USCCB’s Refugee Children’s Program Wins Award For Advancement Of Child Maltreatment Prevention And Intervention
WASHINGTON—The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) has announced that it has chosen BRYCS (Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services), an initiative of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Migration and Refugee Services (USCCB/MRS), as the recipient of this year’s Award for Advancement of Cultural Competency in Child Maltreatment Prevention and Intervention.
This award recognizes an individual, organization or agency that has made outstanding contributions in this regard mainly through education. Viola Vaughan-Eden, awards chair and APSAC vice president, summarized the reasons BRYCS was selected for the award.
“ BRYCS leads the way in providing information on immigrant and refugee families toward preventing child abuse and neglect, and improving child welfare by strengthening services to refugee children and their families to minimize the likelihood of abuse, ” Vaughan-Eden said.
“As a national technical assistance project working to broaden the scope of information and collaboration among service providers, BRYCS provides numerous services, notably the only Web-based clearinghouse focused solely on the impact of migration on child welfare. Extraordinarily, the information and ideas generated by BRYCS are not sold or hoarded but disseminated to the widest audience as possible, often through their incredible website.”
Nathalie Lummert, associate director of children services for USCCB/MRS, said she hopes the recognition will help others take advantage of this useful resource.
"This award recognizes BRYCS' role in advancing the knowledge of child welfare in refugee and immigrant serving agencies to protect the children and strengthen their wellbeing. We hope this recognition will increase the number of individuals across the country who turn to BRYCS for information and assistance."
BRYCS provides technical assistance on child welfare for the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) of the Department of Health and Human Services. It was founded by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) – the two main organizations providing child welfare services to refugee children for the past thirty years. BRYCS has been a project of USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services since 2006.
Some of BRYCS activities include responding to technical assistance requests; creating, building, and maintaining the only Web-based clearinghouse (www.brycs.org) focused solely on migration and child welfare (over 3,000 resources); publishing hundreds of resources including practical tips, annotated bibliographies, cultural/multilingual resources, interviews with refugee parents, and over 80 “promising practices” throughout the U.S.; creating a curriculum on child maltreatment prevention that has been disseminated in over 60 residential programs throughout the country that care for undocumented unaccompanied minors in federal custody; conducting “community conversations” with stakeholders about child welfare issues for refugee and immigrant families; and training on cultural competency in child welfare at different venues.
BRYCS’ parenting booklet Raising Children in a New Country: An Illustrated Handbook, which helps educate refugee and immigrant parents with limited English about childrearing in the U.S., including the role of Child Protective Services, has been BRYCS’ most popular publication yet with 150,000 downloads since its publication in late 2007.
From October 1, 2008 to January 31, 2009 the Web site received 65,819 extended visits (users who visited more than one page) and 545,047 distinct hits. During this time, 79,886 documents were downloaded. On average 26,000 downloads occur each month.
Psychologist and author Lisa Fontes, who nominated BRYCS, expressed the significance of the award.
“Granting the award to an organization like BRYCS sends an important message about how collaboration and cooperation are so clearly important in bettering the welfare of immigrant children and families and reducing the likelihood of abuse,” Fontes said.
The award ceremony will take place June 19 in Altanta, Georgia, during APSAC’s 17th National Colloquium.
For media inquiries about BRYCS, please contact Lauren Edwards at 202-541-3382.
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Keywords: BRYCS, APSAC, refugees, child maltreatment prevention, cultural competency