The Action Research Podcast · University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work

This is Home: Research and Practice with Immigrant Children and Families

·37 min·2 clips

They cite 60 to 70 percent trauma exposure among unaccompanied minors and 60 percent sexual assault risk for girls in transit.

1. The Action Research Podcast episode focuses on immigrant children, family separation, and community-based research led through the HearLab at the University of Houston. 2. Dr. Arlene Bugstead, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, and Dr. Jodi Berger-Cardoso, an associate professor at the University of Houston, connect social work practice with immigration and mental health. 3. The episode asks what community-engaged research can do for unaccompanied minors in Houston and how that work can shape policy, practice, and reunification support. 4. The speakers define unaccompanied minors as children and adolescents who migrate to the United States without one or both parents. 5. They say Houston receives the largest percentage of unaccompanied minors in the country and that their work centers on reducing the mental health symptoms tied to migration challenges. 6. A major part of their work comes through the Central American Minors Working Group, a Houston-based group that has operated since 2014. 7. The working group includes pediatricians, attorneys, mental health professionals, caseworkers, and community organizers. 8. The speakers describe newcomer immigrant families as carrying both strengths and challenges, especially when children are being integrated back into family systems after separation. 9. They cite high trauma exposure among immigrant children, including community violence, state-sponsored violence, and family violence. 10. They also mention a figure that as many as 60 percent of girls may be sexually assaulted during the migration process. 11. The episode names Guatemala as the country of origin for nearly 50 percent of unaccompanied children who arrived in the United States over the past five years. 12. The speakers describe children entering hieleras, or ice boxes, before detention through the Office of Refugee Resettlement. 13. They say reunification is often not a simple happy ending because long separation changes family structure, attachment, and daily life. 14. The speakers define xenophobia as an undue fear of people from other countries. 15. They explain that their research was shaped by listening to colleagues in schools, clinics, legal settings, and health care rather than starting with a detached hypothesis. 16. A key finding from dyadic interviews was that children and mothers experienced multiple attachment disruptions across development. 17. They say families wanted mental health help, but insurance gaps and weekly in-person therapy made services inaccessible. 18. The team eventually moved toward a community-delivered intervention through promotoras and other community health workers after a year-long adaptation process during COVID. 19. The conversation is direct, collaborative, and practice-oriented, with the hosts and guests repeatedly naming policy, community feedback, and testimony as part of the same research pipeline. 20. Social workers, immigration advocates, and community members interested in family separation and child mental health would likely get the most from it. 21. Listeners looking for a light, general-interest interview without policy detail may skip it.

As heard by us

Community-engaged research meets the hard work of family reunification and advocacy.

This episode treats engaged action research as work meant to leave the page and shape practice and policy. Its purpose is easy to grasp: collaborative, accessible, anti-racist research that centers community and aims at social change.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Hear a HearLab action-research conversation link immigrant family experiences to schools, clinics, and policy.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Action Research Podcast