Audio transcript (edited)

DE MAIO

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today's webinar, "Supporting young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds: Good practice and measuring settlement outcomes."  My name is John De Maio and I'm a Research Fellow here at the Australian Institute of Family Studies.  I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet.  In Melbourne, the traditional custodians are the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present and to the Elders from other communities who maybe participating today.  Today's webinar will bring together research, policy and practice perspectives to discuss how to best support young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds. Before we begin I need to briefly mention some housekeeping details.  

One of the core functions of the CFCA information exchange is to share knowledge. So, I would like to invite everyone to submit questions via the chat box at any time during the webinar.  We will respond to your questions at the end of the presentation.  We'd also like to continue the conversation we begin here today.  To facilitate this we have set up a forum on our website where you can discuss the ideas and issues raised, submit additional questions for our presenters, and access related resources.  We will send you a link to the forum at the end of today's presentation.  As you leave today's webinar a short survey will open in a new window, we would really appreciate your feedback. Also, please remember that this webinar is being recorded and the audio, transcript and slides will be made available on our website and YouTube channel in due course.  

It is now my great pleasure to introduce today's presenters.  Nadine Liddy is the National Coordinator of the Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network.  Nadine has a background in service delivery and program management with young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds, and has worked extensively in policy, advocacy and sector development.  Heather Stewart worked at the Centre for Multicultural Youth for over seven years managing a range of programs that support migrant and refugee young people.  

These included the newly arrived specialist Reconnect service which supported young people at risk of family breakdown, and the MY Family Project which explored how family services could better support CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) families and adolescents.  Pilar Rioseco is a Senior Research Officer here at the Australian Institute of Family Studies where she works on the Building a New Life in Australia longitudinal study examining the settlement experiences of recently arrived humanitarian migrants.  Please join me in giving Nadine, Heather and Pilar a very warm virtual welcome.  So our first speaker, Pilar, will now share some findings from the Building a New Life in Australia study.

RIOSECO

Thanks John. Today I'll tell you a bit about the Building a New Life in Australia study and show you how young people are settling in, in a couple of indicators in three domains of the National Youth Settlement Framework that Nadine will be telling you about later.  After the webinar, you will be provided with resources where you can find out more about this study.  The BNLA, as we call it, is a five year longitudinal study of recently arrived humanitarian migrants who arrived in Australia three to six months before the study started and, in the case of respondents who applied for humanitarian visas onshore, who received their permanent visa three to six months before the beginning of the study.  

This study involves face to face interviews on waves 1, 3 and 5 and telephone interviews on waves 2 and 4.  The questionnaire is currently being translated to nine languages and we also use interpreters to conduct interviews in other languages.  We have just finished collecting wave 5, sorry wave 4, which was really successful.  We got over a hundred per cent of response rate relative to wave 3 so we're very happy with that. In this presentation, I will focus on outcomes for adolescents aged 15 to 17 and young adults aged 18 to 25.  When we show change over time we will focus on respondents who participated in all three waves of data collection so that we can identify change on the same respondents over time.

In wave 3 we collected a child module where parents of children aged 5 to 17 and children themselves aged 11 to 17 completed an additional questionnaire including the Strengths and Difficulties questionnaire and other information about school, health and wellbeing. This is a national sample and includes a wide range of topics. The great news is wave 1 and wave 2 are publicly available to approved users so you can apply on the Department of Social Services website to use this data.  And wave 3 will be released in the next month or two which is very exciting as well. In this presentation, we are showing you findings from waves 1, 2 and 3, but because wave 3 data hasn't been publicly released yet and is still being processed, it's important to know that wave 3 results are preliminary at this stage.

I'll give you a bit of information about our young participants.  Most of our young participants were born in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, and the languages most frequently spoken at home are Persian, Arabic, Assyrian, Hazaragi and Dari. It is important to know that the majority of these participants have been exposed to traumatic events. Nearly 90 per cent of them have experienced or had a family member experience traumatic events such as war, religious or political prosecution, extreme living conditions and violence. 

