Archive for the ‘insufficient assistance with daily tasks’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on February 11, 2012
A volunteer helping Karen refugees in Kansas City added a comment to a December post about Jewish Vocational Service of Kansas City (JVS).
My wife and I have been working with the Karen refugees in KCMO for two years. Nothing has changed with JVS they still put refugees in terrible housing conditions, they do not explain the lease arrangements with them. We have several families that face legal action now because they did not understand that they could not just break a lease and move. Also they take all Karen refugees to Bank of America to open bank accounts, without explaining anything about checking accounts, balancing a check book, etc. (my wife and I have done this). Most Karen refugees especially adults are left to take care of themselves too soon, very short or no English classes at all. Lack of helping to find jobs, do not explain WIC program with lots of families having months of expired unused WIC coupons due to lack of no knowing what to do or to do it. JVS is a waste of time for the Karen refugees, we have close to 40 families that we work with, taking to medical appointment, helping with WIC, TANF, Food stamps, Medicaid and any other needs to include transportation to appointments, even lighting their furnaces in the winter. We do this for free and do not work for any group…it is out of compassion and love for the Karen refugees…something that should be a requirement for anyone working with refugees no matter where they come from…. See December post
Posted in housing, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, Jewish, Jewish Vocational Services, Kansas City, Karen, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of | Tagged: Jewish Vocational Service of Kansas City, jvs, Karen, refugees, resettlement, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI | Leave a Comment »
Posted by nancylee1 on May 19, 2011
Stop and think for a moment about how many things in life you are given a manual or handbook on.
A new car…a new appliance…a rental agreement…a mortgage…a school…a contract of any kind…a new job…medical insurance, results and permissions…voter information…when you think about it, for almost anything that is important, you are given written information that allows you to make informed decisions and allows you to have something to refer back to.
In most cases of immigration however, this is not true. Although agencies are paid by the government to care for immigrants and refugees, explanatory written information is very often not provided. Rather, people unfamiliar with even the most basic functioning of this country are given oral seminars while they are in a state of fear and extreme fatigue, not to mention often ill. They are expected to take in cursory information that is foreign to them and hold onto it in their minds. Things that are given to them in writing are often not explained and their signature is required, but they are not even given a copy of what they have signed.
Sound like a losing proposition?
It is.
By doing this, agencies are setting people up for failure and increasing their fear. In addition, for someone who does not speak English or does not have a computer, it is comparable to being thrown to the wolves. In a country where unemployment is around 30% for refugees and living expenses are sky high, being thrown to wolves might seem like a relief compared with trying to cope in a strange new country filled with problems.
It is time to demand that agencies correct this and immigrants and refugees are given an area and language specific handbook or manual, stating the information they need to survive. What the agency has spent on them, the specifics of the program they came into the country on, their insurance benefits, hospital information, school information, local agency information, federal government programs information, lease information, utility information, all the knowledge the caseworkers are expected to know, should be presented in written form to people upon arrival.
Too many have been thrown to the wolves and are destitute because of it. This is unnecessary and inhumane and certainly not in keeping with the sentiment expressed in the website of the agencies.
“A willing heart, a helping hand, and a sense of serving the community with joy..” “…provide help and create hope for more than 9 million people of all faiths each year.” “… leveraging time, energy and resources to join the vulnerable in their time of need.”
Providing a useful tool in writing such as a handbook would go a long way to make these aspirations more attainable.
Please write to your government officials and demand immigrants and refugees be given what they need. Take ten minutes of your time to do this most important task.
Posted in cultural/community orientation, post arrival, economic self-sufficiency, immigration assistance, immigration services, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, language interpretation/translation, lack of, NGO's (Non-governmental organizations), R&P, Uncategorized | Tagged: agencies, handbook, human rights, immigrant, immigration, information in writing, refugee, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, resettlement, volag | 21 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on March 4, 2011
A refugee client of Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, an affiliate of CWS and EMM, wrote to us today about deficient services at the agency. The refugee reported the following problems:
Here is a 2001 inspection report for Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston (the most recently available inspection report, which means they have not been inspected in quite some time).
