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September 2008Vol. 9, No. 7Working With Refugee Children and Immigrant Families

The Bridging Refugee Youth and Children's Services (BRYCS) website offers two new resources for child welfare workers helping immigrant children and families.

The Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) Caseworker's Toolkit for Children in Federal Custody is a toolkit for foster care caseworkers helping children in the Federal custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement Division of Unaccompanied Children's Services (ORR/DUCS). Developed by the Children's Services Department of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops/Migration and Refugee Services, the materials are designed to ensure that SIJS-eligible children receive the assistance and case monitoring they need during the SIJS application process.

The documents in the toolkit include a flowchart of the SIJS process, descriptions of the roles of the people and professionals involved in the process, a description of the Federal and State agencies interacting with SIJS-applicant children, a summary of the typical application forms and accompanying fees, frequently asked questions, and an annotated list of useful resources for helping children and their caseworkers and attorneys understand and explain legal matters of relevance.

The toolkit is available on the BRYCS website:

www.brycs.org/sijs/

Raising Children in a New Country: An Illustrated Handbook is designed to help agencies working with immigrant families by providing newly arrived parents with the basic information they need to know about U.S. law and parenting practices. The book is targeted to workers helping newcomer parents with low levels of English proficiency or low literacy levels. It is available for download on the BRYCS site:

www.brycs.org/documents/RaisingChildren-Handbook.pdf (PDF - 1,426 KB)