Family Early Help
Acknowledging Traumatic Experience
Following their arrival in their destination country, migrants and refugees face a new and often unfamiliar physical, social and political environment. Trauma can be experienced as much after migration as before or during migration.
On top of the trauma experienced in the conflict itself and the trauma of the evacuation, its important to consider that many of the families who were evacuated to the UK were at Kabul airport when the bomb went off. So its vital to hold this possibility in mind when you talk with families. You can read more about the bombing in this BBC news report
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58349010
Professionals who work with refugees are often aware of the huge trauma load that they have suffered, and often worry about how to avoid increasing their distress. Some professionals fear that they could do or say the wrong thing, and that this could make things worse or ‘re-traumatise’ the refugee.
To help us with this, here are some resources to read and watch to help you think about the experiences of refugees before you start work with a family:
Refugee Trauma
A set of reflections from the U.S. National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/trauma-types/refugee-trauma
Refugees: Supporting Recovery from Trauma
Exploring pre-migration, during migration and after migration exposure to trauma from the Australia Trauma and Grief Network
Refugees and asylum seekers: Supporting recovery from trauma
Refugee Core Stressors Toolkit
From the Boston Childrens Hospital. We don't recommend you use this as any form of assessment tool, but more as a prompt to help you think about the types of challenges refugee children and families may be facing.
3-D Assessment for Refugee Children
By Laura Wood from the Helen Bamber Foundation - thinking about development, disease exposure and damage risk pre-migration, during migration and after migration. You can read more here
https://www.paediatricfoam.com/2018/03/refugee-asylum-seeking-trafficked-children/
Naming Strengths
A lot of this reading can feel quite deficit-saturated. It can also play into our constructs about refugees, and might overlook the protective factors and resilience factors in their lives.
Refugee children and families have experienced huge challenge. Refugee children and families have shown incredible strengths and resilience to get through those challenges. Refugee children and families have hopes, wishes and dreams for their future and are experts in their own lives. All three are true.
Talking about strengths doesn't mean ignoring difficulties. It means acknowledging all the things that helped us survive to this point. You can read a really interesting perspective on this from Dr Tanya Moore here https://twitter.com/tanya_tavi/status/1410874087778537472?s=03
Every one of these families has strengths - so listen, ask and name strengths too.
Derek Summerfield sums this up: ‘reducing experiences of children simply to a question of mental health tends to mean more focus on vulnerability in individual psychological terms rather than social ones. Ultimately, it is the economic, educational and socio-cultural rebuilding of worlds, allied to basic questions of equity and justice, which above all will determine the long-term wellbeing of millions of child survivors of war worldwide".
(Derek Summerfield, Childhood, War, Refugeedom and ‘Trauma’: Three Core Questions for Mental Health Professionals)
Helping children and families to rebuild their social world, boosting protective factors and reducing risk factors, is key.
Cultural Responsiveness and Anti-Oppressive Practice with Refugee Families
As ever, our cultural responsiveness and humility means us thinking about the intersectionality lens, the social ggrraaacceeesss and how we explore identity and difference with families. This is just as important in our work with refugee families.
We also need to make sure we have taken the time to learn about what it means to be a child, parent or family of Afghan heritage - norms, practices, traditions, rituals, what daily life is like, what families miss and what families want to keep - so that we can honour and respect that in our work. You will of course learn much by listening to families, asking questions, showing curiosity. Every family experience is unique to them.
Here are some resources to help you start thinking about cultural responsiveness before you start working with refugee families:
Afghanistan Country Profile
As an introduction to thinking about Afghanistan and family daily life, here is an Afghanistan country profile produced by the national UASC Health Community Pediatrics Team.
You should also read this document produced by Nina Evason for Cultural Atlas and published at Community Care Inform Children
Afghanistan culture and customs: quick guide to help work with refugees
Cultural Considerations to Support Children from Refugee Backgrounds
A really helpful webinar from the Australia Institute for Family Studies:
and here is a PDF of the slide pack if you'd prefer to read that instead of watching the webinar
Reflections on Building Culturally Competent Practice with Refugee Families
Again from the Australia Institute for Family Studies, this short podcast covers:
- Building on parents’ own culturally-informed wisdom (09:33)
- How important is it to understand something about the client’s culture? (17:33)
- Suggestions for practitioners working with children and families from migrant and refugee communities
https://emergingminds.com.au/resources/podcast/reflections-on-culturally-competent-practice-1/
Social Graces, Culturagrams and Power & Privilege Wheel
There are lots of resources you can use in our Black Lives Matter Resource Repository here:
Using Your Resilient Families Practice with Refugee Families
Your Resilient Families systemic and relational training will serve you well in your help to refugee families. Lots of the tools from Resilient Families will be helpful to keep the trauma-informed AND strengths-based lenses on the work. You can find all your Resilient Families tools here
https://ascpractice.camden.gov.uk/early-help-guide/resilient-families-practice/
and there are lots of resources and tools on the direct work kit bag that you will also find helpful. You can find the kit bag here:
Preparing to Meet a Family
This guide from the Council of Europe Support for Adult Refugees will be helpful to read to think about your first meeting with a family - things you'll need to anticipate and prepare for, questions you might be asked etc. It will also help you when thinking about the emotional and practical support a family might ask for.
First Meeting with A Refugee Family - Council of Europe
More resources will be added here soon.