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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.
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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
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.
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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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THE LIRS - USCCB/MRS PARTNERSHIP
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) and the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops/Migration and Refugee Services
(USCCB/MRS) have partnered for over 35 years in our work on
behalf of refugee children and families. Out of a common vision
for the need to strengthen coordination between public child
welfare, resettlement agencies, and refugee communities, we
created the Bridging Refugee Youth and Children's Services
(BRYCS) project. Both agencies have contributed technical
assistance expertise, with LIRS focusing on community-based
trainings and USCCB/MRS establishing and developing the Web
site and Clearinghouse. After six years of successful partnership,
regretfully, due to constraints in funding availability, the
contract for BRYCS will be transferred to USCCB/MRS on September
30, 2006. LIRS will remain involved in this project in several
important capacities, including as a key member of the BRYCS
Advisory Committee. Although we will no longer share this
specific project, our two agencies remain strongly committed
to working together to promote the well-being and successful
integration of refugee children and their families in the
United States.
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OCTOBER
2006
SPOTLIGHT ON CHILD CARE |
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]
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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 Positive Youth Development with refugees
and immigrants are available in the BRYCS
archive.
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-
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 |
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WHAT'S
NEW |
NEW from BRYCS!
Refugees
and the U.S. Child Welfare System: Background
Information for Service Providers.
BRYCS has just developed a new Toolkit on
the U.S. child welfare system to meet the
needs of refugee resettlement staff! This
practical resource sheds light on how the
U.S. child welfare system works and supports
increased coordination between resettlement
and child welfare agencies. BRYCS is also
developing an illustrated booklet to be used
directly with refugee families, to help them
understand U.S. child protection laws and
alternative disciplinary practices - look
for this new companion tool in the coming
months!
BRYCS presented to child welfare providers
at the AdoptUsKids National Adoption and Foster
Care Summit, “Answering the Call: Extraordinary
Services for Extraordinary Times - Recovery
and Resilience” in San Antonio on August
3. Julianne Duncan and Lyn Morland’s
workshop, “Reaching Excellence in Serving
Migrating Children: Refugee, Trafficked and
Undocumented Children in our Child Welfare
Systems,” provided background information
and specific strategies for delivering culturally
competent child welfare services to migrating
children. Click here
to view a PowerPoint version of this
presentation.
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Funding News
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. (Description summarized
from their website.)
Events
The Division
of Early Childhood (DEC) of the Council of Exceptional Children
will hold the “22nd Annual International Conference
on Young Children with Special Needs and Their Families:
Advancing Knowledge, Expanding Opportunities” on October
19-22 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Conference participants
will learn about a wide range of important issues facing
those who work with young children with special needs. Attendees
will be provided with the opportunity to participate in
conference sessions, workshops, facilitated crackerbarrel
discussions, research roundtable discussions, and poster
sessions. For more information, please click here.
(Description taken from their website.)
Submissions are being accepted for Arizona’s Refugee
Resettlement Program Conference and are due by October 20,
2006. Please send an email to refugeeresettlement@kc-a.com
or call (480) 893-6110 to find out more about the “Conference
Tracks” and what submissions should include. Mark
your calendars now: the conference will take place on March
26-27, 2007 in Phoenix.
Resources
Cultural Orientation
The Center
for Applied Linguistics has launched a new Cultural
Orientation Web site. The site has some new features,
including a world map linking to descriptions of current
overseas CO programs worldwide and an expanded overseas
CO provider toolkit. COR Center staff will be developing
content for the domestic CO pages, as well as the domestic
CO toolkit, throughout FY07. If you would like to submit
effective activities for US CO or send a description of
your agency's programs to be featured on the site, please
contact Sanja Bebic, COR Center Director (sanja@cal.org).
(Description taken from the CO listserve.)
Rewrite
the Future: Education for Children in Conflict-Affected
Countries, by Save the Children, reports that 18%
of the world’s primary school-aged children do not
have the opportunity to go to school. One of the main reasons
is the number of ongoing conflicts worldwide. In fact, some
children spend their whole childhoods living in emergency
situations. Many children with little to no previous formal
education end up in America’s classrooms. This report
gives American educators background information on the current
status of educational systems in various countries. See
Page 4 for a map and chart of conflict-affected countries
and the number of primary school-aged children out of school
in each.