So how are humanitarian youth settling?  We take three domains from the National Youth Settlement Framework to look at how humanitarian youth are settling in Australia.  I will show you findings regarding English language proficiency and study that respondents have undertaken in Australia.  I will also talk about respondents' friends and their experiences of discrimination.  As well as two aspects of personal wellbeing, including psychological distress which is measured using the Kessler 6 scale, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

First is economic participation. This graph shows that respondents improved their English-speaking proficiency over time.  So, the percentage who speaks English very well, which is in grey, and well, which is in pink, increases over time.  However, this graph also shows that adolescents who are on the left side improve their English more than young adults.  Even though there were no differences by age group in English proficiency pre-migration, which was self-assessed at wave 1, adolescents’ proficiency is higher than that of young adults in later waves.  Although you can't see this on the slide, we have also looked at differences in speaking proficiency by sex.  Among adolescents aged 15 to 17, we find no difference in English proficiency between males and females.  

Among young adults aged 18 to 25 however, no differences were found in pre-migration speaking proficiency, but males show better English than females in waves 1, 2 and 3.  This slide shows respondents’ participation in English classes and other study or training since arriving in Australia.  We see that a higher proportion of adolescents were engaged in study compared to young adults at each wave.  Although young adults aged 18 to 25 are less likely to be engaged in education, we know that they are more likely to be in paid employment.  It's important to note though that among young adults, males are much more likely to be working compared with females.

Moving on now to social participation. This graph shows that social integration of humanitarian youth increases over time.  The percentage of young people who say they have no friends in Australia nearly halves between waves 1 and 3, and the percentage reporting that their friends are mostly a mix of people from their own ethnic or religious community and from other communities also increased between waves.  We can also see that those respondents who say that their friends are mostly from their own ethnic or religious community decreases from 43 per cent in wave 1 to 31 per cent in wave 3.  We found no differences by age group or sex in the social integration measure.  However, we also found a high proportion reporting experiences of discrimination.  So, although their social integration in terms of their friendships in Australia increased over time, we see in this graph that a higher proportion of both adolescents and young adults report discrimination in waves 2 and 3 compared with wave 1.

In terms of personal wellbeing, we looked at in this graph risk of psychological distress.  And this graph shows the proportion of males and females in each age group who are at moderate or high risk of psychological distress according to the Kessler 6.  Among adolescents on the left, we find that a higher proportion of females are at a moderate or high risk of psychological distress, which we have also found in other analysis including all adults in the BNLA sample.  Among males we also see a high proportion at moderate or high risk of psychological distress in wave 3 compared to wave 1: 22 per cent compared to 15 per cent.  It's important to know that adolescents show a lower proportion at moderate or high risk of psychological distress compared with the full BNLA sample where 36 per cent of males and 43 per cent of females are at moderate or high risk of psychological distress.  Among young adults aged 18 to 25, we find significant differences in psychological distress between males and females in wave 3 where females have increased - the proportion of females at high or moderate risk of psychological distress is higher at wave 3.  To give you some context, the Australian Bureau of Statistics National Mental Health and Wellbeing survey shows that 7 per cent of males and 11 per cent of females are at moderate or high risk of psychological distress in the general Australian population.  

This shows the vulnerability of the humanitarian migrant population. They have been exposed to traumatic events before migration and also face significant challenges associated with settling in a new country. In this slide, we show the proportion of male and female respondents likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder. This graph shows that even though no significant differences were observed between males and females on wave 1, by the time of wave 3, a higher proportion of females were likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder compared to males.  Previous studies have shown that not only pre-migration, potentially traumatic events are associated with post-traumatic stress disorder in humanitarian migrants but also post-migration stressors contribute to post-traumatic stress and psychological distress.  

Just to conclude, we know that learning a new language in the host country is critical for humanitarian migrants to be able to settle and participate successfully in the new society.  Although significant improvements in English language were observed over time in this sample, young adults improved less than adolescents.  So, a higher proportion of adolescents are able to speak English well or very well. In addition, young adult females are lagging behind males in English speaking proficiency although there was no difference in proficiency pre-migration, males do better in English proficiency in later waves.  So, young adults aged 18 to 25, especially females, may need targeted support for improving their English skills.  We also saw that young adults are less engaged in education compared with adolescents but they're more likely to be engaged in employment.  However, this applies particularly to males who are more likely to be in employment than females.  

