Archive for the ‘Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 5, 2011
The number of refugees living in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area appears closer to 3,800 than the 5,000 to 6,000 people that Catholic Charities estimated in the recent past. An article in The Journal Gazette breaks the numbers down.
Allen County’s Burmese population includes about 3,800 people, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.
That’s a simple sentence with the potential to cap several years of uncertainty for local refugee advocates and social service agencies, who have estimated the total to be thousands higher. Reaction to the figure was mixed amid those who work with the area’s Burmese refugee community.
Catholic Charities of the Fort Wayne–South Bend Diocese can say in no uncertain terms that it resettled the vast majority of Burmese refugees brought to northeast Indiana since 1991. That influx, overseen by the U.S. Department of State, brought 2,602 Burmese refugees to Allen County over those two decades, said Nyein Chan, Catholic Charities refugee coordinator.
More than 70 percent of those refugees were sent to Fort Wayne in the latter half of the last decade, beginning in 2006. And that’s where the uncertainty about the size of the local population began.
With that influx came another wave of immigration not directed by a government agency.
Drawn by the booming community, the opportunity to reunite with friends and relatives and a relatively healthy local economy, Fort Wayne saw a large number of “secondary migrants” – refugees who came to Fort Wayne after being placed elsewhere in the U.S. by the State Department, Chan said.
Chan was part of Fort Wayne’s Complete Count Committee, a volunteer team appointed by elected officials to ensure undercounted populations were reached for the census.
The committee put forth a mighty effort, he said. That, combined with his agency’s careful study of the issue, have him convinced the census numbers are accurate.
“It pretty much makes sense to me,” he said. “We worked so hard to count the people in Allen County.”
Catholic Charities offers some services to refugees who come to Fort Wayne from other cities, such as job development services, Chan said. The people who use those services are tracked by the agency, and through that method, Catholic Charities estimates the secondary migrant community at 2,000, he said.
The recession caused the secondary migration to slow down and some refugee families to leave. So while Catholic Charities in the recent past has estimated the Burmese community in Fort Wayne between 5,000 to 6,000 people, Chan said he believes the census total is a more accurate current count… Read more here
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, secondary migration, refugee, State Department, US census | Tagged: Allen County, Burma, Burmese, catholic charities, census, Chin, Complete Count Committee, fort wayne, Karen, karenni, Mon, Myanmar, refugees, resettlement, secondary migrants | 1 Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on September 23, 2010
A Fort Wayne Baptist minister is criticizing refugee resettlement efforts in that city, according to a piece at Indiana’s NewsCenter. He says that refugees have been left on their own without sufficient cultural education by the Catholic Charities refugee resettlement agency.
An African American minister says Fort Wayne needs to do a better job teaching the growing Burmese population how to live in our culture.
Reverend Michael Latham is singling out a local charity that helps Burmese refugees settle here.
Part of Reverend Latham’s message—don’t blame the Burmese people, blame the fact they aren’t getting proper training on the way we live in this country.
Latham says he learned of problems with Burmese residents at the Autumn Woods Apartment complex off South Anthony Boulevard…
..Latham, former president of Fort Wayne’s NAACP chapter, says he visited the complex to see conditions firsthand.
He says when he witnessed a Burmese woman eating food off the ground near a trash bin, he decided to organize a public meeting seeking solutions.
He thinks Catholic Charities should be doing more cultural training with the refugees on the American lifestyle.
Kathleen Smith/Autumn Woods Tenant: ” We go on walks and we see kids going to the bathroom outside, because they don’t know better.”
Reverend Michael Latham/Renaissance Baptist Church: ” I would like for Catholic Charities to know, to bring the number of people that they brought into our community and have dropped them off, to me, is a sad indictment on even the Catholic Church.” here
But Debra Schmidt at Catholic Charities says that her agency didn’t bring most of the Burmese refugees to Fort Wayne; that the refugees are secondary migrants from other states. Anyway, it’s hard to find the refugees and help them, and plus, she doesn’t know which states the Burmese refugees came from. And besides, she doesn’t know what they need.
