Counseling Immigrants and Refugees - Bring the World to your Backyard
Immigrants add depth to the American cultural landscape, and enhance the character of our already colorful communities. This is true in microcosms, such as school campuses. It is therefore critical to address the needs of immigrant populations. Addressing the needs of immigrant populations with specialized counseling services is a good way to minimize mental health problems, address physical health needs, and also provide the means by which to foster healthy community growth and social development. This proposal for an immigrant-specific counseling program takes into account the differential needs of immigrants based on culture of origin, nation of origin, languages of origin, gender, socio-economic class, and refugee status.
Refugees are a special category of immigrant, but both immigrants and refugees are foreign nationals who expatriate. In the United States, and indeed most developed countries, there is a clear and legal differentiation between immigrants and refugees. Refugees seek asylum from political persecution or crisis. Both immigrants and refugees move for "a better life," but there are more serious "push" factors involved in refugees' decision to leave their home country ("Immigrant vs. Refugee," 2013). One of the most important distinguishing features of a refugee vs. An immigrant is that, "In most cases, it is not possible for them to go back to their country," ("Immigrant vs. Refugee," 2013). The 1951 Geneva Convention definition of a refugee has been supplemented in the United States by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) in section 101(a)(42)(United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2013). Refugees are said to seek political asylum; immigrants seek jobs.
According to the textbook, immigrants will become a substantial part of the American economic, social, and political future. "Immigrants living in the U.S. make up approx. 12% of the population - And about half of these 33.5 million people have arrived since 1990," (Text). Although half of all immigrants to the United States are from Central and , attitudes, beliefs, and involvement in the community.
Adjustment to life in the United States is dependent on various factors such as language, gender, and socio-economic class status. Some immigrant students arrive on their own with no family to help them, presenting unique challenges to the individual and the counselor. Some speak little to no English. Others come to live with family, and have strong English language skills. Some have money, while many do not. Some of the most common hardships related to adjustment to life in the United States are issues that can be mitigated by simple understanding of differential needs. Those needs include access to social services, community outreach, healthcare, career counseling, professional development, language courses, and social support networks including leisure activities. Of course, not all services are needed in all communities. Individual differences also determine needs.
Counseling strategies must be culturally relevant and culturally sensitive. The counselors should ideally have experience working with the target community, or at least some familiarity with the culture, its language, and its customs. Reading books like The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Fadiman (1997) highlight the importance of counselor knowledge and sensitivity. The health care workers in the…
Fortunately most counselors can overcome their biases and opinions of refugee populations by participating in intensive multicultural training. This training is rapidly becoming emphasized in social work circles whether or not a counselor plans to interact with refugees or not during the course of his or her lifetime. Multicultural training can also benefit counselors in traditional practice settings when working with diverse populations in general (Clark & Hofsess, 1998). Need For
Education Standards Addressed This training will prepare students to become Microsoft Office certified. Teacher Guide Student Guide Objectives To learn Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access) at a level proficient enough to become certified. The instructor will start the students off on the first day with an introductory computer course to familiarize them with the hardware and software. This will be on the first day of training and students will be allowed practice time. Students will
Manchester (2004) discusses the work in New Zealand of ON TRACC, Auckland's Transcultural Care Centre, which offers an intersectoral approach to severe behavioral and mental health issues for children and young people from refugee backgrounds living in the central city. Established as a pilot program last year, it provides specialized interventions involving the school, family and mental health services for refugee children who have been identified as having high and
Cultural Differences of Adolescent in the United States The United States, ever since the time when its history began, has been an accumulation of different cultural patterns who took refuge here for independence in expressing the thoughts. Resiliency or adaptability is featured as a phenomenon of fruit yielding adaptability in spite of difficult or intimidating surrounding. In this paper we shall analyze the cultural differences among adolescents in the country. In
Stresses associated with migration itself, discrimination against racial minorities in this country, poverty, unemployment, and crowded living conditions heighten the chance that a husband will become abusive" (p. 1402). From the Vietnamese-American perspective, these issues are even more pronounced and they are discussed further below. a. Male dominance. One of the most powerful forces affecting Vietnamese families at home and abroad today is Confucian ideology, an ideology that is predicated
Community/Organization of Interest: Health and medical services in Bella Vista, PA, a South Philadelphia neighborhood The cultural perspective Bella Vista, PA, a South Philadelphia neighborhood, is a largely Italian-American ethnic enclave dominated by white, working-class residents. Although recent scholarly literature has focused upon the deficit of healthcare knowledge and services in lower-income nonwhite populations, deficits in knowledge and willingness and ability to access vital resources to improve their health still persist across population
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