TY - JOUR
T1 - Acceptability and Initial Promise of Trainings for Community Stakeholders Serving Refugee and Immigrant Families
AU - Ford-Paz, Rebecca E.
AU - Santiago, Catherine De Carlo
AU - Bustos, Yvita
AU - Uriarte, Jefferson J.
AU - Distel, Laura M.L.
AU - Ros, Anna M.
AU - Coyne, Claire A.
AU - Rivera, Claudio Santiago
AU - Guo, Sisi
AU - Rusch, Dana
AU - Jean, Nicole St
AU - Hilado, Aimee
AU - Zarzour, Hadia
AU - Gomez, Rocío
AU - Cicchetti, Colleen
N1 - Funding Information:
Family Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Chicago, Illinois. Sisi Guo is now at Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California-Los Angeles.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association
PY - 2022/1/31
Y1 - 2022/1/31
N2 - Cumulative traumaticmigration experiences are compounded by escalating chronic distress related to the current sociopolitical climate for refugee and immigrant children and families. The aim of this open trial was to conduct a preliminary evaluation of You’re Not Alone, a rapidly mounted, strengths-based, community-focused capacity building training initiative for stakeholders interacting with refugee and immigrant children and families in the Chicago area. Trainings, based on Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) and psychological first aid frameworks, adapted education and universal health promotion strategies for population-specific chronic traumatic stress. Two groups of participants (N = 948), who attended either mandatory (n = 659 educators) or voluntary (n = 289 community stakeholders) trainings, completed surveys at pretraining, post-training, and 6-week follow-up. Outcome indices included participant satisfaction, acceptability of training model, and changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Over 90% of participants reported satisfaction and acceptability of trainings. For educators, hierarchical linear modeling analyses demonstrated significant increases in trauma knowledge, refugee and immigrant-specific knowledge, positive attitudes toward TIC over time, and a decrease in negative attitudes toward immigrants. Over 95% of participants indicated that they learned and intended to use new strategies to help serve refugee and immigrant children and families. At follow-up, over 80% of those who completed the survey had utilized at least one strategy, and over 55% indicated that they were using resources that they learned about in the training. This study demonstrates that capacity-building trainings swiftly developed and disseminated to community stakeholders can produce positive change in knowledge, attitudes, and practices.
AB - Cumulative traumaticmigration experiences are compounded by escalating chronic distress related to the current sociopolitical climate for refugee and immigrant children and families. The aim of this open trial was to conduct a preliminary evaluation of You’re Not Alone, a rapidly mounted, strengths-based, community-focused capacity building training initiative for stakeholders interacting with refugee and immigrant children and families in the Chicago area. Trainings, based on Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) and psychological first aid frameworks, adapted education and universal health promotion strategies for population-specific chronic traumatic stress. Two groups of participants (N = 948), who attended either mandatory (n = 659 educators) or voluntary (n = 289 community stakeholders) trainings, completed surveys at pretraining, post-training, and 6-week follow-up. Outcome indices included participant satisfaction, acceptability of training model, and changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Over 90% of participants reported satisfaction and acceptability of trainings. For educators, hierarchical linear modeling analyses demonstrated significant increases in trauma knowledge, refugee and immigrant-specific knowledge, positive attitudes toward TIC over time, and a decrease in negative attitudes toward immigrants. Over 95% of participants indicated that they learned and intended to use new strategies to help serve refugee and immigrant children and families. At follow-up, over 80% of those who completed the survey had utilized at least one strategy, and over 55% indicated that they were using resources that they learned about in the training. This study demonstrates that capacity-building trainings swiftly developed and disseminated to community stakeholders can produce positive change in knowledge, attitudes, and practices.
KW - community capacity-building
KW - immigrant
KW - refugee
KW - resilience
KW - trauma
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U2 - 10.1037/ser0000457
DO - 10.1037/ser0000457
M3 - Article
C2 - 35099224
AN - SCOPUS:85125042492
SN - 1541-1559
VL - 20
SP - 188
EP - 201
JO - Psychological Services
JF - Psychological Services
IS - 1
ER -