Serving refugee children and families in Head Start

Children Today, Sept-Oct, 1989 by Connie Broughton

Serving Refugee Children and Families in Head Start

In 1985, the Spokane County Head Start Program received a grant from the Administration for Children, Youth and Families to develop a comprehensive service program to meet the needs of Spokane's refugee families - a population that increased by more than 400 percent in the last 10 years. Funded as an Innovative Project through the Head Start Bureau, the Bancroft Early Intervention/Parent Project was designed to help refugee parents of children enrolled in Head Start learn English, adapt to U.S. culture and become more self-sufficient.

The program offers English as a Second Language (ESL) classes for parents of the Head Start children and provides child care for their infants and toddlers while they attend the ESL classes four mornings a week. One day a week, parents also attend Adult Learning Labs, conducted in English, where they learn and practice the life skills necessary to help them cope in their new homeland.

In the course of developing the program, Head Start staff discovered that refugee families have needs that extend far beyond child care and language. These range from learning such simple skills as using a can opener to overcoming nutritional deficiencies and mental health problems. Responding to those needs provided the staff with many headaches, many rewards, and much growth. By sharing what the Spokane project staff learned, it is hoped that other social service and child care professionals who work with refugee families will benefit from their experiences.

Getting to Know

Refugee Families

Although the terms "refugee" and "immigrant" are often used intercahngeably, significant differences do exist. Immigrants come to a country by choice; they plan their new destination and departure, and usually maintain contact with friends and family left behind. Refugees, on the other hand, escape from their homes under dramatic and often tragic circumstances. They do not choose their destinations. Cut off from family and friends, they find themselves at the mercy of strangers who speak a different language and who live very differently.

It is important to learn the reasons for a family's flight and the details of their escape. They may have had to make unconventional and agonizing choices in order to survive. "We discovered that there's a lot to learn before we go leaping in," notes Pam Praeger, Executive Director of the Spokane County Head Start Program. "If you can build a trusting relationship and find out who these people are, helping professionals can do a lot of good."

Needs of Refugee Families

Language is the first obstacle. It is very difficult and frustrating to live in a world where you cannot understand others or make yourself understood. One 4-year-old boy, a member of Spokane's only refugee family from Romania, was particularly hard to reach. He simply cried and cried the whole time he was in Head Start, and his teachers were unable to comfort him or to find out why he was so troubled. Each time a new adult came into the room, he would run to the person and talk and talk - and then cry and cry. Efforts to find a translator through local universities and the language bank were unsuccessful, but finally, through a letter to the newspaper, a woman was located who spoke the boy's language. She volunteered to work with the boy, and after spending some time with him, she asked him why he cried so much. He answered, "Because the people here don't have ears."

Translators are the "ears" for people who work with refugee families. However, good and appropriate translators are not always easy to find. In addition to speaking the correct dialect, the translator should be someone who is trusted by the families and is the "right" sex. For example, depending upon cultural traditions and the topic under discussion, the proper translator for a talk on family planning might be a woman, while for a discussion on disciplining children, a man might be considered a more appropriate translator. It is also necessary to have a translator who faithfully reports what the refugee is saying without interpreting or changing the meaning.

Staff members also needed to learn how to work with translators and with people who are just learning English. Many Americans have a tendency to talk loudly or even shout, as if increased volume will increase understanding. It doesn't, but brevity is useful. The use of non-idiomatic speech is also important. New English-speaking mothers may be confused when asked if their babies have "the runs," if they can come to a "potluck" supper, or why they are "down in the dumps."

Although children usually pick up English much faster than their parents, it is considered disrespectful to use children as translators. Another problem can occur if the translator has a vested interest in the information being translated. For example, in one case involving a mental health investigation concerning a severely depressed girl, the parents brought a neighbor to translate for them. Unfortunately, the neighbor did not "translate" the real reason for the girl's depression: He had been molesting her, a fact that was learned when the girl finally told a teacher what had been going on. (The school district has since established a policy of using only trained, known interpreters, or, if an interpreter unknown to the school must be used, of thoroughly checking out the translator before proceeding.)