Posted in Texas, faith-based, Christian, churches, beds, transportation, community/cultural orientation, housing, substandard, Houston, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, furnishings, lack of, employment/jobs for refugees, late health screenings, housing, rats and roaches, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston | Tagged: Ali Al Sudani, Church World Service, CWS, Elliot Gershenson, EMM, Episcopal Migration Ministries, houston, Interfaith Ministries, refugees, resettlement | 1 Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on December 8, 2010
After the complaints by Somali and an Ethiopian refugee client of Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc. I just found an article about how Iraqi refugee clients voiced their dissatisfaction with services at the agency last year as well. An article in the San Antonio Express-News tells more:
…On a recent morning, as the tall, 47-year-old man [Khalid Ali ] served steaming Turkish coffee to guests in his Northwest Side apartment, his 3-year-old daughter, Sura, pulled at floppy sneaker shoestrings. Her sister, 4-year-old Shahad, bent back over his knees like a gymnast, singing, “Here I am, here I am,” from the nursery rhyme, “Where is Thumbkin?” …
…His wife Sundas died in early September after a long battle with breast cancer. Doctors gave her two months to live in late August – she died a week and a half later…
…He’s frustrated along with other Iraqis because they can’t find work, in or out of their professions. Some have master’s degrees and artistic talent not tapped since the war started.
A misunderstanding about paying a bill resulted in Ali’s electricity being cut for five hours, sending him scrambling to his caseworker to get power restored for his wife’s oxygen machine.
He prefaces his statements about Catholic Charities with thanks for their aid, but he doesn’t think he’s getting the help he needs. The search for a job is taking too long, he said, and he worries what will happen when his assistance runs out… Read more here
Posted in Iraqi, faith-based, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants, employment services, Catholic, San Antonio, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio Inc., insufficient assistance with daily tasks | Tagged: refugees, refugee resettlement program, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, San Antonio, Iraqi refugees, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio Inc. | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 22, 2010
Nothing seems to have changed at Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc. Last March we reported about the severe problems that Burmese refugee clients were having with the agency. Now Somali and Ethiopian refugee clients of the agency are coming forward to express their distress and frustrations. Refugees report that Catholic Charities placed them in small, roach-infested apartments without any home-safety orientation. When refugees call the agency they don’t hear anything back for days at a time, or case workers tell them they will be out to see them and then don’t show up. The agency has made late rent payments to landlords resulting in landlord warning letters to the refugees. Some refugees are also receiving electrical disconnect notices. Refugees lack transportation and report that overall communication with the agency is extremely poor. They asked to meet with the agency’s director of refugee programs, Paula Walker, but so far she will only speak to them by phone. Some refugees have been so desperate for help that they have resorted to calling 911.
An American volunteer said that some of the refugees asked him a couple of times to come and meet a group of new refugees “that nobody is helping”. He said he went and the small apartment soon filled with over 30 people. Most of the refugees were Somali and they were desperate. They shared some
of their stories. One said that his family was picked up at the airport and left for three days and two nights without enough food. Another refugee said that instead of the traditional rental assistance for six months, it was being cut to three months because of the huge influx of refugees into San Antonio. Yet another refugee said that they were a family with eight kids and had a two room apartment. None of the refugees had a job and no one was helping them look. The volunteer said he came out of the meeting and saw a refugee woman with a young child with hydrocephalus—the child’s head twice the normal size. The woman said the family had been in the country for a month and still had not seen a doctor, nor did they yet have a doctor’s appointment. The child clearly needed a shunt inserted into his head to relieve fluid buildup.
