 Okay. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for Maneer and MCC East Bay for welcoming us tonight. We're here to talk about our refugee foster care program, and in particular how we're serving the Afghan youth. And my name is Claire Collins. And as you can see from this little blurb, I've been working with Catholic Charities with refugee resettlement. I started 12 years ago managing a team of volunteers. And I helped that was the refugee adult and families from all over the world resettle in the Bay Area. And for the past nine years, I've been the outreach coordinator for refugee foster care programs. So I've recruited dozens of families that go through this process. And I'm passionate about supporting resource families as they take on the most important job. And here is my coworker, Kelsey Copland. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. And again, as Claire said, we can't thank MCC enough for just how warm and supportive they are to us always. So thank you. As yeah, I've been with the program for five years. I'm a community coordinator. So I do a lot of work, both in community partnerships, and then doing work like this outreach to find and recruit and help train new foster parents. I've also spent some time working in the refugee context of receive camps and things with you. So thank you very much. And excited to jump in. Okay, so the agenda for this evening is we're going to give you an overview of Catholic Charities and RFC program. That's refugee foster care. Talk about Afghan youth, the current situation where these youth are currently the youth demographics, the program needs, program services and supports, and the resource parent application process. And then we'll have plenty of time for questions. Okay, the URM network and refugee foster care program. So URM is unaccompanied refugee minors. And we are called refugee foster care or RFC. So an RFC overview, we're a federal, federally funded program, federal foster care. And what that is, it's a 24 hour substitute care for children placed away from their parents or guardians, and for whom the state agency has a placement and contract responsibility. RFC resettles unaccompanied minors into resource homes throughout the Bay Area. We actually cover eight counties, and we provide ongoing continuous support to the youth and families in our program. So basically, we have a parody of social services afforded to youth in traditional foster care in California. So probably if you wanted to say the differences between county foster care and our program is that normally, county foster care, number one goal is reunification with biological families. And typically, in our program, that doesn't happen, although we'll talk about the Afghan population, which is a little bit different. So we look for long term placements, adults that are ready and willing to make a long term commitment to the youth. Our goals are to ensure the safety, well being and best interests of the youth and the families, and the support youth to develop the appropriate skills to enter adulthood and achieve self sufficiency. Our principles are everyone has a voice in the decision making process. That's the youth, family, staff. We consider permanency, well being and personal interests of the youth, and minimize moves and encourage attachment. So in other words, we're looking for a long term family that can commit to these youth. And we, as our guiding principle, focus on both the youth and the family as a unit. Okay, so our youth are teenagers. The average age is 15 to 16. We occasionally have had teens as young as 13, but I say the average age is 15 to 16. And there's multiple program phases in our program, but we actually serve the youth until they're 24 or 25. So we have continuous and tailored support to youth and families. And as you can see, these are the countries of origin of the youth that we have served. We have served Afghan youth in the past prior to the most recent situation. We have youth from Bhutan, Burundi, Cameroon, Central Africa, Republic, China, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Iraq, Mexico, all these countries we have had youth from Miramar, Rwanda, Sudan, Syria, and Vietnam and a few other countries. So RFC overview, we provide the youth with mental health care, medical care, school support and advocacy, legal and naturalization support, independent living skills program, monthly allowance and acculturation funds. For our parents, we have ongoing training, one-on-one coaching, family bonding, family dynamics and preservation, parent partner, we have parent partner, program clinicians, social worker, case managers. So we have a really robust staff that are here to support our families. We have community events, peer connections with other families we have events, and we have a 24-hour emergency number that's answered by a live staff member and each family receives a monthly stipend. I'm going to hop in here and talk about how youth get referred into our program. So there are two sort of main ways that youth get referred to us, which you can see hopefully from it's a little dense, I know, looking on the slide, but there's two main kind of pathways outlined visually below. Typically, cases are first reviewed at the federal level and then they are passed to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is our referral agency, and from there the cases get then passed to 21 different offices, one of which is us, all across the United States. It's important