Change Can’t Wait

At the end of 2020, the Research & Program development team implemented two newcomer mental health related projects that built on ongoing research we had been conducting at The Immigrant Education Society (TIES):

1. The first project was called “Immigrant Family-based Interpreters Emotional Wellness Supports” and aimed to introduce information to better support children and youth who provide interpretation and translation for family members.
2. The second project, outline on this page, was called “Pedagogy-based Emotional and Mental Wellness Intervention Pilot for Newcomers,” which intended to infuse culturally safe, emotional wellness pedagogy into teaching, classroom management and lesson planning at settlement agencies.

We primarily tackled the issue of awareness and conveying evidence-based information from past studies. This awareness has led to teachers and students themselves changing their practices when asking a youth to be a language broker for them.

These projects were funded through the City of Calgary’s Change Can’t Wait initiative, which supported innovative efforts and programming for Calgarians struggling with mental health and addiction. Our projects, along with 31 others the city has funded through this initiative, helped inform the development of the Community Action on Mental Health and Addiction Strategy.

Project 2: Pedagogy-based Emotional and Mental Wellness Intervention Pilot for Newcomers

Goal: To infuse strengths-based, emotional wellness pedagogy into the teaching, classroom management and lesson planning at settlement agencies.

Factors that affect newcomer mental and emotional wellness include environments and circumstances they face in the first years after arrival. While settlement agencies provide the necessary programming that enhance language and employment skills and knowledge newcomers need to ‘integrate’ to their new communities, the overall experience of change and the pressure to meet expectations in careers, language and family can weigh heavily on their mental and emotional wellness. The pandemic has exacerbated these circumstances exponentially, as newcomers must additionally try to understand and act upon changing state-mandated policies and an evolving pandemic situation that is complex and potentially life threatening, all of which have serious negative implications for their social and economic integration.

This project built on two years of research and inquiry by TIES and the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Nursing conducted at settlement agencies in Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg in 2018 and 2019 (see: ReNEW Partnership for Best Practices). It applied new knowledge gained and aimed to infuse cultural safety and strengths-based, solutions-focused pedagogy and approaches into the teaching, classroom management, and lesson planning in LINC classes. This pedagogical paradigm shift focused on utilizing classroom management and teaching to establish cultural safety and address factors that create anxiety and stress in the settlement context such as dealing with rapid and overwhelming change and uncomfortable questions of identity. The pedagogy and approaches also aimed to overcome barriers to acquiring help for mental and emotional wellness such as entrenched attitudes and stigma.

Our research has revealed that teachers often feel out of their depth when addressing their students’ reactions to anxiety and stress (Suva et al., 2020). A pedagogy-focused intervention equips teachers with a repertoire to prevent and address such issues while at the same time staying within a familiar and comfortable scope of practice for them, as well as addressing their own anxiety and mental wellness. Teachers have credibility with and possess the trust of newcomer students who interact with them on a daily basis and turn to them as their primary guide to their first Canadian experiences. This project tapped into this credibility and trust to deliver key messages and attitudes about mental and emotional wellness.

Settlement agencies have already sought to enhance staff capacity to support client mental health. However, these often focused on incorporating trauma-informed practices and the hiring of professional counsellors. While these ‘add-on’ interventions are indeed helpful, the focus on teaching practice is unique and strategic, with the teacher as a key determiner of settlement experiences. Other approaches rely on less familiar individuals to deliver important messaging and information, ignoring the key role of a trusted individual. The trusted teacher is more effective at addressing key barriers newcomers face such as stigma. This project laid the foundation for more positive approaches within settlement agencies toward empowering newcomers to overcome many common emotional and mental wellness issues they experience.

Project 2 Workshops

Material from both projects and the LB initiative culminated in the deployment of a workshop to English-language instructors and settlement staff in the new pedagogical approach. Similar to the first project, workshops were intended to create a better understanding of the effects of LB among teachers, staff, and newcomer students.

The workshop was followed by a guided implementation of the approaches in their classes over the next six weeks, supported by a Subject Matter Expert (SME) from the University of Calgary. This pilot involved delivery to 309 newcomer students and yielded survey data about its impact and effectiveness, informing the overall approach on its viability to proceed more broadly.

Participants

• 37 settlement staff participated in the workshop.
• 309 Newcomer clients benefited from the materials introduced in workshops through staff.

Lessons Learned

• LINC instructors do much more beyond teaching English in their every-day roles in settlement agencies.
• LINC instructors are in need of more capacity building on mental health and emotional wellness topics to feel more equipped in their work.

Watch

We have created the following videos to provide a more detailed overview of the Change Can’t Wait projects and our findings.

Impacts

This research has contributed to the development of TIES Healthy Minds, a free online counselling platform for individuals, couples, and families.

Learn More

Here are the resources developed from Project 1 and utilized in the Intervention stage

• Language Brokering Module: CLB 1-2
• Language Brokering Module: CLB 3-4
• Language Brokering Module: CLB 5-6
• Language Brokering Module: CLB 7-8
• Language Brokering Module: Ana Helps her Father CLB 1-2
• Language Brokering Module: Ana Helps her Father CLB 3-4
• Child Language Brokering: Settlement Practitioner's Toolkit

Learn more about our knowledge building surveys, interviews and their outcomes on our Language Brokering Initiative page.

References

Suva, C., Palova, K., & Silversides, H. (2020). Taking action: Agency reaction to the Refugees and Newcomers Emotional Wellness (ReNEW) research study. In Beyond 2020: Renewing Canada's commitment to immigration (pp. 99-113). Metropolis eBook. https://acs-metropolis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/608_metropolis_ebook_vol1_2020_v10_lr-n3qfp.pdf