Social Services

CVT PATH Bibliography Q4 2020

CVT's Partners in Trauma Healing (PATH) creates bibliographies every quarter of resources for current literature on the topic of the mental health status of and treatments for torture survivors, war trauma survivors, refugees, and asylum seekers. This also includes research in the area of social work that relates directly to the psychological well-being of these populations. The compilation below includes peer reviewed journal article citations in these areas and links to the publicly available abstracts and full text versions of these articles.

Office of Refugee Resettlement

The Services for Survivors of Torture program (SOT) is a program of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Division of Refugee Health. It is committed to assisting persons who have experienced torture abroad and who are residing in the United States, to restore their dignity and health and rebuild their lives as they integrate into their communities.

Reporting

All reports should be submitted directly to GrantSolutions.gov. For assistance with GrantSolutions, you can contact their helpdesk: help@grantsolutions.gov.

FY2021 Reporting

Please see ORR Policy Letter 21-05 regarding

Tele-Therapy Regulations

(Updated 7/1/2020)

There have been changes to teletherapy regulations due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Stay up to date with the links below. Please check your state and local regulations and verify any information before moving forward with any tele-health platform.

"Collaboration, pilot program could expand the Center for Victims of Torture’s work in MN"

An article at the Minnesota House of Representatives’ Session Daily, “Collaboration, pilot program could expand the Center for Victims of Torture’s work in MN,” quotes CVT’s Peter Dross, director of external relations, and Alison Beckman, senior clinician for external relations, and describes

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Improving Well-Being for Refugees in Primary Care: A Toolkit for Providers

Healing Hearts Toolkit Cover Image.png

Improving Well Being for Refugees in Primary Care: A Toolkit for Providers
CVT’s NEW Toolkit for Providers Working with Refugees

Meet Paw, a refugee from Burma seeking medical care in the U.S. for her headaches, nightmares and physical pain. She’s unfamiliar with the U.S. primary care system and she doesn’t speak English. Waiting alone at her first doctor appointment, Paw wonders, “How will the doctor understand me? What if I don’t like my interpreter? Will I ever be healthy again?” Paw’s questions don’t end there. They’re only a few of several listed in in CVT’s new manual, “Improving Well Being for Refugees in Primary Care: A Toolkit for Providers.”  Paw is a fictional character whose real-life experiences mirror those of clients in CVT’s Healing Hearts program.

Fundamentals: Social Services Resources

Publications

Engstrom, D.W. & Okamura, A. (2004). A plague of our time: Torture, human rights, and social work. Families in Society, 85(3), 291-300.

Engstrom, D.W. & Okamura, A. (2004). Working with survivors of torture: Approaches to helping. Families in Society, 85(3), 301-309.

Herman, J.L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence. New York, Basic.

Smith, Hawthorne E. and Wilkinson, John. Social Service Provision, in Smith, Hawthorne, Keller, Alan, and Lhewa, DW, eds. Like a Refugee Camp on First Avenue: Insights and Experiences from the Bellevue-NYU Program for Survivors of

Promoting Safety with our Clients e-consultation

This e-consultation follows the webinar on Promoting Safety with our Clients. See that webinar for many additional resources, learning objectives, etc.

Resources

The following resources pertain to topics that came up during the online consultation.

Northwest Refugee and Immigrant Health Coalition

Sanctuary cities: 

Mapping Immigrant Professional Integration

This interactive map showcases over 50 programs and services around the country that are designed to help immigrant and refugee professionals achieve success in the United States. These programs and services focus on career preparation, ESL for high-skilled immigrants, and licensing and credentialing guidance, and are hosted by service providers, advocacy and public education institutions, and technical assistance and resource providers.

Promoting Safety with our Clients

Service providers who work with survivors of torture and forced migration know that their clients face many challenges in navigating environments that feel unsafe and out of their control. Concerns about their safety and their family's safety may be associated with living in a high-crime neighborhood, where "there is nothing 'post' about PTSD"; with fearing the police or other people in uniforms due to their trauma triggers; or with concerns about what seems to be an increase in anti-immigration rhetoric and the larger and, for now unanswerable, concerns around immigration and deportation.

A Congolese-US participatory action research partnership to rebuild the lives of rape survivors and their families in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Glass N(1), Ramazani P, Tosha M, Mpanano M, Cinyabuguma M. Glob Public Health. 2012;7(2):184-95. 

Link is to abstract; full article available for purchase.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains an all-too-potent reminder of how war, human rights violations and their related health and economic impacts can devastate a society. The last decade has seen the use of rape as a weapon of war in the DRC, where rebels and soldiers subject women and girls to brutalising attacks, rape, torture and mutilation.

Michaela L. Zajicek-Farber

Michaela L. Zajicek-Farber, MSW, LCSW-C, BCD, PhD Social Work, is Associate Professor with Tenure at the National Catholic School of Social Service.

Dr. Farber received her Ph.D. in Social Work from The Catholic University of America in 1990. Her dissertation was on Stress experience in parents raising a child with Down syndrome as related to the child’s transitional developmental period, parents’ appraisal of the child’s handicapping condition, and their personal coping and social resources. Dr. Farber also has an M.S.W. in Social Work from the same institution (1979), and a B.A.

Key Social Services for Refugee Survivors of Torture

In my work with survivors of torture in Jordan, every day I see how social services are an integral and extremely important element of healing. CVT uses an interdisciplinary model of care in our Jordan program, and social services represent the third angle of CVT’s services triangle, fully integrated with the other two disciplines: mental health counseling and physiotherapy. With this interdisciplinary approach, we are able to better serve beneficiaries (clients).

Mary Bunn, PhD

Clinical Instructor and Research Scientist, Psychiatry College of Medicine

Mary Bunn has expertise in international mental health, trauma and resilience in immigrant and refugee communities and trauma-informed, cross-cultural programming for communities impacted by chronic violence, trauma and stress. Previously Associate Director of Heartland Alliance Marjorie Kovler Center, Ms. Bunn now works as a consultant to national and international organizations addressing the mental health and psychosocial needs of displaced and violence-affected communities.

RHS-15 handouts

This set of handouts, and the description that follows, was generously shared by Jennifer Shuart of Lowell Community Health Center's Metta Center in July 2016. Ms. Shuart is available to consult if you have further questions; contact healtorture@cvt.org for an introduction.

We began administering the RHS-15 screening in July 2015 at Metta.  What we observed prior to this is that clients were referred after a negative screening for behavioral health, but when they came in for the intake appointment really had no understanding of counseling or desire to engage in treatment.

We try to complete the

Enhancing Empathy by Measuring Torture Symptoms with Survivors

This is the first part of a two-part training on how to use screening tools with survivors of torture to achieve more than just data collection. The webinar focused on the range of screening tools available to clinicians working with survivors of torture and how they can be used to improve clinical practice, improve evaluation practice, and enhance the capacity for empathy in their work. After this training, service providers will be able to evaluate and chose which screening tools may be most effective to use in their own programs.The presenters are experts from the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, Northwest Health and Human Rights, and the Marjorie Kovler Center.

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