BRYCS - Bridging Refugee Youth and Children's Services

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and it is important to remember that domestic violence hurts hundreds of thousands of Americans, some resettled refugees, each year. There are a number of resources available for addressing domestic violence in immigrant communities including Domestic Violence Hurts the Whole Family posters, online videos, audio clips, and multimedia presentations in a number of refugee languages, a Battered Immigrant Women Toolkit, the Multilingual Access Project, which is a Web site about domestic violence in a number of languages, and Sexual Assault Videos. In addition, please refer to SAMSHA/CMHS’ Domestic Violence and New Americans: Directory of Programs and Resources for Battered Refugee Women. To order, call 1-800-789-2647. BRYCS representatives Julianne Duncan, Lyn Morland and Laura Schmidt participated on a National Workgroup to develop Understanding Children, Immigration, and Family Violence: A National Examination of the Issues, available in the BRYCS Clearinghouse, which identifies challenges and opportunities in reaching out to and delivering services to immigrant children and families affected by domestic violence, best practices in serving them, and policy implications for the work.

FUNDING NEWS

Grants of up to $1,000 are available from the Bubel/Aiken Foundation and Youth Service America to support youth-led service projects in which youth with and without disabilities serve their communities together in support of National and Global Youth Service Day (NGYSD). The deadline is November 30, 2006. See here for further information on this grant as well as other funding opportunities for NGYSD.

The Dreyer's Foundation makes small grants ($3,000 or less) to nonprofit organizations for events that promote family, school, and community environments and build skills and foster talents in young people. The proposals are reviewed on the 7th of every month. See their Web site for more information.

FOR REFUGEE YOUTH

Entries to the Seventh Annual International Essay and Media Contest by Teachers Against Prejudice are due by December 15, 2006. The contest is open to all students enrolled in grades 5 through 12 in public and independent schools. There are two separate categories, one for middle school and one for high school, but both questions involve writing a short story or creating a video about a person facing a specific prejudice. The essay questions, judging criteria, and prizes are listed here.

Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship applications are due by January 12, 2007. APIASF is a new national organization devoted solely to the financial scholarship needs of Asian and Pacific Islander American students. Read online for more details and to determine if you, or someone you know, are eligible to apply. Contact Bindi Patel (bindi@apiasf.org or 1-877-808-7032) for more information.

The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities National Internship Program can help college students looking for internships as well as Federal agencies and corporations looking for interns. For students, the application due date for spring semester just passed, but the due date for summer applications is February 23. For agencies and corporations, the due date for requesting interns for spring is November 3 and for summer, it’s around late February or early March.

ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS

Submit papers for a special issue of Multicultural Perspectives by December 1, 2006, which will feature practitioner research focused on issues of multicultural education, diversity, and social justice. They are interested in contributions from K-12 educators who use self study/practitioner research to create knowledge or better understand or change practices associated with multicultural education in their settings of practice. Possible topic areas include multicultural education, second language learning, and more. Please see the Web site for details on submitting papers and contact guest editors Terry Burant (terry.burant@marquette.edu) or Allen Trent (atrent@uwyo.edu) for more information.

EVENTS

Challenges Facing African Youth in the Diaspora in the United States is a conference by the African Immigrant and Refugee Foundation that will be November 17-18 at the Takoma Park-Silver Spring campus of Montgomery College in Maryland, just outside Washington, DC. BRYCS will be conducting a presentation on the welfare of refugee children and the assistance we provide. Come and join BRYCS, refugee youth, educators, family service providers, healthcare professionals, and others to talk about African youth in the schools, parenting in America, healthcare, acculturation and adaptation, law enforcement, and much more. Email airfound@aol.com or call (202) 234-2473 for more information.

The National Association of Multicultural Education is having its 16th Annual Conference in Phoenix, Arizona on November 8-12. There will be many presentations of interest to educators of refugee youth including African Immigrants in U.S. Schools & Society, Immigrant Parents & Preschool, Honoring the Stories & Struggles of Asian American Students, and Responding to Change: Lessons from a Model Migrant Education Program.