to know that youth are not able, they're not here with us yet, they're not able to travel and come here until we have resource homes, that's what we call our foster homes, approved and certified and matched with the youth. So as you can see, there's all these steps that are happening in this review process. Typically for kids that are coming from far away overseas, this is all happening overseas, the United Nations involved, federal government bodies from the U.S. are involved, and that's all happening overseas. This can take sometimes even up to many years, and it's not until the case is referred to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and then sort of shown to the offices like ours that we can then approach families and make that match. So that's kind of that top line. You'll see the bottom line underneath is very similar, but it is for youth that are already in the U.S. Typically that tends to be youth that are coming from like Central America and have crossed the border. And same thing, they go through a very lengthy review process, but it's taking place in the United States. So at that time, these youth are usually living in federally run federally funded shelters. Again, they're not in our care, they could be in completely other areas in the United States. And they go through a very similar lengthy review process. They also in this case will look to see if there are relatives or sponsors that they can find in the community already. So if there's extended family that already lives in the United States, that might be one option. But if that's not an option and the youth is approved for these protected, you know, asylum statuses, they can then apply for the unaccompanied refugee minor kind of program and become eligible for a program like ours. So hopefully you can kind of see that taking place on that bottom line. And it is because of due to the nature of how the evacuations happen with the Afghan population last year, the Afghan youth are have been going through the process that you see there outlined on the bottom. The big takeaway is that, you don't have to know and memorize all this, but the big takeaway that we would like you to know is, again, that the youth are not in our care, they can't travel to us until we have families certified and matched. So that's why we're here to talk to you all today. Okay, so going more into the specifics of the Afghan youth and what we're seeing and what the current situation is. As I just went over, the Afghan youth were initially put into that, what we call the UC system, which is that bottom line. So they're living in federal shelters and have been applying into this URM network. So we are now starting to see these referrals coming in, as you can imagine, it's taken a long time. The youth have humanitarian parole status. And again, as I went over with that visual a second ago, if no sponsor was identified, they can then apply for this URM status and URM programs, which would, which then makes them eligible for our program. And again, they can't travel here until we have a family matched. And I think it's important to note here that, and maybe I don't know if you're going to get to that, Kelsey, but Office of Refugee Resettlement, who's the top agency, they have recommended that we find Afghan families for these youth. So as we showed you the chart before, you know, normally we have resource families from all walks of life. But for this particular population, they wanted us to find Afghan families. And so we have to provide them bi-weekly reports of how many Afghan families we have. So just wanted to let you know that little fact. It's a good point. Thank you, Claire. I will say that it is a goal of ours, typically, to have families with diverse backgrounds and families that reflect the background of the youth that we're serving. But particularly in this moment, there, there is definitely an increased need for, for Afghan families. So definitely there's some urgency. So if you are Afghan yourself and considering this, you know, we do want you to know it's very needed and it's, and it is urgent. So we encourage and hope that this presentation will encourage you to want to join. Demographics of the Afghan youth that we are seeing referred vast majority, large, large majority are males, are adolescent boys. So the range that we're seeing is that 13 to 17-year-old range. But again, the majority are really 15, 16 years old. And again, remember, a lot of these kids have been going through this process for close to a year now. So that's why you start seeing ages, you know, start to climb. Something to note and is a little different than our, our typical situation that, that Claire covered before, many of the cases we are seeing have a, have a potential to reunify with their family eventually. That could be months, it could be years. We don't know for sure. But and there are cases where it won't be possible. But many of the cases, the youth, it is clear that youth are in contact still with family who are back home in Afghanistan. So connect, they're connected over the phone, whether that's their parents or extended relatives. So an example of why a reunification might happen down the line is let's say during evacuations, a youth got evacuated on an airplane and made it to the US. But the parents did not for whatever reason. So parents are still in Afghanistan going through the whole application immigration process. Maybe they're applying for a special immigrant visa or other various