Did You Know That…?

• Immigration is a time of multiple stressors and emotional turmoil often involving the loss of the mother country, loss of opportunities to use the mother tongue and the loss of regular contact with extended family.
• All immigrants face the complex task of adapting to the demands of a new culture and a new society, regardless of the reasons for leaving the homeland.
• Certain characteristics of the Latino immigrant experience have been postulated to foster and sustain this stress and impede adaptation:
  1. discrimination on the basis of skin color
  2. illegal immigration status
  3. often close proximity to the homeland.
• The daily structure of a regular family schedule can create a sense of predictability of activities, which may partially make up for the absence of the consistent, safe, and familiar temporal structure provided in the past by the culture and community of the country of origin. The degree to which Dominican families establish regular daily routines is significantly connected to children’s a bility to handle strong negative emotions.

Program Description

The Fortalecerse: Family Support from Immigration to Work project was initiated in 2000 as a collaboration between Ackerman and Columbia University’s Head Start and Early Head Start (CUHS) program. CUHS provides education, health, nutrition and social services to young children and their families in Washington Heights and West Harlem. The program also involves parents and includes training in job readiness, child development and family health.

The Project used the Collaborative Family Program Development Model to learn more about the challenges faced by Latino immigrant families as they adjust to life in New York City and as parents attempt to find employment, and to create a multiple family discussion group program similar to Fresh Start for Families at CUHS to support families. The pilot of the program was a success, and the manual is available from the Center.

Recent CWF Research Findings

• Major challenge is loss of connection to nature and to sufficient year-round outdoor space and mild weather for family gatherings.
• Family routines from cultures of origin are disrupted by intense and long work days and work schedules in the United States.
• Immediate and extended family living in the United States are often much less helpful to immigrant than was expected.
• Coping approaches include:
• Making use of public outdoor space (parks, stoops) as much as possible, weather permitting
• Engaging in cultural traditions from country of origin such as religious and national holidays, cooking familiar foods, watching and playing traditional sports
• Using increasingly affordable communication technologies to stay in touch with others from country of origin here as well as with family in country of origin
• Remembering the main purpose of being here – to provide greater educational and economic opportunities to the children

References