Change Can’t Wait

At the end of 2020, the Research & Program development team implemented two newcomer mental health related projects that built on ongoing research we had been conducting at The Immigrant Education Society (TIES):

1. The first project, outlined on this page, was called “Immigrant Family-based Interpreters Emotional Wellness Supports” and aimed to introduce information to better support children and youth who provide interpretation and translation for family members.
2. The second project was called “Pedagogy-based Emotional and Mental Wellness Intervention Pilot for Newcomers,” which intended to infuse culturally safe, emotional wellness pedagogy into teaching, classroom management and lesson planning at settlement agencies.

We primarily tackled the issue of awareness and conveying evidence-based information from past studies. This awareness has led to teachers and students themselves changing their practices when asking a youth to be a language broker for them.

These projects were funded through the City of Calgary’s Change Can’t Wait initiative, which supported innovative efforts and programming for Calgarians struggling with mental health and addiction. Our projects, along with 31 others the city has funded through this initiative, helped inform the development of the Community Action on Mental Health and Addiction Strategy.

Project Information

Project 1: Immigrant Family-based Interpreters Emotional Wellness Supports

Goal: To introduce information to better support children and youth who are providing interpretation and translation for family members into Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC).

Newcomer children and youth regularly assist their parents by translating and interpreting in situations such as medical appointments and understanding and applying for government benefits (Corona et al., 2012; Trickett & Jones, 2007). In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is likely that understanding and applying public health guidance has also been undertaken by children. The pandemic has taken an additional toll on newcomer families, as they must now make sense of a constant and overwhelming flow of information related to public health, benefits eligibility, changes to school systems, community resource closures, social distancing protocols, and so on. Due to physical closures of services they depend on, many of these families are left to navigate information on their own.

This is especially challenging for newcomer parents who lack proficiency in the English language. Parents may not be able to visit social services agencies where they can access an interpreter and many essential services are only available over the phone or email. Access to technology is also dependent on English skills. With the move to online schooling, newcomer children are being required to act as intermediaries over video conferencing with teachers and school staff when parents cannot communicate.

Acting as an intermediary has already been demonstrated to have negative effects on newcomer children and youth, as they can be exposed to difficult or age-inappropriate information and can be subject to added stress and anxiety as they adopt an adult-level role (Alvarez, 2017; Rainey et al., 2014; Weisskirch & Alva, 2002). If children are required to relay information that is too complex for their age, the family might compound the pressure, stress and anxiety already burdening them.

In this project, a service was developed to create capacity at TIES and newcomer-serving agencies to provide support minimizing the negative psychological impacts newcomer youth may experience from interpretation and translation requests. Specifically, we deployed two interventions:

Intervention 1: A LINC-based module (see below) that provides skills to newcomer parents who rely on their children for interpretation and translation skills to:

• gain awareness of the anxiety and negative psychological impacts that can result from over-reliance on family based youth interpreters and translators;
• adopt a supportive and collaborative approach to help maximize the educational benefits of this practice;
• create positive communicative practices between parents and children; and
• increase the family unit’s capacity for resilience and ability to advocate for themselves in crisis situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The module was deployed in LINC classes at TIES and subsequently shared with other LINC providers in Calgary to benefit a larger number of newcomer families in the future.

Intervention 2: The development of a Settlement Practitioner’s Toolkit (see below) that provides approaches for front-line non-teaching settlement workers to:

• become familiar with the stressors experienced by newcomer youth acting as intermediaries for their parents in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic;
• provide practical guidance and support to families who experience relationship strain as a result of the increased pressure on their youth intermediaries; and
• encourage a more positive collaborative approach for newcomer parents and youth in engaging in translation and interpretation, so that its positive educational benefits are maximized.

Toolkit knowledgeable staff provided an added layer of support for newcomer clients who have attended the LINC module.

Project 1 Workshops

The Project 1 Workshop was intended to help LINC teachers and students understand the process and psychological impacts of cultural LB. Through these workshops, we raised awareness regarding LB and has affected teacher and student reactions when asking for LB help.

Participants

• 29 LINC staff and 6 settlement practitioners participated in the unique individual training.
• 194 LINC students received the Child Language Brokering (CLB) module from training participants.
• 6 practitioners from different settlement organizations in Calgary participated in an LB workshop.  

Lessons Learned

• The LINC program is the perfect environment to reach out to newcomers and provide them with resources and information on their health in general.
• LINC instructors face many additional demands that they have to accommodate in order to continue instruction for their students (e.g. digital support for students).
• An ESL teacher in a settlement context requires a scope of different skills that relate to experiences newcomers typically face. This includes knowledge of how to address mental and emotional wellness issues and the community services that are offered for such cases.

Watch

We have created the following videos to provide a more detailed overview of the Change Can’t Wait projects and our findings.

Impacts

This research has contributed to the development of TIES Healthy Minds, a free online counselling platform for individuals, couples, and families.

Learn More

Here are the resources developed from Project 1 and utilized in the Intervention stage

• Language Brokering Module: CLB 1-2
• Language Brokering Module: CLB 3-4
• Language Brokering Module: CLB 5-6
• Language Brokering Module: CLB 7-8
• Language Brokering Module: Ana Helps her Father CLB 1-2
• Language Brokering Module: Ana Helps her Father CLB 3-4
• Child Language Brokering: Settlement Practitioner's Toolkit

Learn more about our knowledge building surveys, interviews and their outcomes on our Language Brokering Initiative page.

References

Alvarez, S. (2017). Brokering literacies: Child language brokering in Mexican immigrant families. Community Literacy Journal, 11(2), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.25148/clj.11.2.009116

Corona, R., Stevens, L. F., Halfond, R. W., Shaffer, C. M., Reid-Quiñones, K., & Gonzalez, T. (2012). A qualitative analysis of what Latino parents and adolescents think and feel about language brokering. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21(5), 788-798. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-011-9536-2

Rainey, V. R., Flores, V., Morrison, R. G., David, E. J. R., & Silton, R. L. (2014). Mental health risk factors associated with Childhood Language Brokering. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(5), 463-478. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2013.870180

Trickett, E. J., & Jones, C. J. (2007). Adolescent culture brokering and family functioning: A study of families from Vietnam. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 13(2), 143-150. https://doi.org/10.1037/1099-9809.13.2.143

Weisskirch, R. S., & Alva, S. A. (2002). Language brokering and the acculturation of Latino children. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 24(3), 369-378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739986302024003007