So young adult females may need more targeted approaches to increase their participation in both education and employment. We saw that although social integration in terms of friends in Australia improved over time, we need to work together with young people and people all ages to reduce discrimination.  We know from previous research that experiences of discrimination can have negative effects on people's health and wellbeing so it is important to address these issues.  We also found decreases in mental health over time.  Young people from refugee backgrounds require particular attention and interventions to improve mental health outcomes.  These involve addressing some of the stressors related to settlement as well as directly addressing the particular mental health needs of this population.  

Finally, we need to acknowledge the people and organisations who have made the study possible including government departments, the advisory group, the field work team and interviewing team and especially the study participants.  Here I wanted to show you the BNLA team at AIFS and this is a photo from an interviewing training with the amazing field work team.  The study wouldn't be as successful if it wasn't for the commitment of these interviewers, many of them from refugee backgrounds themselves.  Thank you.

LIDDY

Thanks Pilar. Nadine Liddy here and it's a real pleasure to be part of this webinar looking at young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds and considering how we measure good practice and settlement outcomes. So it's really great to hear about some of the findings from the BNLA study, and we're looking forward to having some more conversations with the team about that data as it becomes available.  I want to talk very briefly about who we are and what the National Youth Settlement Framework is - very briefly - and then I'm going to talk about what's happened since the launch of the Framework in May last year and the last webinar that we were fortunate to be part of with CFCA last year.  

So MYAN Australia is the national peak body on multicultural youth.  We promote the rights and interests of young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds, and we also support a targeted response to addressing their particular needs in the settlement context.  Our vision is that all young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds can access the support and opportunities they need to be active participants in, and contributors to, all aspects of Australian society.  

There are three key aspects of our work.  We engage in a whole range of policy and sector development activities and the National Youth Settlement Framework is a key part of our sector development work and the development of resources to support the sector to better meet the needs of young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds. We support the development of state and territory networks and organisations.  We have MYAN partners across the country in every state and territory. And we work with the relevant MYAN networks or organisations and for those of you who are dialling in from the various states and territories, you might be familiar with the MYAN networks in your state and territory.  

And if you're not we'd certainly encourage you to make contact with them.  And the third key part of our work is to support the development of young people's leadership and advocacy skills.  We have a National Youth Ambassadors network with representatives from each of the states and territories. We run bi-annual national youth events which have a focus on building the leadership and advocacy skills of young people.  And our last one was in December last year when we had over 50 young people come to Melbourne for three days of workshops and opportunities to engage with decision makers, and that included MPs.  We also have over the last couple of years supported young people to engage in international advocacy opportunities and last year we partnered with the Refugee Council of Australia to support three young people to travel to Geneva and participate in UNHCR meetings in June, and then also travel to Bangkok in September to participate in the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network conference at that time.  

So, we certainly consider the development of young people's advocacy and leadership skills as a key component of our work.  And that's about skilling young people up to engage in their own advocacy and to have their voices heard.  The other important thing to say about MYAN Australia is that we very intentionally work across the broader youth and settlement sectors, and that's because we believe that the intersection of youth work frameworks and good settlement practice is where good practice with this group of young people lies.  

Okay, the Youth Settlement Framework.  I won't read through each of these points on these slides, I'm going to move through the next few slides fairly quickly. The National Youth Settlement Framework was launched in May last year by the then Assistant Minister for Settlement, Craig Laundy.  It is the first national framework for understanding and responding to the needs of young people in settlement.  It's been developed by us but very much in partnership with young people, government and the non-government sectors, and we did consultations with young people and both the government and non-government sectors to develop the Framework.  It's designed to inform policy and service delivery, and it's very intentionally not just designed to be utilised or applied in what we might call the settlement sector. So it's very intentionally designed to have broad relevance across a whole range of sectors; all areas of young people's engagement with the service system.  And it is an evidence based guide. It's an evidence based guide for measuring good practice and settlement outcomes and included in the Framework are conceptual and practical resources.  

Why did we develop the Youth Settlement Framework?  We did that because there certainly has been a gap in really a solid and robust conceptual and practical framework for supporting the needs of young people in the settlement journey.  Young people in the settlement journey have particular needs that are distinct from children, adults and families and that's because of their age, their developmental stage and the role within the family, and particularly the role that they often play in supporting family to settle. Their needs are different to Australian born young people and that's because of the refugee - primarily the refugee and migration experience, cultural dislocation and navigating the developmental stage of adolescence in the context of cultural dislocation and settlement.  

