IntroductionObstacles to successful settlement—social isolation, language hardship, issues with employment, housing questions, transportation, barriers to health, education and government service access—all potentially play a role in emerging physical and mental health problems. The objective of this scoping review is to map the available evidence in order to provide an overview of the services and resources offered to refugees, immigrants and other newcomers by settlement agencies to support emotional wellness and well-being.Methods and analysisThe protocol to be followed for this scoping review is based on the Joanna Briggs Institute to provide a map of the current and emergent literature, and examine the extent, range and nature of this literature. The proposed scoping review will also identify the gaps in research pertaining to the emotional wellness of refugees, immigrants and other newcomers as well as summarise and disseminate research findings and provide direction for future reviews. Key databases for this scoping review include APA PsycINFO, Medline, Embase, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature Plus, Academic Search Complete, and Education Research Complete. The database search start and end dates for this scoping review will be from inception to July 2020. The article searches will take place between August and October 2020.Ethics and disseminationEthics is not required as the research will not involve human or animal subjects. The research is a scoping review, and thus relies on published and grey literature studies and documents. The findings of this proposed scoping review will be disseminated through future publications as well as presentations to relevant stakeholders, including immigrant serving agencies. We anticipate that this scoping review will identify gaps in research pertaining to the emotional wellness of refugees, immigrants and other newcomers. The results of this review will be the first comprehensive recent survey of emotional wellness practices employed by settlement agencies.
IntroductionA healthy city is one that continually creates and improves psychosocial and social environments and expands community resources allowing people to develop to their maximum portential. The role of SEDoHs is incontestable, yet we continue to face many of the same SEDoH-related problems despite what we know.
Objectives and ApproachThis project presents the idea of "Empathic Cultural Mapping" (ECM). ECM is an interactive story map which brings together vignettes taken from individual stories curated with "big data" derived from places such as Statistics Canada, the City of Calgary, and library holdings at the University of Calgary. ECM seeks to challenge users to re-imagine long held constructions around sectoral, and disciplinary driven interpretations and categorizations of lifestyle, consumption, health, and the environment. ECM seeks to encourage knowledge users from multiple sectors to think beyond what is known and to consider what might be possible.
ResultsECM is a creative interactive undertaking. In developing ECM, a range of creative research processes have been used to record and tell the stories of a small group of newcomers (defined as those who migrate, seek refuge, or claim asylum in Canada) and position these within large data. A desire to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals and communties through opening processes of dialogoue between local government, non-government organizations, communitites, and individuals lies at the heart of this project. Knowledge and sense-making are key features of individual and community empowerment within the ECM and are viewed as powerful stimuli for change as well as powerful allies for health and a buffer against its threats.
Conclusion/ImplicationsECM creates, shares, and brings together individual stories and 'big data'. It identifies needs that impact health in the everyday. It seeks to improve awareness of the world around us. It encourages people to communicate their experiences. Finally, it achieves its goals by using creative processes.
There remains an ongoing need to address not only the post-migration experiences of newcomers settling in Calgary but also to understand how systems that serve them perceive, make sense of, and contribute to these experiences. By hearing from those who work with newcomers within the institutional settings that support newcomers, we can begin to understand some complexities of newcomer integration. The purpose of this qualitative pilot study was to explore the perceptions that front-line workers hold regarding needs and experiences of newcomers. This study involved a series of eleven semi-structured interviews with workers at an immigrant-serving language-learning agency which were analyzed using thematic coding. The findings highlight: front-line workers perception of their newcomer clients’ identity in correlation to language; the clients’ emotional burden and sense of belonging; and the challenges clients faced balancing everyday commitments. Moreover, this study explores the front-line worker’s role in cultural brokerage and promoting wellness.
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