Unmet Needs of Unaccompanied Minors from Central America: Perceptions of Professionals from Multiple Sectors

Background: In recent years, there has been a significant influx of Central American youth who cross the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian. While federal procedures are established to oversee the treatment and placement of unaccompanied minors, less is known about the needs of unaccompanied minors and available services afterthey are placed in appropriate custody. Methods: Purposive and strategic sampling of professionals from medical, social work, education and legal fields was conducted. Fourteen informants were recruited across the U.S. for confidential semi-structured interviews, which were audio recorded and transcribed in 2016 to 2017. Standard anthropological methods were employed, including immersion and crystallization techniques that incorporated within-case and across-case analytic strategies. Results: Recruited informants had previous or current direct experience working with immigrant minors for three or more years in addition to extensive public health experience. Unaccompanied minors were described as predominantly adolescent boys, ranging from 2 to 18 years old. Children faced unmet mental, medical and psychosocial needs that are interconnected and largely unmet due to children’s legal status and ineligibility to access services in most jurisdictions. The most pressing challenge affecting the health of youth was their immigration status. Across sectors,informants revealed an imbalance between the growing demand for services, including legal counsel, and the limited supply of professionals and well-funded services to meet children’s complex needs. Informants emphasized the value of trauma-informed practice, Spanish language proficiency, child-informed practice and intercultural awareness and humility towards their clients as key features of equipped professionals working with this vulnerable population. Regardless of sector, professionals emphasized the importance of culturally-informed care to immigrant youth. Building these skills is associated with greater confidence to provide services to unaccompanied minors, many of whom have experienced as significant burden of childhood trauma. Conclusions: The health needs of unaccompanied minors are complex and span across medical, social work, education, and legal fields. Interdisciplinary collaboration is needed to address the challenges faced by unaccompanied minors in their efforts to integrate themselves into their new communities and promote their resilience. Promising initiatives include co-location of inter-sector services for increased access and efficiency of services and development of professional trainings and resources for professionals in sectors that serve this population

Reflections on Working via Telehealth with Bilingual Families Experiencing Trauma During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Early childhood trauma has been shown to have a significant impact on children’s development, including their long-term physical and mental health. Recent research has shown these experiences to be widespread, affecting significant numbers of people across all populations. The effects of trauma lead many families to seek mental health services for their children’s emotional and behavioral symptoms, in the hope of promoting their children’s recovery and resilience. However, Spanish-speaking or bilingual families often face additional obstacles to obtaining mental health treatment due to language needs. Emerging research has also begun to examine the impact of bilingualism on the therapeutic alliance and services. Additionally, due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many mental health services rapidly shifted to virtual services, also known as telemental health services, which have unique advantages and disadvantages for providing services to young children and families. This thesis will address the process of working via telemental health with bilingual families during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will also include two case studies from a children’s mental health clinic that illustrate these concepts and their intersections

The acquisition of phonology and the classification of speech disorders in German-speaking children

PhD ThesisPhonological acquisition has been a major research topic for the past three decades. Several different theoretical concepts, accounting for the course of phonological acquisition, have emerged. While all these theories agree the need to explain language-specific differences during the course of development, they all also strongly argue for a universal pattern. This thesis aims to provide evidence for phonological theory in a cross-linguistic context by examining monolingual children acquiring German as their native language. A cross-sectional study of 177 normally developing children aged 1;6 to 5; 11 was found to generally support the concept of universality but also showed significant acquisition differences especially in comparison with English, a closely related language. It will be argued that to date only the concept of phonological saliency (So & Dodd, 1994; Zua Hua & Dodd, 2000) is able to fully explain language-specific findings. However, evidence for phonological theory cannot only be validated by using data from developmental cross-linguistic studies but also from data describing phonologically disordered children. The nature of the errors made and also the children's developmental history might provide information concerning the prerequisites for normal speech development and the cognitive processes involved in speech perception and production. ... This thesis will argue that developmental speech disorders of unknown origin follow a language-independent course that is constrained by a universal pattern. On the basis of normative data for any language investigated, it should be possible to detect universal subgroups of speech disorders across languages. The clinical implication of this conclusion is that therapy techniques can be applied cross-linguistically.Economic and Social Research Council

Teachers’ perceptions on the effectiveness of the Oxford Online Placement Test at King Abdulaziz University

English language placements tests are an essential component of preparatory year programmes (PYPs) as they serve to place students in an English course adequate to their level of proficiency. The aim of the study is to evaluate the perceived effectiveness of the Oxford Online Placement Test (OOPT), as seen by teachers in the English Language Institute (ELI) at King Abdulaziz University (KAU). The investigation explores teachers’ views on the OOPT, on the ELI modules and on factors affecting students’ test performance. It is framed by Messick’s (1989) unified view of validity, which informed both the data analysis and the interpretation of the findings. The study comprised three data collection stages: Stage 1: face-to face interviews, Stage 2: the questionnaire and Stage 3: telephone interviews. The majority of the questionnaire and interview respondents were unfamiliar with the OOPT, however, those who were familiar with the test, agreed that it was an effective tool and generally placed students in the correct level. However, some teachers felt that the content of the OOPT was not relevant to Saudi students. Educational background, computer literacy and socio-economic status emerged as factors influencing achievement in the OOPT and ELI modules, according to teachers. Teachers also agreed that students specialising in the Sciences generally performed better compared to those specialising in the Arts. With regards to the ELI modules, the majority of teachers felt that the courses were too short and that students who were placed in higher levels because of their OOPT scores were generally more proficient than those who had progressed through the ELI modules. Implications for theory and practice are drawn from the findings as well as recommendations for the ELI and for future research.

A qualitative investigation of student interactions in a learning activity center: Defining success, at-risk factors, and resiliency for developmental programs in community colleges

This purposive study selected ten students of different background in order to understand how the educational success of adults was affected by Learning Activity Centers (LAC) in a community college. The ten selected students were all non-traditional students who had at least these three at-risk factors: (a) they scored below the college minimums on a diagnostic test in reading, writing, or mathematics, (b) they were below student financial aid guidelines, and (c) they had an interrupted educational history of two or more years. The ten students were paired into five categories: (a) Sudanese males, (b) Mexican females, (c) single parent females, (d) single females over 40, and (e) males over 40. The ten selected community college students were all graduates or students who were in their final semester who had used the LAC more than 50 hours. Interviews were conducted to determine how the students viewed academic success, how they overcame their at-risk factors, how they interacted with the staff and resources in the LAC, and how the LAC affected their eventual success. First, although students partially agree with institutional definitions of success, such as retention, GPA, and graduation, these non-traditional, at-risk students have additional definitions of success which include increased social status, independence, and stabilizing their life situations. Second, the interviews also review how students use resiliency factors to counter the negative affects of at-risk factors. Third, while the developmental curriculum teaches study skills, reading, writing improvement, mathematics, and English as a second language, students need the additional modeling, mentoring, and advising they receive in the LAC to practice what they learn, improve their skills, and adjust to the social and academic demands of postsecondary education. The research study concludes with suggestions on how to improve staff training in the LAC and that further studies need to focus on additional diverse cultural groups to determine how students can benefit from LACs