Calgary Newcomers Collaborative COVID-19 Response

A strong community is created through building relationships. As a group, the Calgary Newcomers Collaborative (CNC; formerly Calgary East Zone Newcomers Collaborative) hopes to welcome newcomers in East Calgary and support them through a collection of the group’s free services. This zonal approach, created by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, utilizes a community model of inclusion for all newcomers to Calgary. During the CNC COVID-19 Response Project, different immigrant-serving agencies provide their clients with culturally relevant support during the unprecedented and fast-changing pandemic circumstances.

The core of this CNC project comprised of five non-profit organizations:

• Action Dignity
• Calgary Local Immigration Partnership
• Centre for Newcomers
• Immigrant Services Calgary (ISC)
• The Immigrant Education Society (TIES)

TIES documented and conducted research to evaluate the impact of a collaborative like the Calgary COVID-19 Care Table, as well as obtain information on the realities of Calgary immigrants through the pandemic.  

Project Information

What is the CNC COVID-19 Response project?

CNC was a partnership between local settlement organizations that provided emergency COVID-19 relief from December 2020 to July 2021. The initiative acted as the primary operator of the provincially created and funded Calgary COVID-19 Care Table and administered culturally competent and multilingual resources to newcomer and racialized communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Through this project, individuals struggling with COVID-19 could speak with a team of multilingual cultural brokers, where they conversed in one of 20 languages. Some of the assistance included necessities such as food hampers for those in isolation, as well as financial, employment, mental health, and informational support.

What were the aims of the CNC’s COVID-19 Response?

The CNC had three primary aims:

• Provide immediate relief and support to those in quarantine/isolation.
• Address the barriers and aggravating factors that contribute to vulnerability of racialized communities.
• Deliver community-based prevention through engagement, education, and awareness.

Why is this important?

Although settlement organizations typically focus on providing language and employment training along with other integration programs, the unprecedented emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic compelled a coordinated crisis response in Calgary (Suva et al., 2022). The city’s northeast quadrant, with its large population of racialized individuals and immigrants was noted in the media for its high COVID-19 positivity rates due to higher number of front-line workers and larger households (McGarvey, 2020). Counter to this statistic, in November 2021, the same northeast community saw 99% of eligible individuals receive their first COVID-19 vaccine dose, a feat largely attributed to community vaccine efforts(Herring, 2021). As part of such pandemic coordinated efforts and with the support of the federal and municipal governments, the CNC partnership developed a crisis response adapted for the specific pandemic-related needs of immigrants in this area.

Local organizations with established relationships with the immigrant community can more effectively address the specific needs of the group because of their considerable experience as cultural brokers. It has been documented that racialized groups may be excluded from access to public health information because of language barriers (Maldonado et al., 2020). In response, the CNC employed multilingual staff and translated key information regarding the COVID-19 virus and vaccine, pandemic restrictions, and government initiatives. Another example of a CNC culturally informed pandemic support is the provision of culturally appropriate food hampers for those in isolation due to positive COVID-19 results. This gave immigrant clients the ability to choose familiar food items during a period of uncertainty. These are only a few of the services that clients could access through the CNC call center.

Research Overview

Research Questions

• Did the collaborative provide immediate relief and support to the Northeast Calgary zone residents affected by COVID-19 who are in isolation?
• Did the collaborative deliver an effective community-based intervention through engagement education and awareness?
• Did the collaborative address barriers and aggravating factors that contribute to the vulnerability of racialized communities?

Methods

The CNC studies employed a mixed method approach, drawing on quantitative and qualitative data obtained from surveys, arts-based ethnographies, and interviews. There were two phases in data collection and analysis. In the first phase, we explored the broad ranging services provided by the CNC (Suva et al., 2021a) while the second phase focused on the impact of the multidimensional vulnerability of CNC’s client population and its implications on service delivery for the pandemic recovery period (Suva et al., 2021b).

Phase 1

Quantitative data

• First beneficiary survey of those who called CNC until January 14, 2021
• Data from Gateway, ISC’s centralized tracking and referral database
• Second beneficiary survey (with revised questions) of those who called until February 22, 2021

Qualitative data

• Semi-structured interviews with beneficiaries, staff, CNC leaders and mental health service providers

Phase 2

Quantitative data

• Pandemic survey distributed at four vaccine pop-up clinics in northeast Calgary

Qualitative data

• Arts-based ethnography (Goopy & Kassan, 2019) of racialized Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) students.

Key Findings

Phase 1

The CNC responded comprehensively to the rapidly evolving emergency and resolved community distrust by utilizing pre-existing institutional and personal networks of member organizations and staff.

Community outreach created trust, with some limitations:

• Beneficiaries primarily learned of the service through word of mouth.
• Chinese and South Asian communities had lower intake of CNC services relative to their respective populations.
• Beneficiaries expressed limited awareness of the CNC, even after receiving assistance.  

Mental health was the least requested service despite strong evidence in surveys, interviews, and published studies indicating that it is an important pandemic issue.

High levels of need (particularly financial need and job precarity) emerged within newcomer and racialized communities through the pandemic.

• This risked overwhelming the initiative’s goal of providing support to those directly affected by COVID-19 within newcomer and racialized communities.  

Phase 2

• The pandemic has undermined the integration process, putting pressure on crucial domains of successful integration.
• Social connection is essential in ensuring immigrant resilience and integration in the post-pandemic period.
• Financial and employment insecurity remain profoundly destabilizing elements.
• Recent arrivals to Canada are most deeply affected by the social impacts of pandemic restrictions.
• Immediate and ongoing health fears from COVID-19 have impacted immigrants’ sense of safety and security over the course of the pandemic.
• Mental health support for immigrant children, youth, and families is a meaningful avenue of opportunity for service provision.

Learn more

If you would like to learn more about the CNC COVID-19 Response, you can read our various publications:

• A Case Study of Community‑based, Cross‑sectoral Crisis Response to the COVID‑19 Pandemic: Serving Racialized Immigrant Communities‍
• Calgary COVID-19 Care Table Phase 1 Report: 17 December 2020 – 30 April 2021
• Calgary COVID-19 Care Table Phase 2 Report: 1 May 2021 – 31 July 2021

References

Goopy, S. & Kassan, A. (2019). Arts-based engagement ethnography: An approach for making research engaging and knowledge transferable when working with harder-to-reach communities. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918820424

Herring, J. (2021, November 13). 'Really proud moment': At 99 per cent first dose coverage, northeast Calgary a vaccine success story. Calgary Herald. https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/northeast-calgary-celebrates-vaccine-success-story

McGarvey, D. (2020, November 30). Why northeast Calgary has the unenviable position of being the No. 1 spot in Alberta for COVID- 19. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/covid-calgary-northeast-upper-alberta-health-1.5819848

Maldonado, B. M. N., Collins, J., Blundell, H. J., & Singh, L. (2020). Engaging the vulnerable: A rapid review of public health communication aimed at migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. Journal of Migration and Health, 1–2, 100004. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmh.2020.100004

Suva, C., Liu, J., Sigurdson, E., & Escobar Torio, J. J. (2021a). Calgary COVID-19 Care Table – Phase 1 Report: 17 December 2020 – 30 April 2021. The Immigrant Education Society (TIES).

Suva, C., Liu, J., Sigurdson, E., and Escobar Torio, J. J. (2021b). Calgary COVID-19 Care Table – Phase 2 Report: 1 May 2021 – 31 August 2021. The Immigrant Education Society (TIES).

Suva, C., Liu, J., Sigurdson, E., Torio, J. E., & Benson, O. G. (2022). A case study of community-based, cross-sectoral crisis response to the COVID-19 pandemic: Serving racialized immigrant communities. Global Social Welfare, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40609-022-00223-0