Union Pacific Foundation offers grants to increase the organizational effectiveness of nonprofits in communities served by Union Pacific Railroad. Areas of interest include health and human services, fine arts, and community and civic involvement. The deadline is August 15.

Head Start is accepting proposals for Hispanic/Latino Service Partnerships from institutions of higher education with experience in educating and preparing early childhood teachers to work effectively with Hispanic/Latino young children and families. Those receiving grants will work in partnership with Head Start, Early Head Start, and Migrant and Seasonal Head Start. The primary purpose of these partnerships is to increase the number of teaching staff in these programs with degrees in early childhood education to improve the quality of services to young Hispanic/Latino children. Applications are due August 20.

The Department of Health and Human Services is accepting research grant proposals for Reducing Health Disparities among Minority and Underserved Children from institutions/organizations that propose to conduct research to reduce health disparities among minority and underserved children. Specifically, this initiative focuses on ethnic and racial minority children and underserved populations of children including immigrants, refugees, children of migrant workers, and language minority children. Applications are due October 5.

FOR REFUGEE YOUTH

Xerox Scholarships for Students are available to aid the academic success of minority students and the cultivation and recruitment of qualified minority employees in technical fields. Deadline for applications is September 15 of the current year.

Dawn and Dusk: A Kurdish Family Torn by War by Alice Mead is a book about a thirteen year old Iranian Kurd and his family during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Young Azad tries desperately to cling to the life he has known, but the political situation finally forces his family to flee their home and seek safety elsewhere.

The Purple Wagon is a Web site for children, parents, teachers, and others on how to discuss war, terrorism, and peacemaking. The site includes information for these different groups as well as materials in other languages.

RESOURCES

Integration

Bridging Divides: The Role of Ethnic Community Based Organizations in Refugee Integration, from the Migration Policy Institute, discusses the integration of refugee families and how ethnic community based organizations facilitate this process. Of particular use to those working with refugee youth, this report describes integration as a multi-generational process in which children of immigrants tend to acculturate, and ultimately integrate, more quickly than their parents. In addition, this report includes descriptions of programs throughout the country, many of which serve youth.

Child Welfare

Culture and Parenting: A Guide for Delivering Parenting Curriculums to Diverse Families from the University of California Cooperative Extension is an information guide for practitioners for delivering parenting curricula. It provides research-based tips and checklists regarding cultural sensitivity of programs and services offered to families. Cultural frameworks are described. Topics include communication, discipline, bonding, family structure, gender-roles, play, and sleeping. (Description taken from Web site.)

American Humane’s Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) Teleconference Series provides child welfare workers and other service providers with information on this relatively new model of child welfare. In this practice, families and community members are called “to the table” to participate in meetings with public child welfare authorities to discuss how their children can best be protected and nurtured – similar to the types of large family meetings that many refugee and immigrant families have been using to make decisions for years. The first teleconference is August 7 and then they continue once a month for over a year.

Profiles of the Child Welfare Demonstration Projects, prepared for the Administration for Children and Families by James Bell Associates, gives an overview of child welfare demonstration projects that have evaluation results or are in the process of being evaluated. The information is given by state and includes strategies such as assisted guardianship, kinship permanence, and others that may particularly be useful with refugee and immigrant families.

The Unique Challenges to the Well-Being of California’s Border Kids, from Children Now and Kids Count, presents indicators of children’s health, education, and economic wellbeing for communities on the California side of the California-Mexico border. This report provides an overview of some of the challenges as well as strengths of the immigrant families living along the California-Mexico border.

The Families With Teens Information Series from the University of Minnesota Extension Service has Fact Sheets on topics such as Developing Parenting Skills, Building The Parent-Teen Relationship, Facing Tough Issues, Preparing for the Future as well as parenting materials in Spanish.

