Starting Early to Address Migration-Related Trauma
Students attend informal education and integration courses at a local community center in Turkey. Photo: EU/ECHO/Abdurrahman Antakyali, Gaziantep. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.) No changes made. bit.ly/3bCNdQo
By Caitlin Katsiaficas
14 January 2021
Numerous studies have shown that trauma, which can result from exposure to event(s) that threaten one’s physical or emotional wellbeing, can have a strong and sustained impact on young children. Exposure to trauma can hurt their cognitive and socio-emotional development, as well as their longer-term education and employment trajectory, indicating the importance of early interventions for promoting their healthy development and future success and pointing to potential wider individual and societal impacts if it is not addressed.
Refugee families commonly experience traumatic events and stressors over the course of their migration journeys—whether in their origin country, while in transit, or after arriving in the United States or another destination country. While the experiences of individuals and groups vary, a 2019 World Health Organization analysis found that over one in five people living in conflict-affected areas experience depression, an anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, or another mental health condition. Asylum seekers may face similarly harrowing routes to safety, and other migrants might also face difficult journeys in which they may experience trauma or toxic stress.
Trauma may stem from events that children experience themselves or witness happening to others. Children can also be affected by trauma their parents experience, meaning that not only can trauma can have lasting effects, it may even have intergenerational consequences, thus further extending its potential reach. Although this blog focuses on the US context, the research base as well as the global reach of migration and displacement point to implications for other geographical contexts.
There is a critical gap in attention to and services for young immigrant children
While there has been some progress in the past few years, a considerable gap remains in attention to—and services for—young immigrant children who are affected by trauma. This is reflected in both mainstream conversations on child trauma and mental health, which frequently overlook the specific experiences of immigrant families, and in mental health programs for immigrant communities, which often serve older children and adults.
While not all immigrants will be affected by any trauma they might experience, and we should not downplay resilience, for those who are impacted it can have important consequences—particularly if unaddressed.
Immigrants must be intentionally and meaningfully included in efforts to address trauma, and ECEC services can play an important role
The importance of the issue calls for increased attention to young children’s and their parent’s mental health, and early childhood education and care (ECEC) services stand to play an important role in this effort. In fact, it is the relationship with a supportive caregiver that is so important to protecting children from the potential impacts of trauma and adversity and for promoting their resilience. Illustrating this, a Chicago refugee resettlement agency implemented a relationship-based home visiting program aiming to address the impacts of trauma, and a randomized controlled trial found positive parent and child outcomes.
As a key system with which both young children and their parents interact, ECEC programs can provide trauma-informed care themselves and can also connect families to other, more specialized services. Harrisonburg, Virginia’s public school district partners to offer training for all staff on how they can support the resilience of families exposed to trauma. And in Canada, the government-funded Childminding Monitoring, Advisory, and Support (CMAS) organization has developed practical guidance for ECEC programs to support the resilience of child refugees in their care. However, despite the potential of ECEC services for mitigating the effects of trauma, experiences of immigrant families are insufficiently understood by many service providers and immigrant parents often face barriers to accessing services for themselves and their children, issues that must be addressed in order to effectively reach more immigrant families with trauma-informed supports.
But while early childhood programs are an important partner, efforts to mitigate the effects of trauma should be cross-sectoral, reflecting the many programs and service systems with which immigrant families interact. These include ECEC as well as physical health, mental health, education, and social services. Indeed, cross-sector collaboration can help facilitate a more robust response to child trauma. This is why some states and localities, including Vermont and Bexar County, Texas, have launched working groups aimed at ramping up trauma-informed services to mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), while New York State has created a network to build capacity to provide trauma-informed care for people of all ages.
As such partnerships gain traction, they provide an important opportunity to respond to trauma experienced by refugee and other immigrant families. For such efforts to be successful in responding to migration-related trauma, the weaving of mental health and trauma-informed supports into early childhood programs, schools, health centers, and other services should be done in ways that meaningfully reach and are relevant to the experiences of immigrant children and families, including the youngest children.
The insufficient attention to trauma experienced by immigrant children and families is reflected in the lack of targeted services to address it. With large and growing shares of the country’s children living in immigrant families, and with refugee resettlement set to accelerate again under the Biden administration, services must be informed not only about the signs and effects of trauma but about the experiences of the immigrant families they serve. It is increasingly important to focus on migration-related trauma as it pertains to young children, and policymakers and service providers across the country, including those in the ECEC field, should ramp up efforts to offer a more robust and coordinated approach to this issue.
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this publication belong solely to the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of REACH or the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
About the Author
Caitlin Katsiaficas is a non-resident visiting scholar at George Washington University, where she is researching refugee integration and mental health, and also serves as a policy analyst at the International Centre for Migration Policy Development. She previously worked at the Migration Policy Institute, where her research focused on integration services for immigrant and refugee families, and has also held positions at the World Bank and International Rescue Committee.
Connect with Caitlin on LinkedIn.