resettlement opportunities in the US, which you may know yourself or may not know, but can take a very long time. It can be a very slow process. So I wish I had concrete answers for you all, but really what nothing is known for sure or nothing is guaranteed. So we really need parents who can be flexible and who are really here just to support the youth and whatever ends up being the best case for the youth. So whether it's temporary until their family arrives, or whether it's more long term, you know, everything's sort of we're trying to get as much information as we can as we go. And as you can imagine, sometimes these situations are are changing over time. So in terms of our needs, the biggest need, of course, are resource families. That is absolutely that's what's needed to be able to get these youth out of those shelters and come to us and back to more of a normal, nurturing, normalizing teen experience. We're looking for parents, as I just mentioned, that that can be flexible and supportive of the specifics of the youth's case. Each case is going to be different. And maybe, as I said, even changing as we go. So whether it's it ends up being a long term placement or more of a short term, we hope that parents are coming in with the mindset of whatever, you know, whatever is going to be what the youth needs. And of course, we are looking for caring and patient and loving parents. And I'll just add with that that, as many of you maybe have experienced firsthand, or maybe you can imagine, the youth have experienced a lot of loss from country and home and family and just familiarity. Perhaps they experienced traumatic events. So deaf and we definitely have training around how to best parent through things like that. But we're looking for really patient and loving and nurturing families. And then of course, to work collaboratively with our program staff. So resource families are big need. Another need that we have are what we are referring to as mentor families. You know, it might be that we end up having to place some youth in homes that are not Afghan themselves. And so if that's the case, we really want to provide as much cultural support to the resource family and cultural influence for the youth to have in their home as possible. So if maybe you're not in a position to be a resource family yourself, perhaps you can volunteer to help mentor a non Afghan family. So providing cultural learning or resources or helping, you know, teach or prepare meals at holidays. And just being an extra an extra person that is supporting that family to be to be successful and, you know, best serve the youth. So those are our needs. I'm going to pass it back over to Claire to talk about what it actually takes to become a parent in our program. Thank you, Kelsey. Very good. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the approval process. There is a process to become a resource parent. So this is just a approval process overview. So first we start out with a pre screen talk to you. You have to be over the age of 21. You have to have room for a youth and, you know, not depend on the stipend to support the youth have, you know, at your own income. Then there are training classes. So we have a pretty in depth training class schedule, or shall I say a lot of content, which is there to help you through this process. So we have four classes that are facilitated by our staff, cert one, cert two, cert three, and cert four. And then in between there's some online classes. And then after you've completed the classes, we'll show you a schedule in a minute. Then the final step is to go through a panel interview and do a home study. So the whole process is designed to get to know you as well as possible so we can make the best match with our youth. Normally the process takes six months, but it's really dependent on how quickly you can go through the classes. There's a lot of paperwork to be done. A lot of its signatures, but an application process, you do have to get fingerprinted. And there's CPR and other CPR first aid. But we just finished a cohort class this week. And some of the people in there have not only taken all the classes, but they've done all their paperwork and they started the class in May. So we're ready to move forward to the final steps of the panel interview. So we really work with you to get everything done as quickly and as best that works around your schedule. So that's a little bit of an overview of the process. Yeah. And just to say, as you were saying, Claire, the quicker parents can get the paperwork done, the faster we can move everything along. So in the example of the family Claire gave, they were done with their paperwork by the time the classes ended. So then they could just move seamlessly onto the next step, rather than they're being a bit of a delay as they've completed paperwork. As I said earlier, there is quite a big need for Afghan families right now. So if families are quick with their paperwork, we'll do all that we can to keep it moving on our end as well. Absolutely. That's our job. We work with you for the entire process. Okay. So here's what the class schedule looks like. Presently, we've been doing everything online because of COVID, obviously, we're hoping at some point to get back, you know, to being in person, at least for the four certification classes. So the next class starts August 13. And once again, this is a Zoom conference, but we like this meeting here. If we ask that our parents have their cameras