Man:Thank You Very Much for Coming Today to Our Parents Café. As You Know As Part of Our
Man:Thank you very much for coming today
to our Parents Café.
As you know as part of our program for this term
we’re focusing on health and medical issues.
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Narrator:Community organisations across NSW are
assisting refugees with their settlement process.
Many schools are building partnerships with these organisations
to support refugee students and their families.
Man:Parents Café started as an idea of engaging parents
from the Intensive English Centre.
What we were finding is that the parents often felt isolated
because they themselves were having problems of adjusting
to a new country, to a new environment.
So, now we’ve got basically five days of the week
having some Parents Café activity.
… We would have guest speakers, some might be from
Centrelink, AustralianTaxation Office, the Ombudsman,
a whole range of people would come out here
and we’ve now grown that into social inclusion.
So, we do things like take them on excursions,
community cooking, community kitchen, community gardening.
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Man:We have different cultural groups engaged in this garden.
Karen group, they are the main group here.
And we also have some African.
We have Middle Eastern.
All these parents they come fromrefugee backgrounds
and they have kids in our school.
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Man:I’m working with STARTTS at the moment here
at Fairfield High School on an Iraqi Youth Project.
So, what we’re going to do today is
a continuation from last week.
Woman:We came to the school, consulted with the young people
and they came up with theidea of
‘Okay, let’s do the Iraqi culture’ which is actually
this music Choby it’s across all cultural groups in Iraq.
Man:We’re using something that they relate to
from the places that they’re from and the biggest thing
with these young people is that they relate to dance.
Woman:So, we do kind of like Choby dance and hip hop dance
and we’re mixing them together.
Man:It’s not only for their personal development
but also to share their culture and their identity
with the wider community.
Woman: In coming to this kind of group
we create a sense of safety.
And this is very important for young people
of refugee background.
Woman:There are many other organisations
that are working directly with refugees.
So, it’s not just about schools having to be the only agency
that’s looking after these students, it’s also about
developing partnershipswith organisations that are
already supporting refugees, with community leaders
from different refugee communities to see how
they can support schools.
Man:We were lucky and found an agency called
the Fairfield Youth Workers Network.
That particular program put us in touch with about
forty or fifty different types of youth workers with
different organisations who were then able to support us.
We work with about two hundred refugee students
and we link in with about twenty different support partners.
It takes a village to raise a child.
And that’s what we’re doing.
It’s not just the high school, it’s our partners who work
in the community, Fairfield Migrant Resource Centre,
STARTTS and other organisations like that.
It means the child can get a lot of exposure to a lot of
different support and therefore have a better chance
at education at Fairfield High School and then
be a better citizen in our community.
Narrator:Refugee students benefit from community partnerships.
Programs with NSW schools include homework and
language support, career and education mentoring,
sports clubs, music, art and drama workshops
as well as Early Childhood support.
Some schools also provide information sessions and workshops
for refugee parents to help them participate in the school life
and the wider Australian community.
Man:This is a particular music therapy for these young people
to know more about self-esteem, identity, emotional feeling,
teamwork, while they’re playing music.
Student:Like we can be drumming,
like stuff got to do with relationships.
Student:Sometimes we play games.
Man:We run programs that are therapeutic groups
for young people because we find that those can help
not only to deal with the psychological concerns
that they present with but also to facilitate
a connection between students.
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Man:Recovery from trauma is a journey.
When issues of state terrorism have been occurring
for long periods of time, people get used to the violence,
they don’t see having nightmares or flashbacks
as being abnormal.
And we ask ‘Have you been traumatised?’
‘No’.
‘What about being exposed to killing or
shootings or other things?’
‘Yes, I’ve had that.’
‘Well, you’re traumatised.’
‘No.’
That’s because they get used to it over a long period of time.
Man:Working in partnership with schools and other organisations
strengthens those organisations to support refugees
and create a more safe environment for people to settle.
Woman:I’ve got actually quite a big group of students
who have all been through similar things so the
therapeutic group sessions that STARTTS run
help a lot of students all in one go.
Man:There’s drumming groups to help with managing emotions.
Youth camps that are organised during school holidays.
There’s Capoeirawhich is a martial arts.
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Man:We will pick some chilli and cauliflower because
we are going to do some Middle Eastern cooking.
Woman:How’s everyone going with their training?
Man:They’re going really well, we’ve perfected a
traditional Iraqi piece, the Choby, something that
they connect with and they really relate to
so it’s something that’s very familiar to them.
Let’s do it from the top.
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