The Zero to Three 21st National Training Institute (NTI) will be held in New Mexico on December 1-3, 2006. The NTI is considered the premiere training event for professionals who focus on early care, health, and education. It attracts more than 1,500 professionals of various disciplines from around the world, who come together to advance their learning, interact with top experts in the infant/family field, and connect with a vital network of colleagues from coast to coast. One relevant presentation given will be “Voices of Immigrant Mothers.”

RESOURCES

Program Development

The Finance Project is an independent non-profit that specializes in helping leaders plan and implement financial and sustainability strategies for initiatives that benefit children, families and communities. Sustaining 21st Century Community Learning Centers is a recent publication that looks at how out-of-school programming can be sustained after a 21CCLC grant expires and includes profiles of successful programs that have sustained out-of-school time programming beyond their initial grant. Other relevant publications include The Costs of Out-of-school Time Programs, Finding Resources to Support Workforce Development for Youth, and Addressing Linguistic and Cultural Barriers to Access for Welfare Services.

Evaluating Community-based Child Health Promotion Programs: a Snapshot of Strategies and Methods from the National Academy for State Health Policy provides practical information that states and community groups can use to develop evaluation components for community-based projects that focus on children’s health promotion. Through an examination of seven representative projects, the report offers examples and lessons learned related to various aspect of evaluation, among them: design, process and partnerships, outcomes, and dissemination. (Description taken from their Web site.)

Cultural Orientation/Acculturation

Healthy Roads Media is a Web site that contains free health education materials in a number of languages. Their materials are in a variety of formats including written, audio, online videos, and multimedia presentations in Arabic, Bosnian, Russian, Somali, Spanish, and English. Take a few minutes to complete their short survey to help them gather information about what are the most important topics, languages, and ways that health information can be provided to refugees to the United States.

From ‘There’ to ‘Here’: Refugee Resettlement in Metropolitan American by the Brookings Institution looks at refugee resettlement to the United States between 1983 and 2004. While refugees have overwhelmingly been resettled in metropolitan areas with large foreign-born populations, refugees have had considerable impact on the local populations of many medium-sized and smaller cities. Case examples are given from four different sized cities that have incorporated refugees. In addition, the report discusses how the leading refugee destination areas have shifted away from traditional immigrant gateways over the past two decades, while newer gateways are resettling proportionally more refugees. (Description summarized from their Web site.)

Child Welfare

Implementation of Home Visitation Programs: Stories from the States, published by the Chapin Hall Center for Children, is based on interviews with representatives from four national home visitation organizations. It describes the challenges these groups face in sustaining, evaluating, and replicating programs that support pregnant women and families with young children, many of whom are immigrants. (Description summarized from their Web site.)

Violence Against Children, by the United Nations Secretary-General, describes the extent and causes of violence against children worldwide. This report is useful to those working with children in the United States because it includes information on abused children in the U.S. as well as highlights the violence that many resettled immigrant/refugee children may have experienced in their homelands. You can view videos of the stories of five children from various countries here. The study concludes that across the globe, some violence is isolated, but most violent acts against children are carried out by people they know and trust. The report also includes recommendations for action to prevent and respond to it. (Description revised from the Web site.)

The National Center for Children in Poverty of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University identifies and promotes strategies that prevent child poverty in the U.S. and that improve the lives of low-income children and families. Two of the most recent publications listed under Children in Low-Income Immigrant Families related to immigrant children include Children of Low-Income, Recent Immigrants and Immigrant Children: America’s Future. In addition, the Web site is extremely user-friendly with fact sheets, data wizards, and the ability to search for information by state or type of policy.

