Global SW Midterm

Mid-Term Assignment Global Social Work and Practice With Immigrants and Refugees

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Date:

11/5/2019

Introduction to Global Social Work and Practice with Immigrants and Refugees:

Midterm Assignment

Directions: Please answer the questions below. This is a take home, open book, open notes assignment. Good luck! Questions 1- 5 are worth 10 points each. Question 6 is worth 50 points

1) Define the following terms:

a. Immigrants: These are people who move away from their places of usual residence within a country temporarily or permanently (United Nations International Organization for Migration, 2019)

b. Refugees: These are people who are outside their country of origin for reason of feared persecution, conflict, generalized violence or other circumstances that have seriously disturbed public order and as a result require international protection (United Nations Refugees and Migrants, 2019).

c. Asylum Seekers: This person whose request for sanctuary has yet to be processed (UNHCR, 2019).

d. Forced Migration: it is the forced movement of people across international border or within a state from their habitual place of residence.

e. Transnational Family: This is a family that has members in different nations but still together as a family unit (United Nations International Organization for Migration, 2019). FOR THIS DEFINITION THE PROFESSOR SUGGESTED TO USE COFACE-EU.ORG

PLEASE PROVIDE MORE COMPLETE ANSWERS SPECIFIC TO EACH TERM. YOU MAY CITE, USE QUOTATIONS, + CITE YOUR ANSWERS IN APA STYLE. FOR ALL DEFINITIONS FOR WHAT REASONS AND PROVIDE AN EXAMPLE FOR EACH.

2) Which of these (above) categories of persons participate in the programs at your agency? Are many participants falling into more than one category? Which? And Why?

a. Information questions

i. What are the services your agency provides for the population it serves?

My agency provides services to immigrants from all over the world, mainly form El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico We received unaccompanied minors that crossed the border without parents. The agency will be in charge of reunifying the minors with family members that resides in U.S territory

ii. Is the agency leadership the same or different from the population that is being served?

One of the main requisites to serve this population is to speak Spanish. The agency staff in its majority is Spanish speaking, I can say that 90% of the leadership is bilingual speaking both English and Spanish, most of them are Hispanic.

On the other hand, the leadership is composed by people with different backgrounds who shared the same vision despite their cultural differences. The different cultural backgrounds are Caucasian, Hispanic, African Americans, Europeans.

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b. Standpoint Questions- Situate yourself in regard to the agency’s leadership and program participants:

i. Describe your standpoint with regard to the agency populations as we discussed it in class, and how it contributes to what you are able to notice about the people your agency serves.

My standpoint in regards the population that we served is that we do fulfill the needs of the minors. We provided legal, mental health, medical, educational, physical, food, shelter services to all the minors that come to our agency.

I find the agency population who are majorly Spanish speaking awesome; this is because they serve immigrants who also speak Spanish thus making it easy to interact with them thus meeting their needs which is most instances are special needs. This is discussed in the Virginia child protection newsletter on the considerations to be made while dealing with the children including the service provision (Virginia Department of social services , 2011).

My agency works under the Office of Refugees and Resettlement policies, sometimes I don’t agree with what the policies mandated us to do, like home studies. Home studies delay the process of reunification with their love ones. This can be contradictory too, because at the end those home studies are to secure the well-being of the minors. As a case manager when I know that the child has gone through difficult and terrible situations in country of origin, I have to request a home study to be conducted as part of the process. During the process I realized how in need the child needs post release services, that are services that will help the minor and family to adjust to their new environment and acculturation.

As an agency we contribute a lot to our population. I’ve always said that we are like a daycare for these children. Once the minor’s arrived the border they are referred to us. How we contribute to the population? By offering them, food, shelter, education, mental health assistance, medical assistance, and love. Even though we are not their family we became one, the daily interaction with the children made us part important in their lives.

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ii. How is it the same and how is it different from that of the agency leadership? – Explain

The leadership ought to be balanced in terms of cultural background, our leadership staff is from United States (different states), Puerto Rico, Europe (different countries), Venezuela, Mexico, etc. As they participate majorly in management issues hence the trend at the agency the cultural diversity in the agency ensure that the minors are more comfortable and their more easily adjusted.

Diversity in leadership is important as leads to a greater output in terms of productivity in that it gives better solutions to the complex problems (Jones, 2018). This is made possible by the ability to look through the issues with a diverse perspective due to the different cultures, diversity also help in the retention of diverse staff and finally the leaders can serve as mentors to the diverse professionals thus build s multi-cultural competencies within the organization.

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3) Which global factors influenced the decision of program participants in your agency (or their parents or ancestors) to come to New York City? (If the population is very diverse, give one or two examples.).

One of the specific questions that the minors are asked during assessments is what their reasons are to travel to U.S. Most of them can agree on their answers. Most of our minors reported being threatened by Narcos and gang members in country of origin. Sometimes the same people that threatened minors had already killed a family member, or a person of the community. As consequence of these issues minors can display minor displays symptoms of PTSD. Minors often reports feeling anxious, restless and hyper vigilant. Poverty is another reason to travel to U.S and with this comes the lack of educational opportunities for not been able to afford school supplies, and things needed in order to go to school.

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4) Name and describe five of the international human rights instruments discussed in this class, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

i. The universal declaration of human rights: This declaration was passed to affirm the protections of human rights throughout the world. It contains basic concepts of dignity, liberty and equality.

ii. The international covenant on civil and political rights: this covenant was adopted by the UN general assembly thus making all countries party to it. It ensure the protection and respect of civil and political rights including right to life, freedom of religion, speech, assemble and electoral rights.

iii. International convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families: this convention was put in place to protect migrants.

iv. Convention relating to the status of refugees and protocol relating to the status of refugees: this was put in place to protect the refugees

v. International covenant on economic, social and cultural rights:

· YOU SHOULD CITE SPECIFICS ABOUT EACH DOCUMENT AND PROVIDE EXAMPLE. EXPLAIN IT CAREFULLY, FOR WHOM? HOW SPECIFICALLY.

