BRYCS supports efforts to increase collaboration and cross-service training between child welfare agencies and refugee service providers. Such cross-service trainings enable child welfare workers to understand the cultural and political context from which refugees come, so that child protective service (CPS) and child welfare caseworkers can respond with cultural sensitivity when working with refugee families. Similarly, cross-service training’s can educate refugee service workers about child welfare and family preservation services available in a particular community, so that refugee service workers can in turn educate refugee clients about relevant services available to families.
Perhaps most importantly, cross-service trainings develop professional connections, relationships and respect between these two professional fields, reducing misunderstandings and misperceptions and increasing collaboration on behalf of refugee families in need.
Child Welfare Resources
Promising Practices
Promising Practices
Get new ideas, share your promising practice, and read about other refugee-serving programs across the country!
Child Maltreatment Prevention Curriculum
Child Maltreatment Prevention Curriculum
In partnership with ORR/DCS, BRYCS “Tier One” curriculum covers professional ethics and boundaries; types of child maltreatment; and responding to, reporting, and preventing child abuse and neglect. “Tier Two” encourages participants to apply their acquired knowledge to the complex scenarios often encountered by program staff who care for the children in ORR/DCS care.
Fostering Immigrant Children
Foster Parent Training PageChild Welfare Blog
Refugee Resettlement and Child Welfare: Collaboration for Child Protection: BRYCS Interview with Frances Johnson
BRYCS Interview with Frances Johnson Program Manager, Child Abuse Investigation and Assessment Unit, Missouri Department of Social Services Children's Division; Frances.A.Johnson@dss.mo.gov BRYCS: What prompted this [...]
Refugee Resettlement and Child Welfare: Collaboration for Child Protection
An East African family was referred to CPS following the birth of their fifth child due to concerns about hygiene in the home. With the [...]
Refugee Children without Their Parents: Guardianship, Kinship Care and Foster Care
My name is Thomas. I was born in 1987, in Monrovia, Liberia. When I was about six or seven years old, while living in San [...]
Determining Child Abuse & Neglect Across Cultures
This month’s spotlight addresses child abuse and neglect -what it is, who are considered mandated reporters, and how reporting should occur -and the complexities of [...]
Foreign-born Children in Foster Care: How to Serve this Special Population?
The number of foreign-born residents in the U.S. has increased nearly threefold since 1970 1. This increased diversity of American society impacts all social service [...]
BRYCS Public Child Welfare Online Assessment Tool: Preliminary Findings
BRYCS conducted an online assessment in the Spring 2003 which was distributed to child welfare administrators in all 50 states. The focus of this assessment [...]
Local Service Delivery Strategies Report: Portland and Lewiston, Maine (October 10th-12th, 2001)
The BRYCS technical assistance intervention in the cities of Portland and Lewiston, ME, highlighted the continuing need for additional information, collaboration, and resource-sharing between child [...]