Toward Healthy Welcoming Communities: Newcomer Youth and Parents Speak Out
This study was undertaken as a partnership between South London Neighborhood Resource Centre and Western University, Faculty of Education. Our partnership is based on mutual respect as well as combined areas of expertise with a commitment to joint action as advocates for the interests of community members in south London. We are also very aware of the tremendous strengths that local communities, families and individuals possess and take great care to build on those in our work. SLNRC directs a significant portion of its service to the needs of immigrants in South London. The focus of our joint efforts has been on the needs of immigrant adults and youth. Our partnership led to the joint-proposal for the study we describe in this report as well as community-based program development projects on mental health within a course in Cross-Cultural Counselling for Master of Education students during the winter of 2013.
This report is divided into five sections. The first section describes the neighborhood context for the study as well as key themes from the recent published literature on factors that contribute to wellness by newcomers, who arrived within the past 5 years, and immigrants, who were foreign born but in Canada for more than 5 years, in the areas of home, school and community. In section two we describe the process and results of data collection with newcomer youth. In section three, we describe the process and results of data collection with parents of newcomer youth. The fourth section provides results from a discussion with youth and parents together reflecting priority areas as well as their relative importance. The fifth section is a conclusion with implications for future research and program development.
