ImmigrantChildren.ca Archive

Author: marcocampana

  • Metropolis funding for projects that examine "effective partnerships" in delivery of immigrant & settlement services

    Metropolis National Research Competition, an initiative of Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), has issued a call for proposals. This year’s research question is:

    From the point of view of governments and of newcomers and minorities, are government-NGO partnerships the most effective model for delivering services for integration and inclusion in Canada?

    Deadline is September 30, 2009.
    For details about the call, including eligibility, process, application forms and more, see this SSHRC page.

  • Conference proceedings: Canadian Association of Family Resource Programs

    The Canadian Association of Family Resource Programs conference, “Welcoming Communities“, was held in May. Many of the presentations have been uploaded to the FRP conference site. Three of interest to immigrantchildren.ca readers, may be:

    Listening to immigrant families: Restoring parenting self-efficacy

    Canada’s future as a secure, prosperous and cohesive nation depends on how well immigrant families are integrated in society. Yet Canadian institutions undermine the economic, social, and political capital of immigrant parents of young children, leading to sense of loss of self-efficacy in their parenting roles. As a result, not only do the parents feel marginalized, but their children are put at greater risk of feeling alienated from ‘mainstream’ society. One way to address this issue is to systematically document immigrant families’ aspirations, strengths, strategies and needs for support in the form of family narratives, and use them to educate current and future decision makers in public service institutions working in education, childcare, healthcare, and social work.

    Mehrunnisa Ahmad Ali, Ryerson University and the Joint Centre of Excellence for Research in Immigration and Settlement.

    The Cultural and political reasons why family programs should care about cultural identity

    Participants at this workshop will learn about the Care, Identity and Inclusion Project, in which immigrant women and aboriginal women explain why they emphasize the retention and transmission of their cultural and/or faith identities. Findings from this qualitative study suggest that caregiving practices support parents and children alike in a number of important ways, including: to sustain familial relations regardless of geographic distance; to resist discrimination and to contribute to community development.
    Paul Kershaw, Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP),Vancouver, BC.

    Family Support Practice and Diversity 

    The focus of this workshop will be on how children perceive family structure by incorporating the intersections of Queer Theory, race and class and the inclusion of individuals within their family context.
    We will discuss the infusion of Family Support Principles in programs and systems other than family resource programs and where these principles can promote positive attitudes for families of all structures.
    Patricia Hunt, Program Coordinator, South Riverdale Child-Parent Centre, Toronto. 
    Visit the FRP conference site to download the powerpoint presentations.

  • Immigration Minister Jason Kenney on immigrant children

    The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism was interviewed on TVO’s The Agenda last week. Click here to see and hear the entire interview.
    Did the Minister have anything to say about immigrant/newcomer children? Yes! On integration:

    “We want to be deliberate about it and we want to make sure that we don’t end up with a series of parallel communities where children grow up in a community that more resembles their parents country of origin than Canada”.

    An example on “basic social and linguistic integration”:

    “If you’re a young guy, you’re arriving with your parents from China, you live in Richmond, you might go to a school where all the kids speak Cantonese or Mandarin as first language, that’s the language of entertainment, at home on the computer, at the movie theatre, with your peer group, I/we want to make sure that a young guy like that doesn’t end up limiting his opportunities in Canada just by retarding linguistic integration, which is after all the pathway to successful economic and social integration”.

    An interesting interview, uncovering Kenney’s plans to reshape citizenship and multiculturalism. Look for an announcement soon from Minister Kenney on a Blue Ribbon panel to tackle a new citizenship test.

  • Family class applications expedited for Sri Lankans

    Citizenship and Immigration Canada is expediting applications for family class sponsorship for Sri Lankans. For details, see:

    Sri Lankan Initiative: Applications for Family Class Members and Dependents of In-Canada Permanent Residence Applicants Affected by the Current Humanitarian Situation.

  • Study calls for strengthened family reunification policy

    An upcoming edition of the Journal of International Migration includes a piece on transnational families by Judith Bernhard, Ryerson University, Luin Golding, York University and Patricia Landolt, University of Toronto. Transnationalizing Families: Canadian Immigration Policy and the Spatial Fragmentation of Caregiving Among Latin American Newcomers details a study of several transnational families and their struggles to reunite and how they cope when they do.
    The article includes several recommendations including some focussed on improving policy in the family reunification area. Quoted about the piece on the Ryerson University news page, co-author Judith Bernhard says:

    “After September 11, and now with the economic downturn, immigration policies have become more protectionist. Canada is narrowing its borders for secure permanent residence and increasingly relying on temporary labour arrangements to meet the needs of particular industries. That means that it is more difficult for mothers to bring their children to Canada and spatial ruptures can be prolonged, if not become permanent. What’s more, we have learned that the emotional toll of the separation arrangements often has a lasting negative influence on family relations.”

  • Ten policies to improve child care for immigrant children

    New from CLASP  (US-based Center for Law and Social Policy) comes Ten Policies to Improve Access to Quality Child Care for Children in Immigrant Families:

    1. Create and disseminate information packets for new parents in multiple languages that discuss quality child care and help link parents with information and referral agencies.
    2. Fund outreach on quality child care and subsidy eligibility targeted to immigrant families, including grants to community-based organizations with expertise in serving immigration populations.
    3. Use grants, contracts and quality funds to expand the availability of high-quality child care in immigrant communities.
    4. Expand access to Head Start and Early Head Start in child care settings through grants, contracts and eligibility policies.
    5. Translate child care subsidy information and materials and provide dedicated funding and translation and interpretation at the local level.
    6. Increase bilingual staff capacity in subsidy agencies through pay differentials or incentives.
    7. Pay differential child care subsidy payment rates to centers and family child care homes that serve English Language Learners and/or child care providers with a bilingual endorsement.
    8. Create community-based support networks for family, friend and neighbor caregivers in immigrant communities that improve quality of care.
    9. Include measures of cultural and linguistic competence in state quality rating and improvement systems, and provide supports to help programs meet the standards.
    10. Ensure that child care providers receive training to improve their work with culturally and linguistically diverse children and their families and provide support for cultural competency initiatives.