And we would often describe this group of young people as needing to navigate additional and more complex transitions than some of their Australian born counterparts.  And some of those more complex transitions are negotiating or navigating a new culture, education and training systems, new relationships with peers, family structures which are often radically changed or impacted by the refugee or migrant experience.  The significant developmental stage of adolescence, and as I said before, navigating adolescence which of course all young people need to do, but this group of young people do that in the context of a whole range of other challenges.    

They're also navigating concepts of independence and youth rights which are often unfamiliar. They also have limited social capital and all of these factors together mean that their needs are particular and they require a targeted response to ensure that those needs are addressed.  And I think the other important thing to say is when we talk about settlement generally, we often are talking about belonging and identity and a new cultural context in a new society, and of course belonging and identity are really fundamental components of navigating adolescence. So, this group of young people are doing a whole lot as they move through their settlement journey in Australia.  And Heather actually will talk a little bit more about negotiating, belonging and identity and bi or multicultural identity in the Australian context 

What underpins the Framework?  Human rights frameworks including the convention on the rights of the child, youth work and settlement frameworks.  And what I do want to finish with in terms of some general information about the Framework is that we certainly consider that this group of young people are resilient and resourceful and they come to Australia with enormous strengths and capabilities. So even though I'm talking about the particular needs, we certainly recognise that young people have a whole lot of capabilities and certainly the Framework is designed to build on those capabilities and strengths. They are a diverse group, they have particular needs and require a targeted approach, and the Framework is intended to support that.

There are four components of the Framework, I won't read through all of those. The Framework is available through the links that the webinar has provided.  There are also a range of supplementary resources that we have developed and there are two self-assessment guides, one around the active citizenship indicators, and one around the good practice capabilities.  Those assessment guides are not at this point available on the website, but they're certainly available through any of the training workshops that we are holding nationally.  This slide reflects the active citizenship domains and indicators, and Pilar referred to economic, social participation and the personal wellbeing domains. So, these are the key four domains of active citizenship and there's a whole set of indicators under each of those domains.  

I won't talk through each of those but, suffice to say, that we have intentionally framed good settlement outcomes for young people within an understanding of active citizenship, where young people have built a sense of agency and also built social capital. So, the skills, knowledge and networks and confidence to negotiate services and systems, to develop relationships, to navigate the supports and opportunities that they need to be successful in Australian society. And this slide captures the Framework sort of in its entirety.  The four domains with the key indicators, and then right sort of at the ground level if you like, which is the practice level, are the eight good practice capabilities and Heather Stewart will be talking about a few of those good practice capabilities after me.

Okay, what has happened in terms of implementing the Framework since it was launched in May last year? We held national training towards the end of last year and that certainly was a really exciting process to be involved in. I must admit, I was a little bit overwhelmed at the positive response that we received around the Framework. We had a really positive response to all of those training workshops that we held around the country and participants in those workshops said really clearly and really strongly that they felt that the Framework was a really important milestone in youth settlement policy and practice, that it reinforced or provided the scaffolding for the work that they were doing on the ground. So, it very much reinforced what the sector was doing on the ground with young people. Obviously, there are always a range of gaps but it certainly spoke to the work that people were doing on the ground.  Which was very pleasing to us and, I should say, we would have been concerned had that not been the case because the Framework was informed by work that was going on, on the ground.  

So, the national training was held last year and there are a range of other workshops that will be held in some of the states and territories over the next six months. We will be developing some additional resources over the next six months.  We're just about to release a data information sheet for the 2015-16 period, which provides national data and state data on the migration and humanitarian programs as it relates to young people.  And that will come out in the next couple of weeks.  We're also looking at developing some case studies and I put a call out to - a bit of a plug for that.  We will be in touch with the sector through our subscriber list. We're really keen to hear from those working on the ground who have taken up the Framework and applied it in practice, we're very keen to hear how people are using it on the ground, and we will be developing some case studies that will form some of those supplementary resources. We're also planning to work very intentionally with some mainstream service providers, so those who aren't necessarily positioned in the settlement sector providing discrete settlement services, but providing youth specific services.  And we will be working with them to apply the Framework in that context.  As I mentioned before, there will be some ongoing training opportunities at the state and territory level.  And the case studies is one way that we will be evaluating the implementation. So we will be putting a call out around case studies but we're also very keen to hear from those working on the ground about how you've utilised the Framework in your practice, and also whether there are some gaps and, I should say, that was something that came through in our national training last year. It was an opportunity to do some further consultation with the sector around what might have been missing in the Framework, and there were a couple of things in the good practice capabilities and also a couple of things around the way we had framed the active citizenship domains and indicators. So, we will also be doing a revision of the Framework probably by the end of this year to incorporate some of that feedback, which was great. 

