Opening the Doors

Working with refugee & migrant young people

Overview of the needs & issues

Family issues
Settling in Australia can be a stressful time for families.

Parents are faced with many life changes and often struggle to meet their family's basic needs and help the family settle in the new country.

Young people usually have a higher exposure to English through school and friends and usually pick up their new language much quicker than parents. Parents are often only fluent in their first language.

Young people are often expected to interpret and translate when their family accesses services such as housing, health, employment, education and shopping. 21

This can result in role-reversal where parents become much more dependent on their children while children take on much more of a parenting role.

Many families experience inter-generational conflict. There is an expectation from parents that their children will adopt the traditional values and roles of their country of origin while young people face pressure from their friends to adopt "Australian" values and roles. Young people can feel torn between these two expectations.

Families may fear that their children will lose their traditional culture and values. Just like other families with teenagers there is often a clash between a parent's concern for the safety of their child and the need of a young person to develop their own identity and reach independence. Parents may be inclined to limit their children's autonomy because they do not trust Australian social values. 16, 20

Some young people will strongly connect and maintain the culture, language and values of their parents. Alternatively some young people will strongly connect with mainstream "Australian" culture and will not retain the culture, language and values of their parents. Other young people will adopt aspects of both cultures and adopt a bicultural identity. It is believed that this third option contributes to   a greater long term success for young people. 30

Historically youth services have focused on the young person as an individual and have had very limited contact with parents. Refugee and migrant families may not allow their children to attend such services.

Youth services do not exist in many countries so parents can be suspicious of their role and the values they will give young people. 30

Some young refugees, such as many young Afghans, are unaccompanied minors. They arrive in Australia without parents and are under the care and protection of DoCS. These young people are in particular need of support.

Education
School in Australia can be very challenging for refugee and migrant young people because it is in a different language, is a different system and offers a different way of learning than their home country. Some support is provided by the Department of Education and varies between schools and regions.

Newly arrived migrants and refugees are usually referred to a local Intensive English Centre for an assessment of their English language proficiency before enrolment in high school.

Intensive English Centres operate as part of the NSW government schools system. Their purpose is to prepare newly arrived, high school-aged students for study in an Australian high school by providing intensive English tuition. 29

There are 14 Intensive English Centres (IECs) and one Intensive English High School (IEHS) in the metropolitan areas of Sydney and Wollongong. The closest IEC to the Nepean area is at Evans High School at Blacktown.

These centres provide students with English language, orientation, settlement and welfare programs in a high school-like environment. Teachers' aides (ethnic) provide bilingual support.

Most students stay at Intensive English Centres for 3 terms before transferring to their local high school. These students usually continue to receive ESL (English as a second language) support in their local high school.

Young refugees often require extra assistance with schooling and homework because their previous education may have been disrupted or even non-existent. Many of these young people have missed out on education because they spent a significant part of their childhood in refugee camps. Some young people may not be able to read or write in their own language. 21

More information about the education needs of refugee young people is contained in the Early School Leavers section of this manual.

Health
Young migrants, and particularly young refugees may not have experienced adequate health care in their country of origin and may have long term health issues that have not been adequately treated.   7, 16

Young refugees face many health issues because of their refugee experience   including undetected visual or hearing problems, poor dental health, low levels of immunisation, anxiety, depression or post traumatic stress disorder or injuries and disabilities from war, physical or sexual violence, torture or other maltreatment. 21

Refugees and migrants face a number of barriers to using health services. They may not be able to communicate in English about their physical and mental health care concerns, they may have a lack of knowledge about health services and their entitlements, and they may face financial barriers in accessing services not covered by Medicare such as specialists, dental services and medications 7

Structured sport
People born in non-English speaking countries have a lower participation rate in structured sport (10%) than their Australian-born peers (29%). 5

Parents face many challenges in settling into a new country including finding employment, securing accommodation, learning a new language and adjusting to life in a new culture. It can be very difficult for parents, especially those with a large number of children, to provide support for their children's sporting activities. Many parents do not have access to a car so transport to activities is difficult. 5

The cost of participating in structured sport, such as registration fees and uniform costs, often amounts to several hundred dollars. These costs are simply too high for many refugee and migrant families. 5

Other barriers to participation in structured sport include lack of transport and lack of knowledge about sporting associations. 5

Gender issues
Young women from refugee and migrant families often miss out on youth services because activities are not gender specific (more information is available in the Young Women section of this manual).

Some families would never allow their daughters to attend activities where young men are present. This may apply to all activities or just particular activities, eg. swimming. This varies depending on the religious or cultural values of the parents.

For example, in Islam (the Muslim religion) there are restrictions on clothing that can be worn, touching and social contacts. Girls are not allowed to talk to boys from outside the family unless they are with someone from their family, and any physical contact between unmarried males and females is absolutely forbidden.

Torture and trauma experiences
In addition to all of the issues outlined above, many young refugees also have to deal with their experiences of torture and trauma.

Young people have often experienced or witnessed rape, torture, such as people being killed or amputated by machetes, unexplained disappearances of family members, destruction of their homes, and illegal arrests.

Many refugees have been traumatised by their own experiences or those of a loved one.

These experiences will have a profound impact on young people's sense of safety and identity, the ability to trust and develop relationships.

Young people may experience anxiety, difficulties in establishing trust and friendships, low self esteem, survivor guilt, aggressive outbursts or emotional numbness, sadness, withdrawal, sleeping problems, intrusive thoughts, post traumatic stress disorder etc. 7, 21, 34

Police and security issues
Many young refugees have experienced or witnessed torture practices carried out by uniformed militia in their homeland. As a result some young refugees may be fearful of authority figures such as police, security officers and CityRail Transit Officers.

There are a number of community projects in Western Sydney which are working with refugee young people to increase their awareness of rights and responsibilities with police and security, these projects are also working to provide cultural awareness training to police and security officers. Contact YAPA for more advice.

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