· EXPLAIN HOW YOU APPLY THE SPECIFIC PRINCIPLES IN THE INSTRUMENT AT YOUR WORK?

a. Whom do they protect?

The instruments protect various vulnerable groups in the society including the children, women and the unprivileged. The covenants also protect various groups including the refugees, the migrants and their families.

b. How do they protect those people?

Minors are provided with Know Your Right orientation, this orientation is provided by Catholic Charities, which is an institution that helped immigrants of all countries. Each minor get an individual screening, information provided to the minors are that they have legal rights and cannot be violated.

c. How do they apply to program participants at your agency?

All minors are provided with Know Your Rights orientation, and a legal screening without exception. There’s a video in form of cartoons for minors. A child that is months old is mandated to watch that video.

d. Are there ways in which they are not relevant to them? How and why?

Give your opinion briefly.

All these international instruments are applicable to the agency I work at, this is because we served immigrant children who are vulnerable thus their rights ought to be protected.

HOW DOES THIS IS RELATED TO THE DOCUMENTS ABOVE?

5) We discussed the use of participatory research methods in learning from and about diverse populations. We discussed some methods that are used in research, assessment, program design and evaluation on macro, mezzo and micro levels. Referring to Chambers (2007) define and describe Participatory Rapid Assessment (PRA) and Participatory Learning in Action (PLA) Remember to give the proper citation. Use the PPT from class 4 to help you if necessary, but then move forward and use one of the readings as a reference.

Participatory Rural Assessment is an interactive data collection process conducted at a community level with a specific community group of interest, it helps capture the diversity. This method of assessment can be used to investigate the communities’ needs such as the socio-economical deprived community needs. It can be a very effective health research tool thus helps promote community development. It involves observations, doing of interviews with the residents including key informants such as their leaders who then help give a clear picture of the community’s needs and services (Chambers, 2007). This approach is mostly used in rural areas in which realistic solutions are innovated.

Participatory Learning in Action is an approach for learning about and it moves from rural to all communities, the learning involves the tool kit of participatory and visual methods with natural interviewing techniques and is intended to facilitate a process of collective analysis and learning. The approach could be used in identifying needs, planning, monitoring and evaluating projects and programs. As a consultation tool, it offers the opportunity for one to promote the active participation of communities in issues and interventions thus being able to shape their lives. The approach also uses visual methods and analytical tools in which the community is given a chance to participate regardless of their age, literacy capabilities and ethnicity (Chambers, 2007).

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6) Choose 1 of the following: a, b, or c:

a. If you do clinical work at your agency, use either the Culturagram (Congress & Kung, 2012) or a life map to learn about the culture of an individual or family with whom you are working.

i. Report the results.

I was able to use the Culturagram in my clinical work hence enabled me to deduce various findings about it. I was able to work with a family consisting of five members namely Jody, Rosa, Chino, Lenchita and Flor. By interacting with caretaker I was able to identify the challenges they go through including getting to know specific problems that the families undergo through thus be effective in providing assistance.

ii. How is this method a helpful supplement to making an assessment of the family?

Culturagram is helpful in that I was able to get detailed response of the needs of the family by understanding them through knowing the reasons for relocations, their legal status, the length of time they had spent in the community, the languages they use, the health benefits they access and even how they are able to deal with crisis. This enables me to know what area the family needs to be worked on in order to meet their needs.

iii. Are their problems in the use of this method with the families that you work with? What are they?

The challenges that they put forward as a family is what the agency I work for helps tackles, this is through the minors from the different families. By using the Culturagram I was able to obtain information in various problems which include their documentation hence their legal statuses, for this specific family they were undocumented. They also had a challenge of the language barrier in the community they stay in as they only spoke Spanish and Quiche. They had access to healthcare but it was different from the traditional Mayan medicine they were conversant with, they also were able to incorporate cultural values together with the religious values (Congress, 2004).the family was catholic and also stated that they had not faced discrimination and oppression as it is synonymous with immigrants.

Sometimes families can give the wrong answer when conducting this assessment. Wrong information as to who are they family members blood related. Majority of the time than can consider a family member a person with whom they grew up, or a person that has been in their lives for an extend period of time, like neighbors. When conducting this type of assessment, the clinician needs to be very specific in the questions and asked them in different ways in order for the family to understand. The Culturagram played an important role to ensure I identified the problems the family had undergone hence map a way forward on how to solve them.

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References

Chambers, R. (2007). Working paper 286: From PRA tp PLA and pluralism. Brighton : Institute of development studies.

Congress, E. P. (2004). Cultural and ethical issues in working with diverse patients and their families. New York: The Haworth Press.

Jones, S. E. (2018). The value of diversity in leadership roles. The Ladders.

UNHCR. (2019). Asylum seekers. Retrieved November 4th, 2019, from UNHCR: Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/asylum-seekers.html

United Nations International Organization for Migration. (2019). Who is a migrant? Retrieved November 4, 2019, from United Nations International Organization for Migration: Retrieved from https://www.iom.int/who-is-a-migrant

United Nations Refugees and Migrants. (2019). Refugees and Migrants. Retrieved November 4th , 2019, from United Nations Refugees and Migrants: Retrieved from https://refugeesmigrants.un.org/definitions

Virginia Department of social services . (2011). Serving Immigrant Families. Virginia Child Protection Newsletter.

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