And the other thing we will be doing at the end of this year in November is holding a National Multicultural Youth Conference. That's being hosted by MYAN Australia and the University of Melbourne.  We are working with the University of Melbourne on a ARC linkage project looking at data collection or developing a data set to measure the status of CALD young people, and that project will also result in the development of a knowledge bank. So, the conference in November will be an opportunity again to talk about where the Framework is at and by that time we will be able to report on how the Framework is being implemented on the ground through organisations. 

 And a few comments about the importance of measuring good practice and settlement outcomes.  The Framework was designed very intentionally to do that but it now exists in a context of a range of other work in this area which is very, very pleasing to see. Pilar and John are involved in the BNLA longitudinal research, which is excellent and it's very exciting to see some youth data coming out of that.  I've just mentioned the ARC linkage project, that's a three year project. The MYAN is also involved in a national support role with a project called the Youth Transition Support Pilot, which is funded out of Settlement Services in DSS.  And that pilot is a two and a half year pilot that has an independent evaluation attached to that and, again, that was very pleasing for us to see that independent evaluation within Settlement Services and we've had a role in overseeing that.  And the Settlement Council of Australia (SCOA) also released Settlement Outcome Standards last year, so that's some work in the broader settlement sector around how we measure settlement outcomes more broadly, and the Framework and those SCOA standards are complementary.

A couple of other things I want to talk about was the senate inquiry into migrant settlement outcomes. That was initiated towards the end of last year and submissions closed in January and there have been a range of public hearings around that senate inquiry.  Although we were concerned about the context that generated that inquiry, we certainly saw it as an opportunity to talk about the needs of young people in the settlement context and promote the importance of good data collection and measuring outcomes.  So that in many ways it's an opportunity to have a spotlight on the needs of young people in settlement and what we need to be doing, what are the gaps and what do we need to be doing to ensure they are best supported in settlement. 

 And a few comments about the global context.  MYAN has been involved in some conversations and some work happening globally with other resettlement countries.  And there is a little bit of work happening around measuring integration outcomes in some other resettlement countries, which is very pleasing to see.  But there is no youth specific work in that context, so some of those other resettlement countries, Canada, the US, the UK, Germany, are looking at developing frameworks and tools for measuring settlement outcomes.  But work on youth specific measurements isn't really occurring in those other countries.  

So I guess I would just comment on the significance of a whole lot of work that is coming out of Australia, the BNLA research, and the Youth Settlement Framework that focus on young people is unusual globally. And all of this, you know, why does measuring good practice and settlement outcomes matter?  Because we need to build a really strong evidence base and that helps is in our advocacy work around targeted policy and programming. Okay, applying the Framework to practice, I'm going to hand over to Heather Stewart, my colleague, and Heather is going to talk about three of the good practice capabilities and focusing on a couple of case studies from the MY Family project. Over to you, Heather.

STEWART

Thank you, Nadine. Yes, so thank you. Today I was going to talk about an initiative which the Centre for Multicultural Youth worked on last year, which was the MY Family project. And it sought to build better support for migrant and refugee families parenting adolescents.  And I'm hoping today to show how the work of the National Youth Settlement Framework guided that practice in delivery and it's certainly interesting having heard the BNLA data that it's very important that we provide good support for young people in the settlement process.  