The Multi-Language Initiative (MLI), through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, provides the general public with free, translated and culturally adapted government publications online. The available publications that are most relevant to families and children are: Inhalant Abuse: Your Child at Risk, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Inhalant Abuse, Tips for Teens: The Truth About Inhalants, and What is Substance Abuse Treatment? A Booklet for Families. (Description summarized from their Web site.)

Education

New “No Child Left Behind Regulations” are out from the U.S. Department of Education. Under the new regulations, recently arrived Limited English Proficient (LEP) students (those who have attended for 12 months or less) are excused from their States’ reading/language arts assessment for one year. In addition, recently arrived LEP students must take their States’ math (and science in 2007-08) tests, but those scores do not have to be included in the Adequate Yearly Progress reports. For more information, read here.

Child Care and Early Childhood Education: More Information Sharing and Program Review by HHS Could Enhance Access for Families with Limited English Proficiency by the Government Accountability Office found that mothers with limited English proficiency face multiple challenges in accessing public child care programs, including lack of awareness of available assistance, language barriers during the application process, and difficulty communicating with English-speaking providers. In this report, the GAO recommends that HHS help states explore cost-effective ways of collecting data on the primary language of CCDF subsidy recipients and that HHS develop means of reviewing how states provide access to CCDF subsidies. See the highlights here. (Description summarized from the report.)

The Changing Landscape of American Public Education: New Students, New Schools by the Pew Hispanic Center examines two trends that have transformed American public education in recent years: an increase in enrollment and the number of new schools. The report states that between 1993 and 2003, 64% of new students were Hispanic. Despite this, white students attend schools populated primarily by other whites and relatively few attend schools populated primarily by minorities. Furthermore, the schools that experienced the largest growth in Hispanic enrollment were generally larger, had more students on federal subsidies, and had greater teacher-student ratios. (Description summarized from their Web site.)

Family Involvement in Early Childhood Education by the Family Involvement Network of Educators is one brief of a series on family involvement in education. This brief includes recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in their efforts to create an early childhood system that engages the families of infants and toddlers. Furthermore, the brief synthesizes the latest research on how family involvement contributes to young children's learning and development. (Description summarized from www.zerotothree.org.)

Child Care

NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development: Findings for Children up to Age 4 ½ Years by the National Institute of Child Health and Development reports the findings from a 15 year study on non-maternal child care arrangements. The study found that family characteristics have more influence on child development than does experience in child care.

Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Family Supports by the National Center for Cultural Competence at Georgetown University discusses cultural factors that may impact services for families of children with special needs. It is meant to be used by organizations interested in developing policies that promote and sustain cultural and linguistic competence in the provision of family support services, such as home care, respite care, child care, and other types of support.

Juvenile Justice

The Blueprint for Change by the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice developed this comprehensive model to provide guidance to professionals in the field to help them address the fact that the vast majority of youth in the juvenile justice system suffer from mental disorders. It was developed in partnership with the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators, with guidance from an advisory group of key national experts, and revised by a panel of mental health and juvenile justice administrators, practitioners, advocates and youth.

COMING SOON:

New publications this year by BRYCS will include:

An illustrated educational booklet for refugees about parenting and U.S. child protection laws available for free download, on a CD, and in hard copy.

Monthly articles with highlights from interviews with refugee parents on their traditional parenting practices, their challenges parenting in the U.S., and helpful suggestions.

BRYCS will feature the topic Refugee Children and the Schools starting in February, including a new Spotlight, Promising Practices Sidebar, and Featured Resources.

BRYCS will debut our new Technical Assistance Web page soon. This page will have information on our new National Technical Assistance Network, including eight regionally-based expert practitioner-trainers who can provide you with technical assistance consultations and presentations, and have the dual benefits of local knowledge and national support. You will be able to request technical assistance through this Web page or continue to contact us via our toll-free number (1-888-572-6500) and email (info@brycs.org).

THE LIRS - USCCB/MRS PARTNERSHIP

Collaboration for Child Protection