IDENTIFICATION OF "STRESS"
1.
Counselling Service
Ockenden has during the last four years, through its Birmingham Resettle- ent Centre, set up a network of regional resettlement officers. The task of these officers was to maintain contact with Vietnamese refugee families for eighteen months after their move from the reception stage. Through these officers it was possible to identify at first hand where areas of tension were arising. Some individuals manifested stress symptoms at the reception stage and the resettlement officers were made aware of this from the outset. Since the withdrawal of Government support to finance this field work team, a counselling service for the Vietnamese could be maintained only where former field workers have been prepared to continue on a voluntary basis, through our headquarters and regional administrative offices or through contact with Ockenden's residential centres.
2. Support Service
Ockenden's policy has been to set up support groups who have facilitated the initial move of the refugees into their own homes and they, in the most active and successful cases, have continued to monitor and support both families and individuals through all the initial stages of their adjustment to their new life.
There are some areas where such effective follow through support has been difficult to find, in others it has not been sustained.
3. Monitoring by research surveys
Ockenden has endeavoured, by initiating two research projects which will be followed by a third and final survey, to monitor the progress of the first 300 Vietnamese refugee families whom it had resettled. This research has already revealed a number of general causal factors on which the above assessment of stress amongst the refugees has been based.
REMEDIES
(a) Improvement of communication
continued language training provision.
particularly for the
(b) Opportunities for training and re-training
younger age groups.
(c) Opportunity for change of environment - particularly where family tensions
have built up.
(a) Provision of Vietnamese interpreters, para-social workers who have been
trained to the point where they can, with sensitivity and understanding, assist either professional psychiatrists in cases where there is a complete breakdown or others in neighbourhood support and/or statutory welfare services who are endeavouring to prevent such breakdown.
(e) Cottage industries type therapies.
(f) Area cultural community centres in which the Vietnamese could give mutual support. (g) Holidays for families, and particularly for heads of families, with
problems of isolation, as well as for children alienated from their
cultural background.
IMPLEMENTATION OF "REMEDIES'
(a) Communication
Sheila Rosenberg's report and research reveal that there was a great need for continued effort to persuade LEAS to explore ways and means of improving ESL facilities, where the need for this is made known to them.
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