on. So that would be like nine to four, it is on a Saturday. Sometimes we can arrange the classes, two classes during the week, which we did this last cert for, then there's two classes. So we do the introduction. And then there's these other classes, transracial parenting rights and responsibilities and prudent parenting. Those are done online on your own time. Then we have certification to that's all about culture and youth development. Then online, there's mental health first aid. So there's a lot when you're dealing with our population, there is, as Kelsey mentioned for a lot of trauma. I mean, if any of you have done this, have been left your country, your home, your family, your friends, your school, there's a lot of trauma involved in this. So we are a trauma informed care practice. So as you get more into our classes, you will see and have more information on how to handle trauma stress and mental health and how to work with our youth. We do have, as I say, a very large team that is there to help you, the social workers, case managers, mental health professionals, we're all here to work with you. And so these are some of the other classes. Once again, getting down to parenting and cell phones, whether these kids have trauma or not, they're still teenagers. So we, they still want to be tied to what? The cell phone. So we have a lot of classes on that and safety on the internet and things like that. And SIRT four is really where we go into trauma informed parenting. And then the mandated reporter is another class you take online. And then the CPR first aid, which is also online. So that kind of gives you an overview. Actually, our schedule, we've revised the schedule, all the classes actually will be completed in September. We usually try to keep in, keep in touch if there's any Muslim holidays, any Jewish holidays, any Christian holidays, so we can incorporate that into our class schedule. Okay, so there you have it. All right, we're here now to answer any questions. You can verbally popcorn style shout out or you can put questions in the chat. Kelsey and I are here to answer any questions you might have or any comments, anything. Tell us you're out there. And I think perhaps Monir will be helping as well to. Yes, anybody bothering the comments online. So if you're watching this on YouTube or Facebook right now, feel free to leave it in the chat box and I will share it with our esteemed panelists. Thank you, Monir. Thanks, Jim. Hi, this is Nadia. I have a question. Yes. So I hear, I heard you talk a lot about how there's majority of the, there's a high need of, I guess, Afghan families. Is this due to the language barrier that may come in to the picture with the children coming over? Or is that okay for families who are not Afghan to also consider Afghan children for foster care? Absolutely. We welcome everyone that wants to be a foster care. For this particular population, as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has just made this request. And I think it's come from the youth themselves. But absolutely, as in the past, we have had families to, for our Afghan youth, they were not Afghan, and they did a phenomenal job. The youth are all have graduated from college now. But with this particular group, we have been asked to recruit specifically Afghan families. It's a little newer concept for us. Okay. So somebody like me who's not Afghan, and I'm still interested, is this something I should, or I mean, I could still go through the program. And if I'm not a match for an Afghan family, then there's options for other possibilities. Is that correct? Absolutely. From our earlier slide, you saw all the countries. And this, absolutely, we would love to have you. We are still receiving youth from other countries as well. So they're youth from all over the world still needing care. And to answer your question about language, yes, of course, having resource parents that speak the same language as the youth is a huge help. But it by no means is a requirement of our program. There are so many languages spoken in our RFC community. And we work with interpreters, translation services, especially in the beginning for anything that's very important or explaining to the youth their rights, any documents for them to sign anything like that, we would absolutely have language support. And then we also will talk to our families a lot about how to get creative, how to, you know, use facial expressions and hand gestures and flashcards and cell phone apps and things. And our families, we figure it out. And I also just to say how fantastic are the youth seem to really, I don't know how they are taking in so much at once and also learning English, but they do so. And the other thing to note is we have a lot of Muslim youth from different countries in our program currently. We had them from Miramar, a lot of the African countries. So that's always a plus if you're of the same faith, not that you need to be, but it's really helpful for that. So we would not turn you away, but we're just hoping maybe to get some Afghan families. Okay, and one last question. Thank you so much for explaining all that different scenarios. My other question was the families who are already doing this and are caring for our youth, refugees or not, is there a possibility, I'm interested in more first, you know, kind of like talking to somebody who's gone through the experience, perhaps even somebody who may be a similar sized family as mine, and kind of understanding