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!

In anticipation of the arrival of Iraqi refugees, BRYCS has researched this population and developed a List of Highlighted Resources for refugee resettlement staff, service providers, and teachers.

The most recent edition of Children’s Update from Catholic Charities USA focuses on migrating children. It includes an article by BRYCS called Meeting the Needs of Immigrant Families, along with articles by Catholic Charities across the country that are working with refugee and immigrant children.

Call for Papers from American Humane Association! AHA’s journal, Protecting Children, is issuing a call for papers with a focus on children from birth to age 18, and their families, who have been exposed to violence. Specifically, this issue of Protecting Children will involve a description of the incidence and consequences of exposure to violence in the homes and in the community; and policies, programs and specific treatment and support services to prevent and reduce the impact of exposure and to break the cycle of violence in different settings and systems. The deadline has been extended until October 1.

EVENTS

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 8th National Conference on Preventing Crime will be in Atlanta, Georgia on October 3-5. The conference will attract attendees from across the U.S. and from other countries, and from the fields of law enforcement, crime prevention, loss prevention, criminal justice, the military, youth services, education, nonprofit organizations, and social services. There will be many opportunities to learn cutting edge strategies and crime prevention practices and to meet others engaged in the varied aspects of crime prevention.

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!

Join BRYCS at the Strengthening Refugee Families: Issues, Best Practices, and Innovations conference in Chicago on October 22-23. This conference offers a national opportunity to identify issues, emphasize best practices, and highlight innovations among groups and individuals assisting refugee and immigrant children and their families. The conference will include sessions on: integration of services, creating partnerships, multiple-risk families, PK -12 educational issues, family life education, health issues, and refugee influxes. BRYCS will present on “Promising Practices for Serving Refugee and Immigrant Children and their Families” on October 22 at 2:45.

Understanding Immigrant Children will be in Guelph, Ontario on October 25-26. The conference is designed to explore our current understanding of child development and family dynamics, and the social challenges and issues that are relevant to immigrant children. Researchers from various disciplines (e.g. psychology, sociology, social work) and methodological approaches (quantitative, qualitative) will be presenting, including many from the United States. Click here to register.

Reducing Disproportionate Minority Contact in Juvenile Justice by Making the Right Connections will be in Denver, Colorado on October 25-27. It is being put on by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and will include sharing information on successful programs that have implemented partnerships to involve systems such as education, child welfare, labor, health, mental health, and/or substance abuse treatment systems in reducing racial and ethnic disparity or overrepresentation across systems.

The 2007 National Even Start Association Conference will be in San Diego, California on October 28-30. It is designed for service providers and educators involved with family literacy programs. Concurrent sessions related to early childhood education, adult education, parenting education, interactive literacy, program management and evaluation will be held.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition will have their annual summit in Washington, DC on October 29-31. Sessions will be divided into six strands including professional development, Title III accountability, language education program approaches, early childhood education, research, and parent and community outreach groups.

The National Conference on Safe Schools and Communities will be held in Washington, DC on October 29-31 and will feature bullying prevention, mentoring, program evaluation, and community programs, with special sessions on youth courts and mental health. Additional sessions will address gangs, juvenile and restorative justice, and protective factors and resilience, among other subjects.

National Health Promoters Leadership Training for Refugee and Immigrant Women will be held in Atlanta, Georgia on November 12-16. It will be put on by the Refugee Women’s Network, Inc. and is for refugee women leaders who are interested in conducting health education activities in their own ethnic communities. The 5-day training will address the issues of critical components of a successful health promoter program, leadership development, group decision-making to develop solutions for and by the community, developing community collaborations, and resource development. The application deadline is October 15.

FUNDING

Kids In Need Teacher Grants provide K-12 educators with funding to provide innovative learning opportunities for their students. The Kids In Need Foundation helps to engage students in the learning process by supporting our most creative and important educational resource — our nation's teachers. The deadline is September 30.

Youth Power grants of up to $1,000 are available from Youth Service America and the U.S. Department of Justice to support youth-led service projects. These grants support youth in foster care as well as youth who have recently transitioned out of foster care. Eligible applicants include organizations that have prior experience working directly with youth in foster care and youth who have transitioned out of foster care and are working with an organization that engages youth in foster care. The service projects that the foster youth organize must be on Global Youth Service Day in April 2008. The application is due by October 1.

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 30th.

Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas chronicles the author’s journey to America in 1972, when she was seven years old. The author and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with little firsthand knowledge of this country. The author describes her experiences growing up in America with humor and grace. This book will likely be appreciated by refugee youth who are developing bi-cultural identities as well as those having family members who have acculturated to varying degrees.