The volunteer said he went back the next day and started on the myriad problems of one family – because the Catholic Charities’ caseworkers were refusing to help. While he was there, one refugee man called his Catholic Charities caseworker about an appointment to get scheduled inoculations for his family. The caseworker said that he couldn’t take the family because it wasn’t “in the budget”. Another refugee had an 85-year-old mother with hepatitis-C and a wife with a uterine infection – and again, no scheduled appointments. The volunteer reports that the number of serious complaints went on and on. Some refugees complained of verbal abuse from Catholic Charities staff, with an assistant director named Hisham telling one man that he “didn’t care about his problems!” All of this added to the volunteer’s experiences from earlier this year with the abandoned Catholic Charities Burmese refugee families. One Burmese refugee man hung himself and his body was found by children. The volunteer said that his conclusion is that there are hundreds of abandoned refugees in the Wurzbach-Gardendale-Datapoint streets area – and another 80 families are expected within weeks.
After the crisis with the recently arrived Somali refugees, a couple of days later the refugees called the police on Catholic Charities. Four police cars pulled up to the apartments. The police then called Catholic Charities to find out why they weren’t helping the refugees. Then two Catholic Charities administrators arrived and passed out $100 gift cards and told the refugees to go back into their apartments. A couple of days later, four blocks away, Catholic Charities held their annual “International Gala” at the Omni Hotel. The volunteer reports that San Antonio has been completely overwhelmed by vast numbers of refugees that continue to be mindlessly pumped in. The apartment complexes in the Wurzbach, Gardendale, and Datapoint streets area have basically become “refugee camps” of confused, frustrated, un-served, and under-served refugees.
Catholic Charities’ refugee program director Paula Walker was quoted last year in a news article about the agency saying, “In the past two years, the local program grew from helping 600 refugees settle into new lives to more than 1,000.” Perhaps this is the result of raising the number of refugees an agency receives so quickly in such a short period. That, of course, would be the State Department’s doing.
Posted in State Department, Burma/Myanmar, Somali, Somali Bantu, health, faith-based, Catholic, San Antonio, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio Inc., food, transportation, housing, overcrowding, police, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, Ethiopian, late health screenings, housing, children, capacity | Tagged: Archdiocese of San Antonio, Burmese refugees, catholic charities, Ethiopian refugees, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, San Antonio, Somali refugees | 1 Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 13, 2010
According to volunteers in Grand Forks Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota’s (LSSND) sub-office in the city has not been adequately assisting their refugee clients. We’ve heard directly from other volunteers about the agency’s poor treatment of their refugee clients. Now other volunteers are complaining to the local newspaper. According to a Grand Forks Herald article:
…a Grand Forks volunteer who has been working with a refugee family since late last year said [LSSND] lacks the staff, resources and commitment to meet its stated goal: helping new arrivals from Iraq and other countries achieve self-sufficiency within eight months.
JoAnna Panther, a retired social worker, said that Lutheran Social Services’ nonprofit resettlement agency “hasn’t been living up to its end of the bargain” with the refugees.
“My concern is people aren’t being treated with dignity,” she said. “They’re being herded into the country” and not receiving enough support before they’re expected to be self-sufficient.
…Panther said she has been frustrated trying to help her refugee family find employment.
“They get these folks over here and then let them sink or swim,” she said. Too much is left to volunteers, she added, with not enough professional case management. here
The reporter then trots out the refugee resettlement agencies’ claim that they don’t get enough government funding to properly help refugees, however, he then mentions that the State Department doubled their per refugee funding this year (as of January 1 the funding amount went from $900 to $1800 per refugee for refugees’ first 3 months).
The reporter also got the runaround when he questioned the high staff turnover at LSSND’s Grand Forks office. LSSND Grand Forks referred the question to the LSSND headquarters in Fargo. LSSND headquarters then refused to answer the question.
Tara Dupper took over in May after the departure of former coordinator Dawn Barwin and other staff.
…Dupper…referred questions about the staffing shakeup to the Fargo office…
…Officials at the Fargo center, which supervises the Grand Forks resettlement office, declined to discuss the staff changes.