what challenges or what I would be up against and sort of just be ready for what, you know, is this something a good match or not, you know, is that a possibility to do that? Absolutely. That's a common request. And, you know, when if we meet with you offline, we'll talk to you about your family dynamics and, you know, let you talk maybe to a similar family, maybe from a family that's already within MCC, or, you know, that is definitely, we're glad to do that. Thank you. Claire, I put the question in the chat box. What are the household income requirements one of you are asked? Just that you're not dependent on the stipend solely to support your family. So you don't have to be a wealthy person, but able to support yourself and the needs of a family. The stipend is a thousand something dollars a month, and that is of course, to support any needs the youth might have. Yeah, so there's no specific number that we look for. We look to make sure that the family is able, is financially stable before the addition of another youth. And then as Claire said, the stipend can help to cover obviously costs will increase with another person in the home. So that's mostly what we're looking for. Okay. And the other question was I understand these are young men coming from Afghanistan. What about young ladies girls? Well, that's a good question. Right now in the queue, we're just seeing boys hopeful that there'll be some girls, but we haven't seen any yet. Yeah, I heard that there was a small number, perhaps maybe they had family, they were already able to reunify. So it's possible. But the truth is, we're not seeing that's not what we're seeing. So we want to be very clear and transparent with expectations. Another question we're getting that we do have a national audience. And this person is in Georgia, and they're asking, is there an affiliate agency I can contact if I live in another state? I'm not sure if there's an office in Georgia, like Georgia in the United States. That's right, Georgia in the United States. I don't believe there is one there. To my knowledge, I think it has a big resettlement community for adults and families, but I don't know that I don't believe there's a URM program. And did you show the map before where the office is? Yeah, yeah, I can put that back. We can put that back. The problem is there's not many, we don't have that many locations. Now, as you can see, they're limited on this map. Yeah, I know Michigan has a very large program, but I don't know about, I don't think there's any in Georgia, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. And unfortunately, the programs are limited to local service regions that social workers can go physically to the home. So for example, we're talking with the Catholic Charity of Santa Clara County. Do you cover Sacramento, for example? Is it all of Northern California? What areas are we talking about? We just go as far as San Francisco, Contra Costa County, Alameda, down through San Benito, which is Monterey Santa Cruz. So we have a sister office, Bethany Christian Services, they're under the USCCB umbrella. They have an office in Modesto and have opened a new office here, but they only do primarily the unaccompanied children that are from Central America. They don't have the capacity yet, I mean, they're trying to get there. Does that make sense? Yeah, well, it's a little hard to understand, but that visual that I showed, let's see if we can pull it up. So here, that group that Claire mentioned, they work more with youth in that bottom line before they're able to come to a program like ours. So it's more temporary well, youth are still going through legal processing, and it's typically Central American youth, especially that program we know for sure doesn't have any Afghan youth. We checked in with them. So and then to answer your question, so I'm there, okay, where are these kids now? They're in shelters in the United States. I do know that our placement coordinator told me recently there was one boy that was living in a shelter in San Diego. So and with that network of offices throughout the United States, even though it's small, if they have families that are ready, those youth will be picked up by them. Yeah, but I mean, the shelters are all over and so the San Diego, but I also know of some kids who were in a shelter in Chicago. And they'll just look for whichever program of that map of the US we were just showing has the best like fit for a family match. So, you know, it's not necessarily locally based. They might have the youth travel to a whole other state or what have you. Any other questions? I think you guys answered them all. You guys are great. We are very, very grateful and we thank everyone for their time. And if you do have more questions, you can see me, Claire and Kelsey and you can contact us and we welcome all of you to get in touch and we'll move forward. And once again, thanks, Maneera and MCC for always working with us in partnership to help our youth. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for doing this and thank you for the work you do. Thank you so much. And yeah, people have questions, want to talk more, or if you know you're interested in moving forward, please don't hesitate to contact us. Yes. And you can read in the description of the video, the live videos, the contact information for Claire and Kelsey are there as well. So you can click on the link and send them an email. Great. I hope everyone has a nice evening and weekend and