Policy & Practice | Summer 2023

Finding the Needs The Urban Institute notes that approx imately 25 percent of all U.S. children are the children of immigrants. 1 As part of its broader efforts to better support the growing percentage of the U.S. population with ties to migration, the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) is engaging in several information-gathering initia tives, including the recent publication, Retrospective of Factors Impacting U.S. Human Services Delivery and Emergency Response During Evacuations from Afghanistan (see https://bit.ly/ 3QoJf2m). This briefing utilizes this recent humanitarian crisis as an oppor tunity to examine the interconnections between human services and nongov ernmental organization (NGO) systems serving repatriates and foreign-born populations, many of whom may have extensive support needs. Many of the insights that were shared across these interviews centered on the importance of interdisciplinarity for enhancing cross-sectoral approaches to fostering system resilience. This includes better supporting beneficiaries and their providers. Still, perhaps the most salient findings of the brief were a widespread recognition of the need to improve providers’ ability to assist pop ulations coming from other countries, as well as a need for improved trauma informed, wrap-around supports that are rooted in evidence. These overarching findings are by no means radical, as there have long been efforts to improve institutional capacity. However, rarely has the need for improved coordination been rendered so visible as it was during the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan—a crisis that was immediately followed by the mass migration event from Ukraine. This confluence of events created a

Conversely, outsourcing services exclusively to specialized partner organizations limits the incentive to develop internal capacity, and encour ages reliance on non-systemic, ad-hoc interventions. Community partners, while knowledgeable about individual and community-level work, may also have limited understanding of systems from a macro perspective, often resulting in solutions that are not scalable or that do not take policy interactions into consideration. Blending both of these approaches, along with a strong commitment to engaging beneficiaries at all stages of planning, increases the likelihood of obtaining valid information, ascer taining the viability of approaches, promoting the diffusion of knowledge, cultivating community trust, and creating enduring change. It also con cretizes stakeholder buy-in and raises awareness of institutional limitations (the latter being of essential impor tance given the prevalence of service interruption for immigrants and reset tled individuals). Such feedback loops can also help to foster continuity and buffer against changes within systems known to have high rates of turnover. Importantly, they can also help alle viate the emotional labor of personnel working toward these aims. As such, and situated in a network of supportive systems, human services personnel are well positioned to advance social services by helping to translate local approaches into wider efforts. Expert Staffing of Crisis Cases Joint government, CBO, and survivor staffing of mental health and other urgent cases among refugee and immi grant families is a paramount need. Not only is participant-designed program ming increasingly recognized as an ethical means to approaching services delivery, but in terms of tactical value, it also provides a layer of understanding that may otherwise not be accessible to providers despite even the most rigorous training. Critical intellectual partners, such as universities or other research bodies also need to be engaged to be able to provide guardrails and oversee programmatic quality in suf ficiently fine-grained detail. Together,

unique opportunity to examine fissures in social services systems. Though programs were patched together during and immediately after the emergency to meet the needs of new arrivals, due to the urgency of the demands, gaps in the national capacity for equitably serving refugee and immigrant families were not able to be addressed in a systemic manner. Therefore, now that the emergency has ended, human services personnel and their partners have resumed strate gizing about how to equip their systems with the requisite knowledge to serve new arrivals, while also capitalizing on the new partnerships that were forged in the midst of the evacuations. Multimodal Approaches to Creating More Responsive Services Theoretically, there would be two main approaches to rectifying dis ciplinary and programmatic gaps in the provision of services. Systems could improve workforce competence through entirely internal efforts, or they could outsource these functions to external parties having the given area of expertise, including community based organizations (CBOs) or NGOs and persons with lived experience. While most systems would naturally approach workforce preparedness through a combination of these efforts, it must be emphasized that not employing both of these strategies simultaneously can stunt progress. Educating the workforce through primarily internal efforts means poten tially limited access to information on client experiences that local partners (and thus, a diversity of perspectives), would be able to surface. This is espe cially the case as it relates to working with populations having historical reasons to be distrustful of institutions and who may not be inclined to share their concerns. Internally established standards regarding what constitutes an adequate knowledge base also may not be reflective of the nature and intensity of the needs. Furthermore, where training is offered, approaches sometimes involve limited to no input from the populations in question, creating a further disconnect between providers and those whom they serve.

Amaya Alexandra Ramos, MSW, CPH, MA is the Project Associate for Refugee and Immigrant Social Services at APHSA.

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