Education

Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction for English Learners in the Elementary Grades from the Institute for Educational Sciences addresses the challenge of providing effective literacy instruction for English learners in the elementary grades – something that numerous teachers of refugee students struggle with. Although the target audience is a broad spectrum of school practitioners such as administrators, curriculum specialists, coaches, staff development specialists and teachers, the more specific objective is to reach district-level administrators with a Practice Guide that will help them develop practice and policy options for their schools.

Helping Traumatized Children Learn from Massachusetts Advocates for Children demonstrates how trauma from exposure to family and other forms of violence can help explain many educational difficulties teachers face everyday. Such difficulties include the inability of children to focus, understand instructions, form meaningful relationships with peers and teachers, and control their behavior in appropriate ways. The report provides a school-wide flexible framework and a public policy agenda for environments where traumatized children and their classmates can focus, behave, and learn. (Description summarized from the Web site.)

The Anti-Racist Schoolkit from the Bradford Anti-Racism Project of England provides a bank of lessons for teachers to use to teach anti-racism, including anti-race hate ideology. Though it is designed to complement England’s National Curriculum, there are lessons and materials that are suitable for use in the United States.

Early Care and Education for Children in Low-Income Families: Patterns of Use, Quality, and Potential Policy Implications, from the Urban Institute, assesses low-income families' patterns of Early Child Care and Education (ECE) use, the implications of the extent and quality of ECE, the evidence on the quality of ECE, and key policy considerations. Of particular relevance to those working with immigrant families is the information on relative care and other home-based settings with unregulated caregivers, which is a common practice among foreign-born families.

Trafficking

The Foreign Policy Association manages a daily blog on topics related to migrating children. Recent postings include Q & A with Julianne Duncan on Child Trafficking, Child Trafficking in the United States…One Organization's Efforts to Combat Child Trafficking and Provide Services for Victims, and Child Trafficking and Slavery Today.

Health/Mental Health

Capacitar For Kids: A Multicultural Wellness Program for Children, Schools, and Families by Capacitar International offers students, parents, and teachers simple wellness practices for use in the classroom, in daily life, and in the home. The practices and methods described in this book have been field-tested with many different cultures and socioeconomic groups. Practices such as breathwork, visualization, and meditation as well as specific practices for children coping with trauma. For more information on this and other publications, see their Manuals page.

Cultural Considerations for Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and The Traumatic Experiences of Border and Immigrant Youth are two of the teleconferences conducted by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, as a part of their Culture and Trauma Speaker Series. Click here to view the full presentations.

Trauma Among Youth in the Juvenile Justice System: Critical Issues and New Directions from the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice provides an overview of trauma among youth in the juvenile justice system, including its scope and impact; and reviews tools, curricula and approaches for addressing trauma among justice-involved youth. Issues related to implementing trauma services within the juvenile justice system context are also discussed.

Youth

Attending to the Needs of Refugee Youth: The Development of a National Comprehensive Youth Service, from the Centre for Refugee Research in Australia, gives the results of a study conducted to investigate the settlement needs of refugee youth in Australia. The main finding was that more refugee youth services are essential and that Australian services fail to have a coordinated approach between government, non-government organizations and community leaders. Though this report is about Australia, it is extremely applicable to those creating policy related to refugee youth in the United States.

Program Development

Measuring Youth Program Quality: A Guide to Assessment Tools from Grantmakers for Children, Youth, and Families compares the purpose, history, structure, methodology, content, and technical properties of nine different program observation tools. It provides useful guidance to practitioners, policy makers, researchers, and evaluators as to what options are available and what issues to consider when selecting and using a tool to measure and improve program quality.

What is Evidence Based Practice? from Child Trends gives a very brief overview of what this term means and what out-of-school time programs should do with this information. It includes a useful list of Online Resources for Evidence-Based Practices in Out-Of-School Time Programs on page 4.

COMING SOON:

BRYCS' newest publication, Raising Children in a New Country: An Illustrated Handbook will be available for free download in September! Free CD-ROMs and a limited quantity of printed and bound copies (in color) will follow soon afterwards - place your order now to reserve yours at info at brycs.org!

HELPING REFUGEE YOUTH FIND THE RIGHT PATH