SocW 495
Multi-Ethnic Practice Methods: Empowerment Practice with Refugees: Communities in Transition

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Course Description

Empowerment Practice with Refugees examines the processes that characterize the transitions of displaced women, children, youth, and families within their country of origin and in resettlement in the United States, including: a) an overview of the historical events and processes that have resulted in the mass displacement of people; b) selected policies and service programs that have been developed to assist refugees in transition; and c) refugee trauma, adaptation, and integration after repatriation or resettlement.

The course also examines interventions with displaced women, children, youth, and families across a variety of community settings and agency programs, with a focus on a) mutual assistance, psychosocial support, gender and family issues, youth assets development, and
community mobilization, b) participatory approaches to program development and ethnographic interviewing, and c) the importance of multicultural understanding in social work practice. A wide array of strengths-based and empowerment approaches to social work practice in home, school, agency, and community contexts constitute the interventive focus of this course. Case examples for the course will draw from refugee experiences of conflict, forced migration, repatriation and resettlement, with particular case examples from Seattle’s East African communities and from diverse analyses of forced migration and related services.

Course objectives

Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to:

1. Understand underlying causes and impacts of forced migration and U.S. refugee policy on refugee populations.
2. Analyze the chronic stressors, gender, and identity issues accompanying conflict, forced migration, repatriation, and resettlement.
3. Identify trauma, coping strategies, and related interventions to promote psychosocial health in community and clinical settings.
4. Understand gender roles and issues in program development and social services
5. Apply multigenerational perspectives with regard to refugee family and intergenerational resources and conflicts
6. Understand and apply basic principles of ethnographic interviewing
7. Understand and apply participatory methods in program design and/or evaluation
8. Apply knowledge of U.S. and East African social systems and culture with regard to developing relevant services for refugees in originating and host countries.
9. Promote the development of appropriate services to refugees across multiple settings and levels of social work practice, with application of these skills in your course projects.
10. Obtain a working knowledge of resources and constraints related to contextual practice with refugee women, children, youth, and families. Apply this knowledge in your course projects.
11. Develop a basic proposal including needs assessment and program design
12. Collaborate and problem-solve at a multicultural level with a greater degree of cultural competence.