Centering the Voice of the Client: On Becoming a Collaborative Practitioner with Low-Income Individuals and Families

Risk, resilience and family relationships among at-risk Ethiopian immigrant youth in Israel: A focus group investigation

Despite the pivotal role that parents play in their adolescent children's lives, intervention programs aimed at at-risk, immigrant youth have often neglected the role of the parents. Informed by an ecological perspective, the current study explored how the intersecting experiences of parents and adolescents in the Ethiopian immigrant community in Israel inform adolescent risk and resilience. A sample of 55 parents and adolescent children, who were involved in a program serving at-risk families, and eight service providers participated in five focus groups. Grounded theory analyses of transcripts provided insights into family processes in which the experience of disenfranchisement of parents (due to societal and familial processes) transacts with feelings of isolation and withdrawal of their adolescent children. We documented five issues that reinforced this core pattern: Stigma and discrimination, cultural and language differences between parents and youth, disempowerment in interactions with authorities, parental role strain, and negative influence of the neighborhood. We also documented three resilience processes that counter this pattern (community cohesion, cultural socialization and ethnic and cultural pride, and vigilant parental monitoring). Results suggest a need for family-based intervention programs that can counter reinforcing cycles of disenfranchisement and build on families' resilience resources.

Expanding Possibilities: Flexibility and Solidarity with Under-resourced Immigrant Families During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The novel coronavirus has added new anxieties and forms of grieving to the myriad practical and emotional burdens already present in the lives of underserved and uninsured immigrant families and communities. In this article, we relate our experiences since the COVID-19 crisis to the lessons we have learned over time as mental health professionals working with families in no-cost, student-managed community comprehensive health clinics in academic-community partnerships. We compare and contrast the learnings of flexibility of time, space, procedures, or attendance we acquired in this clinical community setting during regular times, with the new challenges families and therapists face, and the adaptations needed to continue to work with our clients in culturally responsive and empowering ways during the COVID-19 pandemic. We describe families, students, professionals, promotoras (community links), and IT support staff joining together in solidarity as the creative problem solvers of new possibilities when families do not have access to Wi-Fi, smartphones, or computers, or suffer overcrowding and lack of privacy. We describe many anxieties related to economic insecurity or fear of facing death alone, but also how to visualize expanding possibilities in styles of parenting or types of emotional support among family members as elements of hope that may endure beyond these unprecedented tragic times of loss and uncertainty.