Family Early Help
Cultural Responsiveness and Anti-Oppressive Practice with Refugee Families
Our cultural responsiveness and humility means us thinking about the intersectionality lens, the social graces and how we explore identity and difference with families. This is just as important in our work with refugee families.
We need to make sure we have taken the time to learn about what it means to be a child, parent or family of Ukrainian heritage - identity, 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.
Learn About Ukraine
This helpful short guide from Healthprom introduces some important cultural context for Ukraine life - please read here
The main religions of Ukraine are:
- Orthodox, which includes the Orthodox Church of Ukraine
- Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church
- Ukrainian Orthodox-Moscow Patriarchate
- Ukrainian Greek Catholic
- Roman Catholic
- Protestant
- Muslim
- Jewish
The main languages spoken in Ukraine (as a first or second language) are:
- Ukrainian (67%)
- Russian (30%)
- Romanian (7%)
- Crimean Tatar (5%)
- Bulgarian (3%)
- Hungarian (3%)
- Armenian (1%)
- Belarusian (1%)
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
Social Graces to Explore Identity
There are lots of resources you can use in our Black Lives Matter Resource Repository here, including exploring identity with the social graces:
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:
Trauma Inform Your Practice
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.
It is crucial we consider the trauma experienced in the Ukraine war itself, the trauma of fleeing from your home, and the difficulties and challenges of arriving in the UK.
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.
Responding to Trauma in Humanitarian Crisis
Read this slide pack from the Thrive Foundation webinar on trauma informed practice in humanitarian crisis - see especially slide 32 on the six signs of trauma informed practice to think about as you offer help to families
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 and World Building
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. Refugees will often experience situational vulnerability, not inherent vulnerability.
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 and strengthen their social world, boosting protective factors and reducing risk factors, is key.