Two new resources are available from the Iowa Foster and Adoptive Parents Association, which may be useful to foster parents of unaccompanied refugee minors. The “Welcome Book” is a simple book made by the foster family, which includes photos introducing the child to his or her immediate family, including pets and surroundings. The “Lifebook” is a record of a child’s life in his or her own words using photos, artwork, and things picked up along the way. Page down to the bottom of the publications page for the templates of both of these books.

RESOURCES

Cultural Orientation

Welcome to the United States Orientation Guidebooks from the Center for Applied Linguistics are now also available in Arabic, Swahili, and Kirundi.

Child Welfare

The 2007 edition of America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being is out from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Each year since 1997, the Forum has published this report, which includes detailed information on the welfare of children and families. The Forum alternates publishing a comprehensive report, as is the case this year, with a condensed version that highlights selected indicators. The report addresses such topics as family and social environment, economic circumstances, health care, physical environment and safety, behavior, education, and health.

The 2007 edition of the Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation is out. Each year, this book provides information and statistical trends on the conditions of America's children and families. This year’s report notes improvements in four areas – the child death rate, the teen birth rate, the high school dropout rate, and teens not in school and not working. In contrast, four indicators worsened, including low-birth weight babies, children living in families where no parent has full-time year-round employment, children in poverty, and children in single-parent families.

Listen to the audio recordings of the plenary sessions from the June 2007 conference of the International Society for Child Indicators. The event brought together nearly 200 attendees from 23 countries to hear researchers share information and findings relating to the welfare of children and youth. Speakers discussed the UNICEF Child Well-Being Report Card for developed countries, including the U.S., the role of neighborhood poverty in child maltreatment, and other topics related to child well-being.

The Spanish section of the Child Welfare Information Gateway Web site has recently been updated. Visit the Child Welfare Information Gateway en Español for resources on child abuse and neglect, prevention services, and more.

Child Sexual Abuse

Child Abuse and Culture: Working with Diverse Families by Lisa Aronson Fontes provides a framework for culturally competent practice in child maltreatment cases. It offers vital knowledge and tools to help professionals from any background play a more positive, effective role in the lives of diverse children and families. (Description taken from bookcover)

Preventing Child Sexual Abuse within Youth-serving Organizations: Getting Started on Policies and Procedures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is designed for representatives of youth-serving organizations who are interested in adopting strategies to prevent child sexual abuse. Whether these strategies are developed within the context of an overall risk management plan or are addressed separately, organizations need to examine how they can protect youth from sexual abuse. (Description taken from the report)

Child Sexual Abuse Across Cultures: What We Know So Far, which was commissioned by UNICEF, establishes child sexual abuse as a world-wide phenomena, looks at the many variables that contribute to our understanding of child sexual abuse in various cultures, discusses the links between child sexual abuse and other dangers that children face, and identifies intervention and prevention strategies and recommends next steps.

Education

A Resource Guide for Serving Refugees with Disabilities is now available from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. This resource guide is intended for those serving refugees with disabilities such as refugee resettlement staff, Mutual Assistance Agency staff, community advocates, and social service providers. It was created in an effort to increase understanding and exposure to the various services and programs available for those serving refugees with disabilities and includes an entire chapter on Services for Children with Disabilities.

Young Latino Infants and Families: Parental Involvement Implications from a Recent National Study, from the Harvard Family Research Project, describes the findings from a recent study examining parenting behaviors and children's developmental outcomes. The study provides a deeper understanding of how cultural practices combine with other factors to shape parenting behaviors among families in the U.S. in the first year of children's lives. Several findings provide information about ways in which practitioners and Latino families can more effectively engage with young Latino children to influence their cognitive, social, language, and literacy development—and therefore facilitate their school readiness. (Description taken from the article.)

Information Sharing Could Help Institutions Identify and Address Challenges Some Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Students Face, from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, reviews the educational attainment and average incomes of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The report discusses: 1) What are Asian American and Pacific Islander subgroups' educational attainment and household income levels? (2) What challenges, if any, Asian American and Pacific Islander students face in pursuing and completing their post-secondary education? and (3) What federal and institutional resources do institutions with large Asian American and Pacific Islander student enrollment use to address the particular needs of these students? (Description taken from the abstract.)

No Child Left Behind Act: Education Assistance Could Help States Better Measure Progress of Students with Limited English Proficiency from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, describes (1) the extent to which LEP students are meeting annual academic progress goals, (2) what states have done to ensure the validity of their academic assessments, (3) what states are doing to ensure the validity of their English language proficiency assessments, and (4) how the U.S. Department of Education is supporting states' efforts to meet NCLBA's assessment requirements for these students. (Description taken from the abstract.)