Debra Schmidt/Catholic Charities: ” The majority of the families that are living in those complexes are what we call secondary migrations, and those are people who are refugees who have been re-settled into other states and cities in this country, and have moved to Fort Wayne, so the difficulty in working with the population now is, where do they come from and what are their needs?”
Schmidt says for every Burmese refugee intentionally settled in Fort Wayne, there are close to three more who chose to live in Fort Wayne as secondary migrants.
Schmidt says it’s extremely difficult to track or assimilate that population.
These weak excuses are tiresome. What do they mean that most of the refugees are from other states but they don’t know where the refugees came from? Does it matter which states? Why? Why is it so hard for Catholic Charities to find these refugees when residents don’t seem to have any problem noticing the refugees and their obvious adjustment problems? It’s not as though these refugees spread themselves out across the nation. They are clumped-together in a city long known as a Burmese refugee magnet city.
Voice of America has an article about what other agencies are doing to aid these secondary refugees. Maybe Catholic Charities could learn something from them.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Catholic, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne, cultural adjustment, faith-based, Fort Wayne, refugee magnet city, secondary migration, refugee | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 8, 2010
The City of Fort Wayne has hired a consultant for $80,000 to help “identify community needs for Burmese residents”, here. The consultant will help develop a strategy to offer health care support for refugees and find funding to support the city’s Community Resource Center for Refugees and other resettlement efforts.
Fort Wayne hired a consultant for $80,000 to help identify community needs for Burmese residents.
The city entered a one-year contract with Baker & Daniels consulting in April. The contract was released this week as part of the city’s quarterly consultant report.
The contract states the firm will help develop a strategy to provide health care support for refugees in conjunction with the state administration and legislators and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The firm will also work to get money to support the city’s Community Resource Center for Refugees and other resettlement efforts.
Heather Presley, deputy director of Community Development, said the firm has been instrumental in connecting the city with state and federal agencies that create rules regarding refugees. Because Fort Wayne has the largest Burmese refugee population in the country, she said it is important for the city to have programs that work.
For example, federal rules require new refugees to get permanent housing immediately, but they often have less than $50.
Presley said Baker & Daniels has helped the city reach appropriate departments to share these concerns and discuss solutions.
“They are getting us in touch with people we may never have been able to talk to otherwise,” she said.
In addition, Presley said the group has helped the city contact a non-profit organization that could help finance refugee housing.
The firm also will work to maintain the current limits on refugee resettlement in Fort Wayne, according to the contract.
It seems that Fort Wayne is paying this firm a lot of money to do some things they could easily do themselves, e.g. why would a consultant firm be needed to “work to keep the current limits on refugee resettlement in Fort Wayne”? Fort Wayne merely needs to stay in touch with the State Department about how many refugees the area can accommodate. Fort Wayne could also make a call to Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne and tell them not to accept more refugees than the area can reasonably accommodate.
The paragraph about federal rules requiring new refugees to get permanent housing immediately, but that refugees often have less than $50, doesn’t make much sense. Refugees may have only $50 in their pocket (pocket-money that the resettlement agencies must give to each arriving refugee case) but the State Department gives each refugee family $900 per family member to pay for things like fidning permanent housing, i.e. renting an inexpensive apartment. Then the ORR gives the families cash assistance and other benefits for at least eight months, again, to cover basic bills such as rent.
It’s clear the city has no clue how to aid refugees, and there’s no reason they should. This is why we have local refugee contractors such as Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne that are supposedly refugee experts. They should understand all the federal rules and regulations of the federal refugee program. It’s not clear to me why Fort Wayne isn’t consulting with them what steps to take. For example, funding for refugee resource centers and ethnic community self-help groups is available through the ORR. It seems like some of this could be done without paying an outside consultant to research it.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Catholic, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne, faith-based, Fort Wayne, funding, health, housing, Indiana, ORR, refugee magnet city, State Department | Tagged: Baker & Daniels, Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne, Community Resource Center for Refugees, fort wayne, Indiana, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, refugees, resettlement, State Department | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 8, 2010
The county health department in Fort Wayne, Indiana is still having problems providing health care for incoming Burmese refugees, here.