So, the MY Family project went and delivered some on the ground projects to explore how we could do better support, and the one I'm going to talk to today is on the website called Case Study 1, which brought together the settlement support service, Catholic Care and I know there's Catholic Care people out there today, so hello. With Anglicare ParentZone worker, again I know there's Anglicare out there, so big hello, brought them together with CMY to try and address the needs that had been identified by a group of Afghan parents in Dandenong about issues they had parenting their adolescent children. So, what we did was we had a session where we went and met those families in the Catholic Care setting where they were already gathered and had a chat to them about what might be some of those concerns and built some trust.  And then from that ParentZone worker Ariane went away and developed some ideas for parenting strategies that could be delivered that were going to meet their particular needs.  And with the support of CMY and Catholic Care we built around it a one day program which was then delivered in a school holiday.  

On that one day those families came back with the young people, and what we did was in the morning we split the group into two. The parents stayed with the Anglicare ParentZone worker, and the young people sat with the CMY worker, and the Catholic Care workers were spread across both. To give them an opportunity within their own groups to talk about what their unique and particular concerns were that might lead to pressures on intergenerational relationships. As you can imagine, the young people had quite different concerns from the parents although they overlaid in similar areas.  And many of those concerns related to the kind of tensions we see with young people aspiring to have success in the new culture while parents having concern that their young people are losing connection to their culture of origin.  

Having had that opportunity, the groups then came together in the afternoon and we ran some activities, where the most successful of which I think was perhaps the reverse role plays, where parents got to role play being the young person and young people go to role play being their parents. And then they worked through some fairly common scenarios that people identified can lead to conflict in families. You know, young person wants to get a boyfriend, and he's a boyfriend from another culture. Or young boy wants to go out with his friends on a Saturday to a party, or a young person has no interest in pursuing a career that the parents think would be the best career for them. This was highly successful, it was fascinating to notice that the young people were able to role play their parents to a T, they knew exactly what their parents were going to say, but perhaps what surprised me was that the parents were also amazingly adept at being young people and it very clearly became evident that they did actually understand each other's perspectives. And there was lots of laughter in the room.  

The groups then went into their own families where another activity which was very successful was each person in the family was allocated a particular period of time where they were allowed to talk without interruption about issues they had with their family. And then finally the families were brought together to set their own goals. Now I'll talk a bit about how it applies to the good practice capabilities but in summary it was a very successful project because it provided a safe space for young people and their families to talk about issues which could put pressure on intergenerational relationships. And it created a very strong sense of attachment between the young people and the families as the process enabled them to identify what they shared in common as much as what concerns they had.

So just to talk about how we can see the good practice capabilities guiding it. The project only worked because the services understood the critical role of family in young people's settlement journeys. Relationships with families provide young people with a sense of belonging and support, and help them to feel connected to shared values, culture and history.  And this project was successful because it enabled families and young people to build that connection, it helped to build stronger attachment and facilitated positive connections. Many youth work initiatives don't tend to look at the family and perhaps some family initiatives are not as comfortable working with adolescents, but this was a good model where it worked with families with an awareness of the young people's needs.

The good practice capability of cultural competence was also evident. It recognised that cultural dislocation is a significant factor in the migration and refugee experience and that there is value in providing opportunity for young people and families to talk about cultural differences in the settlement process. This is an ongoing issue for young people who are often negotiating the pressures of developing a bi-cultural identity, whilst being situated in families that have concerns that they are losing connection to their culture of origin. Initiatives like this allow young people and their families to explore these tensions in a safe space in ways which enable them to identify their shared connections.  And I think when I was looking at the cultural competence, I believe one of the things that this initiative did was it enabled to build the cultural competence skills of the young people themselves and their families.  I think as young people navigate the settlement journey, what they also have to do is become more culturally competent themselves because that is the world in which they are operating. They leave the family home with one set of expectations and they get on the bus and they go to school or to their friends and there's a different set. So that being able to talk about it and name it and juggle it is really important for helping them make sense and processing it.  

Finally, the good practice capability of collaboration was critical to the success of this project. It only worked because we were able to bring together youth work expertise, community agency expertise and family organisation expertise.  And that included the employment of bi-cultural workers in all three of those agencies to support delivery of this project.  We needed the connections that Catholic Care had on the ground with families to draw people in. We needed the expertise of Anglicare ParentZone to know what might be good strategies to help families work through those issues. And we needed CMY expertise on the unique and particular needs of young people to bring young people into that conversation in a way in which they felt heard.  So that case study is on the MY Family website as is another case study with a similar bent, which was delivered by City of Greater Dandenong working in collaboration with Life Without Barriers.  And a whole lot of resources that will be very useful for people that were looking at the issue of promoting positive intergenerational relationships, including links to agencies like Spectrum which have a fantastic resource called Parenting in the New Culture, which informs a lot of the great work that's being done in the sector.

So, in conclusion, I think that model is something that could be duplicated in other areas.  When we went around to talk to different regions, a lot of services had very similar ideas and were doing very similar work. So, in Morwell a very similar initiative had already been rolled out and as long as you have the key components of the different expertise of family services, cultural expertise and youth work, and you use bi-cultural workers and you develop a process that involves your community, I think this could be a successful model to be offering support to families and young people in the settlement journey.  

WEBINAR CONCLUDED

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Slide outline

1. Supporting young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds: Good practice and measuring settlement outcomes

• Presenters: Nadine Liddy, Heather Stewart, Pilar Rioseco and John De Maio
• This webinar is part of the CFCA information exchange webinar series:

www.aifs.gov.au/cfca

2. Presenters

• John De Maio 
  Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Family Studies
• Nadine Liddy 
  National Coordinator of the Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network (MYAN Australia)
• Pilar Rioseco 
  Senior Research Officer, Australian Institute of Family Studies
• Heather Stewart 
  Previously worked at the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY) and the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria

3. Humanitarian youth in the "Building a New Life in Australia" study

• Pilar Rioseco & Cuc Hoang
• CFCA Webinar, 23rd March 2017

4. "Building a New Life in Australia" (BNLA)

• Five year longitudinal study.
  • Onshore and offshore humanitarian migrants.
• 2,399 respondents in Wave 1 (2013-14).
  • 135 adolescents (aged 15-17)
  • 553 young adults (aged 18-25)
• Child module in Wave 3.
• National sample, wide range of topics covered.

5. "Building a New Life in Australia" (BNLA)

• Wave 1 and Wave 2 are publicly available for you!

6. Background of young BNLA participants

7. How are humanitarian youth settling?

Three areas in the National Youth Settlement Framework:

• Economic participation:
• English language proficiency, study.
• Social participation:
• Friends in Australia, discrimination.
• Personal well-being:
• Psychological distress, post-traumatic stress disorder.

8. Economic participation

9. Proficiency in spoken English improves over time

• Graphic shows percentages of English proficiency by Wave and then by age group.
• Rating very well to not at all.

10. Adolescents have higher engagement in English classes and study than young adults

• Graphic shows comparison between English and other study by Wave and by age group.

11. Social participation:

12. Higher social integration of young people over time

• Graphic shows what social groups respondents primarily mix with

13. However, higher proportion report experiencing discrimination in later waves

• Graphic shows percentage reporting experience of discrimination

14. Personal well-being

15. Different patterns of psychological distress among adolescents and young adults

• Graphic shows percentage at moderate/high risk of psychological distress according to Kessler 6

16. A higher proportion of females likely to have PTSD relative to males in Wave 3

• Graphic shows percentage likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

17. Conclusion

• Young adults aged 18-25, especially females, need targeted support for improving English skills.
• Young adults aged 18-25 are less engaged in education than adolescents aged 15-17.
• Although social integration increases over time, higher proportions experience discrimination in later waves.
• Decreases in mental health over time require particular attention and intervention in this population.

18. Acknowledgements

• Department of Immigration and Border Protection
• Department of Social Services
• Members of the Advisory Groups
• Colmar Brunton Social Research and interviewing team
• Study participants

19. BNLA team

• John De Maio 
  Research Fellow 
  [email protected]
• Pilar Rioseco 
  Senior Research Officer 
  [email protected]
• Cuc Hoang 
  Senior Research Officer 
  [email protected]
• Rebecca Jenkinson 
  Research Fellow 
  [email protected]

20. AIFS CFCA Webinar: 

• Supporting young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds: good practice and measuring settlement outcomes
• Nadine Liddy 
  Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network (Australia)
• Heather Stewart
• 23rd March 2017

21. MYAN (Australia)

• National peak body on multicultural youth
• Promotes rights and interests of young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds and supports targeted response
• Vision – all young people from refugee and migrant background can access the support and opportunities they need to be active participants in and contributors to Australian society

