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Infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) services can offer vital support for young children’s healthy development. Yet, young children in immigrant and refugee families often do not benefit, due in part to lower levels of health-care coverage and limited cultural responsiveness in the field. This issue brief explores the benefits and barriers to supporting these children via IECMH services, and some ways to close key gaps.
Speakers will discuss the importance of infant and early childhood mental health services, highlighting approaches that have successfully connected immigrant and refugee families with beneficial and culturally relevant services. They also will offer recommendations to expand accessibility and responsiveness of these services.
Immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits in the United States is governed by a complex patchwork of rules that make many groups of noncitizens eligible for some benefits but not others, while other noncitizens are excluded completely. This report provides an overview of immigrants’ eligibility for programs related to general assistance, health and nutrition, employment and income, education, housing, driver’s licenses, and more.
A significant increase in the number of immigrant children in U.S. schools over the last decade has challenged K-12 educators to expand their capacity to serve students with different backgrounds and educational needs. This fact sheet sketches a profile of recently arrived immigrant children, presenting data on top states of residence, national origins, household characteristics, and more.
White House and Department of Health and Human Services officials join a leading language access advocate and MPI's Margie McHugh in a conversation exploring executive-branch efforts related to language access provision, upcoming actions, and opportunities to improve the provision of information and services in languages other than English in federal programs.
The pandemic and move to remote learning affected students across the United States, and certain groups—including the nation’s 5 million English Learners (ELs)—were hit particularly hard. At the same time, the federal government made unprecedented investments in public K-12 education to counter the pandemic’s adverse impacts. This issue brief explores the ways school districts have invested these funds to support ELs.
Marking the launch of a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and MPI, this event examines unaccompanied children’s access to medical and mental health services post-release and offering recommendations for improvements.
As the number of unaccompanied children entering U.S. communities has increased, many have faced barriers to accessing critical medical and mental health services. This report explores common barriers to care, promising practices for overcoming them, and strategies for strengthening services. It draws on interviews and focus groups with clinicians, social workers, and others working with this population as well as one-time unaccompanied children themselves.
This conversation marks the launch of a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and MPI examining unaccompanied children’s access to medical and mental health services post-release and offering recommendations for improvements.
The U.S. government created the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, to combat food insecurity. Under federal law, many lawfully present noncitizens in poor households are ineligible. This issue brief examines the size and characteristics of the population of immigrants with incomes low enough to qualify for SNAP and their eligibility for and participation in the program, at U.S. and state levels.
For unaccompanied children leaving federal custody to live with parents or other sponsors, the transition into U.S. communities can be a difficult one. And although a patchwork of services exist to help these children and to address medical, mental health, and other needs, their capacity varies widely by location. This issue brief explores promising practices for improving these critical forms of support.
Shortages of workers continue to plague early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems across the United States. With the field already struggling to effectively serve young children in families that speak languages other than English, apprenticeship programs offer a promising solution to bring more—and more multilingual—workers into early childhood careers.
Language access policies and services are critical to promoting the equitable participation of Dual Language Learners and their families in early childhood programs, yet there are persisting participation gaps. This webinar outlines federal and state efforts to implement language access policies in the early childhood field, along with opportunities to improve language services.
How many Dual Language Learner (DLL) children live in your state, and what share do they comprise of all children under age 5? What languages are most commonly spoken in their households? Answers to these and other questions that are critical to the design and implementation of early childhood programs that reach all children equitably are presented in a series of state-level data fact sheets.
Dual Language Learners (DLLs)—young children with a parent who speaks a language other than English at home—benefit greatly from early childhood programs, but they also enroll at lower rates than their peers. This policy brief looks at federal and state language access policies that aim to make such programs more accessible to DLLs’ families. It also examines persistent gaps in participation and ways to address them.
Language access policies and services are critical to promoting the equitable participation of Dual Language Learners and their families in early childhood programs, yet there are persisting participation gaps. This webinar outlines federal and state efforts to implement language access policies in the early childhood field, opportunities to improve language services, and more.
Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program help many children in low-income families access health care. But under federal rules, hundreds of thousands of children are ineligible due to immigration status. This brief presents U.S. and state-level estimates of immigrant children who are eligible for and participate in these programs and considers the impact of state policies that expand access to public health insurance.
As the United States becomes more diverse, changes in the cultural makeup of communities can challenge longstanding practices in human services delivery. This brief explores strategies service providers can employ to build their understanding of and responsiveness to the cultures of the communities they serve, leading to better outcomes for immigrant and refugee families.
Language barriers can hinder immigrant families’ access to services and make it challenging for immigrant parents to find family-sustaining jobs and actively participate in their children’s education. This brief explores approaches service providers are using to make their offerings more culturally and linguistically responsive, and to support language learning among children and their parents.
What status immigrants hold affects their access to U.S. public benefits and services. This brief examines approaches that two-generation programs are using to service immigrant families with a variety of statuses, including mixed-status families.