It’s believed about 40 percent of the refugees come here infected with the tuberculosis bacteria.
They have to be screened and treated to make sure full-blown tuberculosis cases don’t develop.
The medical care burden falls primarily on the Allen County Health Department.
Many local foundations and public assistance agencies are also involved.
Deborah McMahan, M.D./FW-AC Health Commissioner: ” All working on how can we absorb this, working with the Family and Social Services Administration, to see if we cannot get funding directly for the refugees, but I think what we’re going to have to do is start billing Medicaid and billing for our services, so that we can recover the funding.”
Dr. McMahan says there is reason to believe the Burmese refugees will continue to flood in here at a higher than normal rate for another year or more.
The federal government plays a role in directing refugees to certain places, but it doesn’t automatically re-imburse local communities for the costs they incur by serving their new residents.
This problem has gone on for almost two years now and the county government seems incapable of resolving problems. In August 2008 a newspaper article reported that the problems were due to changes in the system after the state outsourced its processing of welfare benefits in a 10-year contract with two private vendors, IBM Corp. and Affiliated Computer Services, here. Yet, two years later the problems continue.
The freeze on resettling refugee “free cases” (refugees with no local ties to family or friends) to Fort Wayne, that the State Department imposed at the same time as restrictions on resettlement to the Detroit area, remains in effect, however, the State Department and Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne continue to resettle refugees with family members in Fort Wayne. (Detroit area restrictions were recently lifted.) In addition, other refugees arrive via secondary migration under their own volition after first being resettled to other states. Fort Wayne therefore remains a magnet for Burmese refugees.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, health, Indiana, late health screenings, refugee magnet city, State Department | Tagged: Allen County Health Department, Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne, fort wayne, Indiana, refugees, resettlement, State Department, TB, tuberculosis | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 6, 2010
The latest State Department inspection of Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne shows that the agency was in only partial compliance with the minimum requirements of their refugee contract, here. According to the document CC of Fort Wayne failed to give refugee clients basic furnishings, failed to make basic referrals, failed to provide interpretation services, and did not keep up basic records. Only 50% of refugees were employed after six months (guidelines require at least 75% employment at six months).
The State Department inspectors visited just four refugee families, but just this small sample showed how neglected the refugees were. The families all arrived between April and June 2008.
The first family was a Burmese girl and boy who arrived with their grandparents. The family was found living with an aunt in overcrowded housing (CC of Ft. Wayne claimed they offered the family more spacious housing). The aunt asked for help applying for guardianship of the two children, as CC of Ft. Wayne apparently was not assisting with this matter. She also requested help with applying for social security benefits for the grandparents.
Three of the four families also reported that they did not have their Medicaid cards; three families did not have working smoke detectors; all families were missing bed-frames; two families did not have lamps in their living rooms; two families were missing alarm clocks; three families had not signed their social security cards; one family had received a table, two chairs, and a sofa just two days before the inspectors arrived; and one family reported that language translation was not regularly provided during home visits from the CC of Ft. Wayne case worker.
If you’d like to see how little the State Department expects the resettlement agencies to do for their refugee clients, just look at the Operational Guidance to Resettlement Agencies contract document. Many refugee resettlement agencies view government contract requirements as mere suggestions.
It’s interesting to note that USCCB, CC of Fort Wayne’s national volag affiliate, had inspected the agency before the State Department inspection, yet CC of Fort Wayne was not following their recommendations. Folks, this is what results from self-monitoring. It’s like asking BP to inspect themselves for non-compliance with regulations. It doesn’t work.
Posted in beds, Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne, faith-based, Fort Wayne, furnishings, lack of, household items, missing or broken, housing, overcrowding, Indiana, language interpretation/translation, lack of, neglect, Operational Guidance, R&P, State Department, USCCB | Tagged: Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne, fort wayne, ft wayne, Indiana, Operational Guidance, PRM, refugees, State Department, us catholic conference of bishops, USCCB | Leave a Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
