DAY 2 SCHEDULE - October 6th, 2011

08:30am - 09:00am	Breakfast (provided) - Registration
09:00am - 09:10am	Re-cap of Day 1 Presentaitons and Topics by Co-Chair Chris Friesen
09:10am - 10:30am	Keynote Address - Lee Gunderson (Lost Between Cultures: Teenage Immigrant Students Navigating Canadian Schools)
10:30am - 11:00am	BREAK - (snacks provided)
11:00am - 11:15am	Soma Ganesan Spirit of Hope Award / Art Group of Women Presenation
11:15am - 12:15pm	Dr. Martin Guhn & Dr. Constance Milbrath (A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Kindergarten Children's Health and Development in BC)
12:15pm - 01:00pm	LUNCH - (provided)
01:00pm - 02:00pm	Workshop C & D (choose one to attend)
	(C) Settlement Workers in Schools (S.W.I.S) - School District #43 Coquitlam (D) Ninu Kang - (Working with Men Addressing Resistance)
02:00pm - 03:00pm	Workshop F, G, H (choose one to attend)
	(F) First Steps Program (DIVERSEcity Community Resources Society) (G) Romi Chandra Herbert (The LGBTQ Immigrant/Refugee Experience) (H) Jaswinder Sandhu (Intergenerational Communication in Punjabi Immigrant  Families)
03:00pm - 03:30pm	BREAK - (snacks provided)
03:30pm - 04:30pm	Dr. Kendal Ho - (Lessons learned in engaging Chinese and South Asians in mental health dialogue in B.C.: The UBC Faculty of Medicine "iCON" experience)
04:30pm	Closing Remarks by Conference Co-Chairs Dr. Soma Ganesan & Chris Friesen

Day 1 - October 5, 2011

Child Mental health training and institutional support for working with refugee and immigrant populations has been uneven in Canadian health settings. While DSM IV offered a preliminary cultural formulation axis, the complex familial and generational issues of hybridization, assimilation, acculturation, institutional racism, countertransference and post traumatic phenomena add complexity to the child and adolesent training challenges striving for cultural competency. Systemic and developmental frameworks that integrate a cultural formulation model or axis, must appreciate that each family will have multiple narratives and multiple psychological solutions will emerge in our multicultural context. A case history approach will be used to illustrate the challenges of cultural safety and cultural competency in working with children and adolescence. Promotion of resilience, protective factors as well as mediation across generations in family systemic approaches will be discussed through literature review and clinical cases.

1. Understand the rational, background and evidence of motivational therapy with regards to facilitating positive behavioral change.
2. Demonstrate knowledge of the key principles of motivational therapy within a cultural framework.
3. Demonstrate skills related to assessing and enhancing motivation within a cultural framework.
   

Satellite babies are infants who are sent to a parent's country of origin to be raised for a period of time. This type of separation has potential mental health implications for the child and family. This leads to consideration of the effects on the greater community including the school system. Dr. Wong will be presenting current research in this area, the possible factors that lead families to make this decision, and the possible mental health implications. The presentation is targeted to mental health professionals, interested health care professionals, early childhood educators, elementary school educators, social workers, school support workers, and other professionals working with immigrants or infants and preschoolers.

Mental health outcomes for immigrant/refugee children are bi-modal. Generally, immigrant children do better than Canadian-born on many indicators of mental wellbeing, such as lower rates of substance use, better school performance and higher rates of university participation, for example. However, there is a portion of immigrant and refugee children and youth who fare worse. BC recently released Health Minds, Health People: a 10 Year Plan to address mental health and substance, recognizes the importance of the early years, and strengthening children and families is a priority in the provincial plan.

This workshop will provide an overview of the importance of the early years for mental wellbeing, identify promising practices in mental health promotion/prevention in the early years, and facilitate discussion on successful approaches in mental health promotion/prevention in the early years with immigrant and refugee families.

Day 2 - October 6, 2011

 

Every year thousands of teenage immigrant students arrive with their families in Canada where they are required to study and learn in a language that is often different from the one they speak at home. The purpose of this presentation is to describe immigrant students' lived lives from different viewpoints. One goal is explore how immigrant students are doing in schools where their first language is not the language of instruction or of their socialization into society in general and into the community of secondary students specifically. Another purpose is to explore issues related to cultural identity. To achieve these goals several sources of information will be explored; students' grades in secondary school academic courses, teachers' and parents' views, and of course, the views of the students themselves. Teenage immigrants are lost in the spaces between various identities; the teenager, the immigrant, the first-language speaker, the individual from the first culture, the individual socializing into a second language and cultures, the individual with neither a dominant first or second culture, but one not of either culture. Parents' views of their children's achievement are often higher than their children's views. There are conflicts related to differences in perceptions between groups and between parents and their children. These and other issues will bedescribed and discussed.

Dr. Milbrath and Dr. Guhn will present the latest findings from their cross-cultural research on children's 'school readiness' and developmental health in Kindergarten in British Columbia. Based on the Early Development Instrument database, which contains teacher ratings about children's development on all Kindergarten children in British Columbia, Dr. Milbrath and Dr. Guhn analyzed the patterns for BC's most prevalent language groups (e.g., Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, Tagalog). In addition, they examined how children's development is related to whether children live in neighbourhoods with or without other families that come from the same ethno-cultural background. The findings present unique insights into the developmental patterns of children from families with different cultural backgrounds and a recent immigration history. The purpose of the presentation is to share the research findings as a starting point for meaningful engagement and discussion about culturally diverse notions of 'school readiness', and about cultural differences in goals, values, and practices related to parenting.

The SWIS program is a school based settlement service for immigrant and refugee families with school aged children to meet their immediate and ongoing settlement needs. It is a partnership between the Multiculturalism Branch of the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism & Innovcation and the Ministry of Education. The goal is to support newcomers in makeing connections to schools, government agencies and community services.

This workshop will provide a framework that uses spirituality and compassion as a vehicle for change. The participants will learn and practice strategies that focus on the client/counselor relationship as a starting point for addressing resistance in engagement. The presenter will share strategies she has learned and used from her own experience of 20 years working with men who have used violence in their intimate relationship. Through presentation, group discussion and dialgoue, participants will be able to reflect on their own practice while learning new strategies of engaging clients in process of change.

Engaging in a dialogue and knowledge exchange in mental health issues in Chinese and South Asian communities can be challenging due to the stigma associated with this chronic disease. Yet, there is strong interest for our multicultural community members to gain evidence based knowledge and understand pathways towards optimal self-management and navigating our health system. University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine EHealth Strategy Office has been leading an initiative - inter-Cultural Online health Network (iCON) - to work with our multicultural community members in the lower mainland and different parts of B.C. to support them in evidence based chronic disease management since 2007, using both live forums and various electronic formats including social media, webcasting, web portal and blogs. This workshop will share ICON's experience in tackling topics in dementia and mental health issues over the last year, and facilitate a discussion with workshop participants in some of the successful tactics, lessons learned, and further approaches. This knowledge exchange will hopefully assist all workshop participants to gain new insights and share best practices in helping to engage the multicultural public towards living well with mental health.