22. MYAN (Australia)

• Policy and sector development - provide advice to government and capacity building to those working with young people
• Support development of state/territory networks & organisations – MYAN NSW, MyQ, MYAN WA, MYAN TAS
• Support the development of young people’s leadership and advocacy skills – Youth Ambassador Network (YAN), national youth events, international advocacy opportunities
• Work across settlement and youth sectors

23. Photo of young adults

24 What is the Youth Settlement Framework?

• First national framework for understanding and responding to the needs of young people in settlement
• Developed by MYAN Australia – informed by young people, non-government and government sectors
• Designed to inform policy & service delivery across government and the non-government sector – all areas of young people’s engagement with services to support their settlement in Australia
• Evidence-based guidance for measuring good practice and settlement outcomes – conceptual and practical resources

25. Why a National Youth Settlement Framework?

• Young people in the settlement journey have particular needs:
  • Distinct from children, adults and families – age, development stage and role within the family
• Different to Australian-born young people – refugee and migration experience, cultural dislocation
• Additional and more complex transitions – culture, education/training pathways, peers, family structures, adolescence, concepts of independence and youth rights
• Limited social capital
• Settlement in the context of adolescence - significant developmental stage, belonging and identity

26. What underpins the Framework?

• Human rights frameworks
• Youth work and settlement frameworks
• Young people in the settlement journey:
  • Resilient and resourceful – strengths and capabilities
  • A diverse group
  • Have particular needs
  • Require a targeted approach

27. Components of the Framework

1. Understanding the refugee and migration experience for adolescents
2. Understanding the Australian settlement context
3. Facilitating good youth settlement through active citizenship – domains and indicators
4. Facilitating good practice in youth settlement – good practice capabilities

• Supplementary Resources
• Assessment guides – Active Citizenship Indicators and Good Practice Capabilities

28. Graphic

• Shows how economic, social and civic participation impact on personal well being and all of these factors impact on active citizenship.

29. Young people active citizenship

• Graphic shows key life indicators that contribute to active citizenship and good practice capabilities for service delivery.

30. Implementing the Framework

• National training 2016 – reinforced need, sector engagement in youth settlement, Framework as milestone
• Additional resources – 2016 Data Info Sheet, case studies, digital stories
• Working with mainstream service providers
• Ongoing training opportunities at state/territory level
• Evaluating implementation – seeking feedback from the sector
• National Multicultural Youth Conference:
  • Melbourne, 23-24 November 2017
  • Hosted by MYAN Australia and University of Melbourne (Youth Research Centre and School of Culture and Communication)

31. Importance of measuring good practice and settlement outcomes

• BNLA research, ARC LP ‘Defining the status of CALD youth’, Youth Transitions Support Pilot (DSS Settlement Services), SCOA Settlement Outcomes Standards
• Senate Inquiry into Migrant Settlement Outcomes – spotlight on settlement outcomes
• Building an evidence base – advocacy in policy and programming
• Global context - resettlement countries

32. Applying the Framework to practice

• Good practice capabilities:
  • Cultural competency
  • Family-aware
  • Collaboration
• 2 x case studies – MyFamily Project (Centre for Multicultural Youth, VIC)
• Working with mainstream and settlement organisations, focus on strengthening families
• Resources available on the MyFamily website

33. Photo

34. MyFamily

• Supporting migrant and refugee families parenting adolescents

35. Photo

36. MyFamily

• Working with young people AND families

37. Photo

38. MyFamily

• Importance of intergenerational relationships for young people in the settlement process

39. Photo

40. MyFamily

• Family aware practice
• Understanding the pressures of settlement on families

41. Photo

42. MyFamily

• Cultural competence
• Impact of cultural dislocation

43. Photo

44. MyFamily

• Collaboration
• Cross sector partnerships build responsive interventions

45. Photo

46. Resources

• National Youth Settlement Framework
• Speak Up: Global Refugee Youth Consultations in Australia
• MyFamily

47. MYAN (Australia) Contacts

• Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network (Australia)
• Nadine Liddy (National Coordinator)
• [email protected]
• www.myan.org.au
• Subscribe to the MYAN eNews
• Register – National Conference
• State/territory partners – contacts through MYAN website

47. Questions

• Join the conversation & access key resources
• Continue the conversation started here today and access related resources on the CFCA website.