    Read the full report on the CLASP site.

  • Meet Rebecca: A Russian-Jewish immigrant doll

    The American Girl series of historical fiction for young adults has been a big success in the US. A similar series runs in Canada, and includes a story about the home children: Orphan at My Door: The Home Child Diary of Victoria Cope, written by Jean Little. The Canadian series is called Our Canadian Girl.
    The American Girl series also has accompanying dolls. Launching this weekend, to great anticipation, will be Rebecca, the Russian-Jewish immigrant doll to go along with Jacqueline Dembar Greene’s Meet Rebecca.
    According to the May 23rd edition of the Sunday New York Times, a great deal of research went into what a Russian-Jewish immigrant doll should look like, with early comments favourable (Previous American Girl dolls stirred up controversies).

  • Canada's top 25 immigrants

    Canadian Immigrant Magazine, with financial support from RBC, have announced the winners of the Canada’s Top 25 Immigrants awards. The awards are billed as “a people’s choice award that seeks to uncover and celebrate the untold stories and remarkable achievements of outstanding Canadian immigrants from all walks of life”.
    The awards program was introduced in Nov 2008 with a call for nominations from Canadians for “top immigrants” in terms of their contributions to Canada. A panel of immigration judges short-listed 75 and online votes were held via canadianimmigrant.ca. Ten thousand votes were cast. Among the 25 winners is one who works with/on behalf of immigrant children: 

    Elaine Chan, founder of the Chinese Academy. The Chinese Academcy provides Cantonese and Mandarin classes for children from K-12 and Chinese as a 2nd Language in Calgary AB.

  • Immigration policy consultation by wiki

    The Public Policy Wiki is a collaborative project of the Globe and Mail and the Dominion Institute. The Public Policy Wiki is an attempt to bring forward to government a range of views from the general public on matters of public policy. How do they do this? Through an online wiki, of course. The public is invited to “be bold”, participate, contribute and even edit works cited on the wiki.
    Among the topics currently on the Public Policy Wiki is a section on immigration policy. There are several resources to review on this page, including pieces written by experts and stakeholders. The wiki poses a series of questions for consideration – and requests for responses – after a reading of the online resources. immigrantchildren.ca readers will note that there are no specific questions related to children and families, but a couple of analysis papers do address immigrant children. Maytree President Ratna Omidvar:

    “It is a serious oversight to ignore the settlement needs of immigrant children; however the reality is that these needs remain overlooked in the not inconsiderable resources we spend in settlement programming every year. This oversight is possibly not entirely intentional, but a reflection of jurisdictional arrangements that govern our federation.
    “Here is an opportunity for the federal government to reaffirm its role as nation-builder by finding creative ways to overcome jurisdictional barriers. It could, for instance, flow money to provinces and their schools so that immigrant children have assured access to English language training, sports and cultural activities. There are no better integration ambassadors for immigrant parents than their own children, who by participating in team sports and cultural activities are guaranteed to bring their parents to the rink.
    “Imagine, children playing hockey, or soccer or even cricket together and parents watching and cheering them along! Here is how we can build our nation”.

    Rudyard Griffiths, co-founder of the Dominion Institute:

    “…the federal government should also put special emphasis on second language training for school-age children, particularly in the country’s major cities.
    “In Toronto, the city that attracts the majority of newcomers to Canada, the percentage of elementary schools with English-as-a-second-language instructors has declined from 41 to 29 percent in the last decade while the number of students requiring such instruction has doubled. Young people from non- French- or English-speaking countries desperately need additional support to master French and/or English. The federal government should find ways to work with the provinces to get more funding for language instruction into urban classroom to relieve overburdened ESL instructors”.

    Mathew Ingram, Communities Editor at the Globe hopes the Public Policy Wiki is working towards a ‘Two Million Minds’ “open, crowd-powered forum” that will have legitimacy on the public policy landscape. Deadline for comments is June 1. Responses from this online forum will be collated and submitted to the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. Let’s participate and ensure that the issues, challenges and needs of immigrant and refugee children and their families are voiced in the forum. Visit the Public Policy Wiki on immigration policy here.

  • More than words: Supporting 2nd language acquisition in young immigrant children

    Interesting story out of Penn State University where researchers worked with preschool programs to help them identify strategies to support 2nd language learning in very young immigrant children.
    The children were given cameras and asked to take photos of their world outside of their classrooms. Then, the children talked about the pictures they had taken with their teachers. Researchers cite improved teacher and child interactions and stronger language and vocabulary development in the children. 
    From the news story:

    “After the two years and final transcript comparisons were completed, the study unexpectedly found that learning English was not an obstacle to the oral expression of immigrant preschool children when compared to their native-born classmates. In fact, once invited into conversation through photo elicitation, the stories of reportedly “quiet” immigrant children proved as long as the others. And there was no statistical difference in conversational skills when American-born and immigrant children were compared and, in fact, the immigrant language complexity became superior to the native-born children.
    The findings of the study also provided a caution for the teachers in the preschool. ‘The teachers have to listen to the kids,…We found the teachers had preconceived notions or myths about the children. The photo exercises changed that and they learned a great deal about the child’s world. The project turned out to be a powerful invitation for all the children to converse and they provided a place for the immigrant voice to be heard’.