Supporting Immigrant Families
Resources and training for frontline workers who provide services for immigrant families and their young children.
OVERVIEW
Create Spaces of Hope and Empowerment for Immigrant Families
Young children from families of recent immigration are the fastest growing youth population in America.
Beyond the expected stressors associated with immigration, young children and their families may face additional stressors due to federal immigration policies. Living in constant fear of deportation, detention and child-parent separation can lead to extreme anxiety, traumatic stress and other mental health disorders.
Supporting Immigrant Families provides frontline providers working with immigrant families with the tools and resources to support undocumented as well as mixed-status families with children in their care.
WHAT WE DO
Immigration Presents Unique Challenges – We Can Help
Frontline workers from historically marginalized communities often have higher caseloads with higher levels of complexity. This can have an impact on the families they serve. Protect the wellbeing of frontline workers while improving best practices in supporting immigrant families.
My client’s parent/caregiver has been deported.
My client expresses worry and fear about their status.
I work with undocumented immigrants.
I feel overwhelmed and exhausted.
I need more training about immigration trauma.
I want to understand how immigration trauma impact development.
Professional Development
What We Offer
Start by exploring all our tools and resources available on this website to help strengthen your work supporting young immigrant children and their families.
Additionally, to discover ways your organization can improve strategies and approaches specific to their work, try customized training and consultation with our experts.
Rate the perception of your knowledge and skills and identify key areas in your own practice that you can improve to better support young immigrant children and families in your care.
This tool can be used in supervision or consultation to get a snapshot of current knowledge, skills, and approach when working with immigrant families.
Connect with us to facilitate trainings to improve the knowledge and skill of your staff working with immigrant families with young children.
Engage with Erikson to provide a safe space to step out of the work and reflect on the feelings, memories, and experiences that the work evokes in us.
Explore this resource library to find supports that would support the young children and families in your care.
Explore curated training content to develop foundational skills needed to support this work.
A Proven Model to Help Agencies & Centers
Expand your organization’s services for support for immigrant families with young children.
Erikson’s Supporting Immigrant Families uses a trauma-focused, developmentally-appropriate, diversity-informed, and culturally-responsive training model, borrowing from the Diversity-Informed Tenets for Work with Infants, Children, and Families. This training model encompasses a social justice approach with focuses on a proactive approach for fear reduction in the provision of services and as an alternative in the absence of humane immigration enforcement policy reform.
This approach is multilayered and multipronged and has implications for clinical practice, workforce well-being, and systems change for practitioners working with immigrant families.
SELF-ASSESSMENT TOOLS
Build Your Self-Awareness to Determine Next Steps
Agencies and centers like yours see multiple and increasing demands for specialized infant and early childhood mental health services (IECMH) for immigrant children and their families in your communities. The needs for support, training, and reflective consultation for the providers serving these children and families continue to grow. Complete these self-assessments to help determine what your opportunities and next steps should be.
Self-Efficacy in Supporting Immigrant Families
Use this tool to understand your current areas of strength and areas that need further development. Rate your perception of your knowledge and skills to support young immigrant children and families in your care. Once you identify areas that need further development, you can utilize other resources on this page, discuss with a supervisor, help guide you to other resources on this page, or seek out additional training.
To cite this tool: Noroña, C.R., Fernández-Pastrana, I., Saulnier, M., Anderson, S., & Korfmacher, J. (2022). Self-Efficacy in Supporting Immigrant Families.
Supporting Immigrant Families Case Vignette
This tool can be used in supervision or consultation to get a snapshot of current knowledge, skills, and approach when working with immigrant families. An individual can complete the questions related to the vignette and bring to the supervisor/consultant to discuss and rate responses. It can be used to highlight areas of strength and guide areas of support and development as well as measure changes in approach over time.
You can use this to guide next steps in developing your practice to support your work with immigrant children and families.
To cite this tool: Noroña, C.R., Fernández-Pastrana, I., Korfmacher, J., Saulnier, M., Anderson, S., & Kimondo, F. (2022). Supporting Immigrant Families Case Vignette.
Frontline Provider Training
We facilitate improving knowledge and skill in supporting young immigrant children and families through a multipronged and multilayered, multidisciplinary approach that:
- Uses a historical and socio-cultural and political critical lens/awareness
- Focuses on creating sanctuaries, empowerment, and hope
- Caring for the caregiver: Increasing protections, supporting and uplifting the voices of the workforce
We believe that attachment and development are a dynamic process that happen in the context of relationships and socio-cultural values and differences.
Diversity-Informed Reflective Consultation
If you are a worker who receives consultation that is increasing your awareness and allows you to feel supported, then you’re going to be able to see the beauty, strengths, and protective factors that families have. You’re going to be able to feel more inspired by your work and the families you serve because your cup is not empty.
These consultative services:
- Provide a safe space to collaborate and name the unspeakable
- Help with decolonization of knowledge and practice
- Cultivate critical self-reflection
- Support identification of social location and intersectionality
Hear from Our Researchers
Generously Funded By
In Collaboration With
Help Improve the Wellbeing of Immigrant Families with Young Children
Connect with Supporting Immigrant Families to find the best training options for you and your staff.