Hello Counsellors….
Hope you had great summer… for me… It was a time for letting o as well as acquiring new information to sustain me during the Canadian Winter Hibernation….. I had the opportunity to attend events and workshops through-out the summer and as part of my work, I attended a settlement service event here in Toronto which was attended by service providers from as far as PEI and Manitoba.
We as counselors working with diversity are always looking for best practices that we can incorporate into our exiting work and also trying not to reinvent the wheel. In one such chance encounter, I came across the Aurora Therapy Program for Immigrant and Refugee Families, who are based in Winnipeg, Manitoba and are also featured in the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website. I got to meet eh ‘therapists;’ and was enriched by the work that they are doing. Its a new program and this is how they describe w=the need for its existence in their website: The new Therapy Program for Immigrant and Refugee Families came about as a result of our efforts to become more involved with our surrounding community. We recognized that there was a large part of this community that we had not been able to serve due to various obstacles, including language, cultural differences, and the stigma many members of refugee and immigrant communities associate with mental health issues (Aurora Family Therapy Centre).
I get the opportunity to work with immigrants and refugees and have often been approached to support issues like Your Family Support Counsellor provides support for:
Disciplining children, Understanding Canadian family law, specially navigating Children Aid ,Solving conflict within the family, Communicating with children and partners, Learning to live with change, Learning to take care of stress, Family separation etc.,.
While working with this population group I have found that they have to deal with all these while trying to adjust to Canada and perhaps expected to succeed and when they start to decline…that’s when they seek us out or if they cant affords private practitioners its places like Aurora.
I for one liked their philosophy and plan to incorporate more of this kind of work into my practice.
More information can be found at http://aurora.uwinnipeg.ca/programs-and-services/immigrant-refugee-project/
*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA