Bridge Builders: A Qualitative Study Exploring the Experiences of Former Refugees Working as Caseworkers in the United States

ABSTRACT.

Individuals who come to the United States as refugees and work as resettlement caseworkers offer peer support, modeling, and assistance with integration to newly arriving refugees, despite often having limited training or experience in social service provision. A phenomenological approach was utilized to gain understanding about the experiences of refugee caseworkers. Nine caseworkers who came to the United States as refugees completed in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis was used to identify primary themes, including: a) the caseworker's bridge-building role with clients; b) their role in building bridges with others in the community, including the resettlement agency; and c) the caseworkers’ experience as bridge builders, including motivations, perspectives toward their role, and needed supports. Refugee service providers face unique challenges in negotiating boundaries with clients and meeting the expectations of their ethnolinguistic community members. Their strengths in understanding household experiences and in building agency and community understanding highlight their ability to contribute to positive resettlement outcomes. The findings from this study have implications for agencies serving refugees and for other social services that utilize peer-support strategies, particularly in regards to staff training and support. Findings highlight the need for research examining effective resettlement strategies and the perspectives of refugees toward resettlement approaches.     

Designing Organisational Management Frameworks to Empower Episodic Volunteering

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Volunteers are a critical operational resource for not-for-profit organisations in the health and welfare sector. However,...     

Organizational violence and aggression: Development of the three-factor Violence Climate Survey

The aim of this study is to examine the concept of health-specific leadership, differentiate it from sound general leadership and identify whether it has an impact on employee strain, alongside general sound leadership practices. Health-specific leadership is conceptualized as the leader's explicit consideration of and engagement in employee health. The study is based on research in the field of leadership impact on employee strain, health and well-being, extended by recent findings of the importance of domain-specific leadership constructs. As indicated by previous relevant studies, we include psychological climate for health, role ambiguity and job satisfaction as mediating variables. Using structural equation modelling, a sample of 1027 employees of the German tax administration was examined. The results show differential effects for health-specific and general sound leadership. While neither of these two aspects of leadership exhibited a direct association with employee strain, general sound leadership practices were significantly related to lower employee strain through lower levels of role ambiguity, better psychological climate for health and higher job satisfaction. Health-specific leadership was associated with higher levels of psychological climate for health, but also higher role ambiguity.     

Childbearing Biographies as a Method to Examine Diversity and Clustering of Childbearing Experiences: A Research Brief

Population Research and Policy Review - Due to increasing heterogeneity in if, when, and under what conditions women have children, the timing, spacing, and other demographic aspects of...     

The impact of poverty and immigrant background on children's school satisfaction: evidence from Norway

Children's school enjoyment and satisfaction with their teachers is crucial to their quality of life. Still, we have little knowledge about what shapes positive outcomes in this respect, and to what extent groups of children and youth differ from each other. This article compares immigrant children with Norwegian children from low-income families and with a reference group of children from normal-income families. The children were interviewed at age 10–12 years, and again at age 13–15 years; thus, we can follow changes over time. Immigrant children from income-poor families express significantly higher school and teacher satisfaction than any other category of 10–12-year-olds. However, for the 13–15-year-olds, there are no systematic differences between group averages, but there are more signs of polarisation among low-income immigrant children. Explanations for these patterns are sought in the literature on social capital in immigrant families.     

Practitioner Research: Evidence or Critique?

In this paper, I revisit some of the origins and more recentdirections in practitioner research in social work, seeing itas a phenomenon that—rather than being special or narrowlyassociated with social work—manifests a pervasive clusterof concerns about good professional practice in contemporarysociety. Drawing on some general conclusions of a recent studyof practitioner inquiry, I indicate ways in which the widersystems of which it is a part frequently hamstring the potentialof such research to operate as more than a fringe operation—a‘street market’ version of mainstream research.I outline four ways in which social workers, service users,agency managers, academics, government departments and universitiesshould work to a transformative agenda for practitioner research—transformativefor both practice and research. This will involve refashioningthe interface between the methodology and methods of practiceand research; generating practitioner research capacity; recognizingthe subtlety and critical potential of a genuinely ‘practical’agenda in practitioner research; and rescuing practitioner researchfrom a simply technical information-providing function, thatby-passes the challenge to promoting critical practice.     

Sex Differences in Associations Between Parental Behaviors and Characteristics and Adolescent Social Integration

One hundred and eight eighth grade students completed self-report questionnaires about their perceptions of parental warmth, structure, and psychological autonomy granting (used to compute a measure of perceived parental authoritativeness) and three measures of social integration: their own connectedness to their communities and involvement in school- versus community-based extracurricular activities. Parents of these students participated in telephone interviews during which they reported on their own relationships with their children's friends and friends' parents, and their own involvement in community activities. Parental community involvement was associated with stronger feelings of community connectedness and higher levels of community involvement among boys and more involvement in school- and community-based extracurricular activities among girls. Perceived parental authoritativeness was associated with stronger feelings of community connectedness and higher levels of involvement in community activities among girls. Parents' relationships with children's peers and peers' parents were associated with greater involvement in school-based extracurricular activities among girls.     

The Relationship of Welfare Receipt to Child Outcomes

Welfare receipt often is correlated negatively with children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes. Yet, virtually all children in households that receive public assistance are poor, prompting the question of whether poor outcomes are an effect of welfare, a spurious relationship between welfare and child outcomes, or a result of welfare selection. Using the NLSY-CS, these possibilities are examined by controlling for poverty and for selection into welfare. Controlling for child and maternal characteristics accounts for the majority of bivariate associations between welfare and outcomes among Black children. Controlling for poverty does little to change the relationship between welfare and outcomes for Black or White children. Controlling for selection into welfare further reduces the relationship between welfare receipt and outcomes among White children and has little discernible effect among Black children.