Child Welfare
Online
Resources for State Child Welfare Law and Policy,
from the Child Welfare Information Gateway, is useful for
child welfare professionals who need to access state laws
and regulations regarding child protection, foster care,
and adoption. This publication provides websites by state
where statutes, policies, and other resources can be accessed.
The California
Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare (CEBC) Web
site, highlighted last month, recently added 10 programs
to their clearinghouse that serve youth
transitioning into adulthood. In addition, one can search
the clearinghouse by type of program such as those designed
for parent
training and trauma
treatment for children. All of the programs in their
clearinghouse have a “Scientific rating” as
well as a rating for “Relevance to Child Welfare.”
Education
Finding
High-Quality Pre-K, a quality checklist developed
by Pre-K Now and the National PTA, is designed to help parents
evaluate their pre-K options based on components that research
says are the most important for the healthy growth and development
of preschool-age children. (Description taken from their
website.)
Opportunity
in America: The Role of Education, by Isabel Sawhill,
senior editor and co-director of the Center on Children
and Families at the Brookings Institution, reviews the evidence
on intergenerational mobility and the role of education
in enabling less advantaged children to move up the economic
ladder. It concludes that, in many respects, the U.S. education
system tends to reinforce rather than compensate for differences
in family background. This policy brief reviews the full
report, by the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University
and the Brookings Institution, called The Future of Children,
Opportunity
in America (Vol. 16, No. 2). The nine articles
in this issue focus on the extent to which children's chances
of success depend on the circumstances into which they are
born. (Description taken from the abstract.)
Pathways
to Early School Success: Helping the Most Vulnerable Infants,
Toddlers, and their Families, by Jane Knitzer and
Jill Lefkowitz of the National
Center for Children on Poverty, builds on the center’s
work over the past several years to describe effective programs,
highlight policy opportunities, and offer fiscal strategies
to promote the emotional health and school success of young
children and their families. These analyses will help policymakers,
community leaders, and advocates take action to ensure the
healthy development of children and their families. (Description
taken from their website.)
Child Care
Child
Care and Early Childhood Education: More Information Sharing
and Program Review by HHS Could Enhance Access for Families
with Limited English Proficiency is a study conducted
by the U.S. Government Accounting Office to analyze the
challenges Limited English Proficient families face in accessing
child care and early education programs. The GAO found that
mothers with LEP faced multiple challenges, including lack
of awareness of available assistance, language barriers
during the application process, and difficulty communicating
with English-speaking providers. (Description summarized
from the GAO highlight.)
Is
Child Care Ready? Nationwide Child Care Disaster Planning
Initiative is now available from the National Association
of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies. It is part
of the nationwide effort to train providers, inform parents,
and partner with local, state, and federal agencies to ensure
that every child in child care is protected in the face
of disaster. Disaster preparation guides are available online
for child care centers, family child care providers, parents,
and child care resource and referral agencies. (Description
summarized from their website.)
Juvenile Justice
Juvenile
Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report is
now available online from the federal Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention. It draws on reliable
data and relevant research to provide a comprehensive and
insightful view of juvenile crime across the nation. Service
providers who are unfamiliar with the juvenile justice system
might want to see Chapter
4, which provides information on the differences between
states, how children enter the system, and a flow chart
showing how cases are processed.
COMING SOON:
Since our topical updates are so rich with information,
BRYCS will move to a quarterly Spotlight, Featured Resource
List, and Promising Practices Sidebar this year. On November
1, look for our new update on collaboration between Refugee
Resettlement and Public Child Welfare agencies, highlighting
such advantages as increased access to culturally-appropriate
services and new funding streams. Our Promising Practices
Sidebar will address your “how to” questions
by providing two examples of successful collaborations.
We will also provide a “sneak peak” at our plans
for the new year, including a National Technical Assistance
Network.
BRYCS will continue to update our resources and news items
monthly. To find out “What’s New” at BRYCS,
be sure to sign up for our BRYCS Bulletin Email Alert (just
send an email to info at brycs.org
and type “Subscribe” in the subject line).
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