Health/Mental Health

Strengthening Policies to Support Children, Youth, and Families Who Experience Trauma, from the National Center for Children in Poverty, reviews current policies and practices to support children, youth, and families exposed to trauma and highlights reasons for optimism and concern. Service providers working with immigrant youth might be interested to read Box 1, on page 15, about the Impact of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Raids on Children and Youth. In addition, see page 72 for a table of trauma-informed services by state.

Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Addressing the Mental Health of Sexually Abused Children from the Child Welfare Information Gateway provides an overview of the characteristics and benefits of trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT). TF-CBT is an evidence-based treatment approach shown to help children, adolescents, and their caretakers overcome trauma-related difficulties. This issue brief was written primarily to help child welfare caseworkers and other professionals who work with at-risk families make more informed decisions about when to refer children and their parents and caregivers to TF-CBT programs. (Description summarized from the report.)

Innocents Lost by Jimmie Briggs is a book about child soldiers. The book discusses this global issue through the author’s journey to five countries where children have participated in war including Rwanda, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Afghanistan. The author takes us to the front, where child soldiers are learning to kill, and to the villages and rehabilitation centers where they are struggling to transcend the horror of the past and build new lives. This book may be useful to service providers working with refugee children from these areas of the world to gain an understanding of what some of them may have witnessed or experienced. (Part of this description is quoted from the book cover.)

Research and Evaluation on Programs for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Other Pacific Islander Populations is from a recent edition of Focal Point, from the Regional Research Institute for Human Services. This article focuses on important ways that culture must be considered in the research and evaluation of mental health programs for children and families from culturally diverse groups.

Attachment Relationships: Quality of Care for Young Children from the Open University focuses on the formation of early attachments with young children and their relation to later developmental outcomes. This report highlights established international research findings and was developed to support the work of early childhood advocates and policy makers. Of particular interest to BRYCS’ audience will likely be the section on “Attachment and Cultural Context” on page 10, though the influence of culture is integrated throughout.

Families

Adapting Healthy Marriage Programs for Disadvantaged and Culturally Diverse Populations: What are the Issues? from the Center for Law and Social Policy discusses the hundreds of existing healthy marriage programs that serve diverse families across America. This brief looks at programs that were primarily designed for white, middle-class, educated couples and describes the types of adaptations that are underway to make them relevant and accessible to diverse populations.

Youth

Making a Difference in Schools: The Big Brothers Big Sisters School-based Mentoring Impact Study, from Public/Private Ventures, is the country's first large-scaled, national, random assignment evaluation of school-based mentoring. The study finds that "Littles" demonstrate eight positive academic outcomes in the first year as a result of mentoring matches, and reduced skipping of school and greater expectation to attend college in the second year. (Description taken from Human Services Newsbytes.)

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Model Programs Guide (MPG) provides a searchable database of evidence-based programs across the spectrum of youth services, including family therapy, leadership and youth development, mentoring, parent training, residential treatment centers, and wraparound services. The MPG was designed to assist practitioners and communities in implementing evidence-based prevention and intervention programs that can make a difference in the lives of children and communities.

Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies, from the Justice Policy Institute, attempts to clarify some of the persistent misconceptions about gangs and to assess the successes and failures of approaches that have been employed to respond to gangs. This report highlights the situation in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. It emphasizes the importance of using evidence based interventions and primarily those that operate from a positive youth development perspective, rather than a punitive one.

Victims of Human Trafficking

Comprehensive Services for Survivors of Human Trafficking, from the Urban Institute, discusses the Office for Victims of Crime’s “Services for Trafficking Victims Discretionary Grant Program – Comprehensive Services Sites.” The program provides direct services, such as legal and crisis counseling to assist victims once they are identified until they are “certified” to receive other federal benefits. Urban Institute researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with survivors and with key service providers in three evaluation sites. The in-depth interviews document victims’ service needs, their experiences using OVC-funded services, and barriers to services. They also provide a unique opportunity to listen directly to the voices of the victims. (Description taken from the Abstract.)

Program Development

Visit the new Clearinghouse for Sustaining and Expanding Youth Programs and Policies, which is a joint project of The Finance Project and the Forum for Youth Investment. The clearinghouse contains information and resources for supporting and sustaining youth programs and initiatives. It is designed to help individuals learn about data, tools, policies, practices, financing strategies, coordination efforts and technical assistance resources developed by organizations in the field that aim to improve the lives of youth. The clearinghouse was also designed to meet the needs of program developers and managers, intermediaries, funders, and policymakers.

COMING SOON:

The CD version and printed and bound copies (in color) of BRYCS' newest publication, Raising Children in a New Country: An Illustrated Handbook will be available in October/November. Place your order now to reserve yours at info@brycs.org! Limit of five per agency, please.

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY CENTERED CHILD WELFARE PRACTICE WITH REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS