A Call to Action: Re-imagining Social Work Practice With Unaccompanied Minors

Abstract

In the decade leading up to 2012, approximately 8,000 Unaccompanied Minors (UAM) arrived annually at the Southwestern border of the United States. Since then, the number of arrivals has drastically increased, surpassing 14,000 between October 1, 2017 and January 31, 2018 alone. The needs of UAM concerning mental health, education, social, and legal counseling often differ from the needs of other Latinx and immigrant populations. However, recent instability in the protections and services tailored to UAM are channeling these youth and their families into mainstream agencies. This article is a call to action for social workers who may now encounter UAM for the first time in their practice. Drawing from almost twelve years of practice experience working with UAM and their families, as family case managers, community liaisons, program managers, grant administrators, and training facilitators, we review needs, services, and promising practices for social work practice with UAM. Recommendations include providing education to parents and caregivers about UAM’s rights, U.S. laws and regulations, and service availability; building trust and rapport with families; creating welcoming schools; practicing cultural openness; hiring diverse staff; and fostering partnerships with local service providers.

Unaccompanied Immigrant Children in ORR Foster Care: Community Level Facilitators of Adjustment Identified by Service Providers

“…The existing literature documents the many barriers to mental health services including the lack of bilingual providers, high costs, long waitlists, and the fact that clinicians do not feel they have the capacity needed to serve UC and their families (Marrow, 2011 ; Roth & Grace, 2015 ; Schapiro et al, 2018 ). While findings from the current study support the notion that there are not enough bilingual and bicultural clinicians or low cost services available (Evans et al, 2018 ; Roth & Grace, 2015 ), participants also discussed the promising practices in their communities such as collaboration between foster care workers and medical professionals and tailoring sex education classes specifically to this population as a means to meet the unique needs of UC. This suggests that other long term foster care providers might want to assess existing group psychoeducation courses and determine if they should be adapted for UC specifically.…”

“…This study’s results reinforce the importance of collaborations among service providers, especially when the case goals are similar. Such partnerships can help with efficient and effective referrals for services, cross training opportunities, and in the development of new and tailored programming to meet emerging client needs (Evans et al, 2018 ; Morland et al, 2005 ).…”

Unaccompanied immigrant children in long‐term foster care: Identifying and operationalizing child welfare outcomes

“…LTFC programmes address UC's previous exposure to violence and vulnerability through counselling services, but there could be more attention to how the physical safety needs relate to future exposure by expanding emotional safety programming. For example, programmes could increase the use of peer support groups led by ethnically or language matched professionals, and mentoring programmes (Evans et al, 2018; Raithelhuber, 2019). Additionally, foster parents may also benefit from community‐based social service programmes geared towards strengthening parenting skills and creating safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments for UC as a means to help build emotional safety in the placement (Linton et al, 2018).…”

“…To address children's mental health and social dimensions, service plans should also include trauma‐informed interventions such as access to therapy, school‐based mental health programmes, good quality social support services, and programming that will help develop meaningful connections with foster parents, and supportive relationships with screened mentors (Crea, Lopez, et al, 2018; Estefan et al, 2017), that are culturally relevant whenever possible. Social service professionals and foster families should also receive training about how to care for UC given their unique needs (Evans et al, 2018). The health needs of UC should be addressed as well.…”

A Human Rights Approach to Macro Social Work Field Education with Unaccompanied Immigrant Children

“…Schools of social work should assess their current field placements to ensure there are adequate opportunities for students to engage with immigrant and UC groups. By providing more field placement opportunities with UC we can continue to build cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity skills for students to enhance their ability to serve immigrant children (Evans, et al, 2018). Therefore, the macro field activities mentioned throughout this manuscript could be accomplished by social work students both in agencies that specialize in serving UC and by students in agencies that are not focused on immigrants by nature and may only rarely serve UC.…”