Posted in employment services, faith-based, funding, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, Lutheran, Lutheran Social Services of ND, neglect, North Dakota, R&P, State Department | Tagged: Grand Forks, LIRS, LSSND, Lutheran immigration and refugee services, Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, State Department | 4 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 29, 2010
The USCCB’s Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Migration and Refugee Service was out of compliance with a federal government refugee contract in 2007 (here). That was three years before media accounts of their serious neglect of refugees at the Fredericksburg sub-office (here).
According to the State Department inspection report at least two refugee cases appeared to have been at risk as result of little or no contact from the agency. Case files were also inadequate.
In one case a Catholic Diocese of Arlington case worker never even visited a refugee (Somali) at home, even though the State Department contract requires at least one home visit during the first 30 days (here, scroll down to Home Visits). Case log notes also ended the day after the woman’s arrival, even though basic refugee services are to last 90 days, and contracts require documentation of any services rendered.
Inspectors noted that another refugee family (Ethiopian) did not have enough blankets or bed frames. The family of nine was living in a $1,500-a-month three-bedroom apartment, and had been in a two-bedroom apartment until just several days before the State Department inspection.
Another refugee woman (Somali) who was single and 8-months pregnant at the time of her arrival said she didn’t get any cash assistance, and did not receive food stamps until after her baby was born. She wanted to learn English and find a job but had no one to help care for her baby. She said that Catholic Diocese of Arlington staff told her to come in to the office to learn more about English classes, but no one at the agency had even showed her how to use the bus.
Apparently the State Department inspectors didn’t think to interview any of the Catholic Diocese of Arlington refugee clients at the Fredericksburg sub-office. Oops.
What is it about the State Department inspections in which inspectors note problems yet the problems just continue on after inspectors leave? Is it the lack of penalties? The lack of follow-up? Do the agencies just realize the State Department inspectors likely will not return for another ten years so that the agencies have little to worry about?
3-18-11 **UPDATE** State Dept.’s Office of Admissions finally followed up with Fredericksburg refugees a year later in 2008. Found refugees in apartments with roaches, leaks, and little employment assistance.
Posted in arlington, beds, Catholic, Catholic Diocese of Arlington, employment services, ESL & ELL, Ethiopian, faith-based, fredericksburg, furnishings, lack of, household items, missing or broken, housing, overcrowding, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, Somali, State Department, transportation, USCCB, Virginia | Tagged: arlington, catholic church, Catholic Diocese of Arlington, fredericksburg, refugees, resettlement, State Department, us catholic conference of bishops, USCCB, VA, Virginia | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Melissa Sogard on January 25, 2010
We’ve been reading articles and posts around the internet regarding problems at this refugee resettlement agency – JVS (Jewish Vocational Services). There are two recent artcles in the Pitch, here and here. (Christopher wrote a comment for the first Jan. 7th article regarding how the U.S. Department of State conducts investigations of refugee resettlement agencies – see Comment #8; also see Comment #1).
There articles tell the story of what our group has seen at refugee resettlement agencies in other parts of the U.S.; refugees being placed in apartments that do not meet the requirements of the State Department’s guidelines, refugees not been given rides to crucial doctor appointments, refugees who have no idea who to call when their refugee resettlement agency is not there to assist them.
JVS is an affiliate of the USCRI (U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants). The USCRI’s affiliates have been in dozens of newspaper articles during the past several years that have documented neglect of refugees.
I guess my question is why hasn’t JVS responded to the reports of neglect? The silence almost reads as a confirmation of the reporter’s information and the stories told by JVS’ refugee clients. Does it really all come down to funding issues? If the private contributions added to the public money contributions were too little, why were the refugees accepted by JVS for resettlement? Did a grant or two fall through? How is the public to understand what has happened with so few details provided by JVS?
Posted in Burundian, housing, housing, substandard, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, Jewish, Jewish Vocational Services, Kansas City, State Department, USCRI | Tagged: Burundian, federal contractors, jewish vocational services, jvs, R&P, refugees, resettlement, substandard housing, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI | 1 Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
A volunteer helping Karen refugees in Kansas City added a comment to a December post about Jewish Vocational Service of Kansas City (JVS).
