History of the BRiTA Futures program
The BRiTA Futures program began in 2002 in response to a study ( “Coping in a New World”, 2001 ) that investigated the mental health needs of young people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations. The initial phase of the program involved the development of a 10-session group-based program with content specifically designed to build resilience and mental health literacy in CALD young people through the use of culturally relevant learning activities. Evaluation methods were also developed, along with a training program for BRiTA Futures group facilitators.
What is resilience and why is it important?
Resilience refers to a person's capacity to "bounce back" or adapt successfully after negative life experiences, lifespan transitions or difficult circumstances. It develops throughout the lifespan in response to the balance between risk factors (such as traumatic life events) and protective factors (such as supportive relationships), and underpins mental wellbeing and quality of life.
Why develop a resilience program for CALD young people?
The breakdown of family ties and community cohesiveness, social isolation, loss of employment or "under-employment", high density living conditions, lack of access to culturally appropriate health services, language barriers, intra-generational conflicts, and breakdown of traditional cultural lifestyles and values are just some of the many risk factors faced by children, young people and adults arising from migration and acculturation. These risk factors have consistently been linked to early school dropout and poor achievement, as well as numerous mental health and social problems. However, no programs specifically designed to help young people from CALD backgrounds to develop skills for coping positively with these issues had been developed either nationally or overseas.
|
|
Most programs designed to promote lifeskills in children and young people make the implicit assumption that resiliency protective traits are common across all cultural groups, and therefore interventions tend to be developed according to the "one-size-fits-all" model. The BRiTA Futures Program is unique in that it is founded on an extensive review of the national and international research literature to identify those elements of resiliency that are culturally-determined, while the content has been carefully selected to ensure that cultural issues are woven into each module, both in terms of group activities (both content and processes) as well as topics to trigger group discussions and personal reflection activities.
There are two different versions of the BRiTA Futures program, one for adolescents and one for primary school aged children. Both versions of the resiliency building program utilize creative and interactive activities, discussion questions and take home activities to facilitate the learning of key objectives. Each version of the program includes a facilitators manual, participant's workbook, a training program for facilitators and evaluation materials. The BRiTA Futures program is designed for use with small groups in school or community settings or in CALD or youth related agencies. It can be used with children and young people who were born overseas and migrated here either recently or sometime ago, newly arrived refugees, or those who are from 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation migrant families. (BRiTA Futures - Adolescents Program Outline - PDF) (BRiTA Futures - Primary School Aged Children Program Outline - PDF).
The BRiTA Futures Primary-School (PS) is an 8-module primary-school version of BRiTA Futures developed and evaluated within a Health Promoting Schools framework. The BRiTA Futures PS version was piloted in 6 schools across Brisbane and was conducted in the classroom using a whole-class approach with students in years 5 & 6.
The Aims of BRiTA Futures:
|
|
BRiTA Futures trains facilitators and co-facilitators in the running of the BRiTA Futures program. There are currently over 90 group facilitators trained. The next training session is for group facilitators of the Primary School Aged version of the BRiTA Futures program planned for Monday the 6th of October 2008. If you would like more information about training please contact the BRiTA Futures Project Officer.
The BRiTA Futures program is evaluated using pre and post-questionnaires developed to measure change in the key learning areas. The questionnaires used include the Personal Wellbeing Index - School Children (PWI-SC) 3rd Edition© Cummins, R. A. & Lau, A. L. D. 2005, the General Health Questionnaire-12 and tools developed specifically for this program called the Multicultural Child Resiliency Survey and the Multicultural Youth Resiliency Questionnaire. The Personal Wellbeing Index and the GHQ-12 have been internationally validated in it's use with CALD children and youth. There are also weekly/sessional questionnaires for both the participants and the facilitators to measure responses to each session and questions for a focus group to be held at the completion of the program.
|
|
The BRiTA Futures-Adolescents program was piloted in Brisbane, Logan, the Gold Coast, Townsville and Canberra, with CALD young people including those with a recent refugee background. The pilot programs were evaluated using a self-report questionnaire measuring 7 resilience factors; 3 indicators of social connectedness; measures of depression, anxiety and stress; and acculturation stress. Overall, the results from the piloting of BRiTA Futures have been positive. Quantitative results showed; a significant improvement in the variables: "goals & aspirations" and "help-seeking". The other 5 variables increased slightly. Community connectedness was noticeably weaker than family and school connectedness, which increased slightly. Acculturation stress was rated dramatically higher than general stress, depression and anxiety, and improved slightly but not significantly. Also noted was a strengthening of pro-social relationships with peers, improvements in young people helping others outside the home, believing they could make a difference and trying to work out problems by talking about them. These results clearly suggest that addressing specific issues related to acculturation is significantly more relevant than general stress management interventions and that culturally relevant resilience protective skills rather than universal life skills are clearly more effective for CALD young people.
Qualitative feedback from participants has also shown that they enjoyed learning more about other people and other cultures, having an opportunity to talk about issues relevant to them and learning through interactive group activities. What they saw as their core learning also reflected the themes for each session, as did the goals that they committed to as a result of each session. These had a strong emphasis on taking more responsibility for their lives and actions, eg. "Make more effort to understand own feelings and those of others", "Go for help with problems", "Manage stress better".
Programs Delivered
2007 saw BRiTA Futures - Adolescents being delivered to students at Milpera State High School (a secondary school providing an intensive English language program and settlement services to prepare mainly newly arrived students with a refugee background for participation in secondary schools around the Brisbane area) and to a group of young Samoans. In 2008, Milpera State High School is delivered a program, a program for young Muslims was implemented at QTMHC and Kedron State High School ran two programs in October 2008. Currently, the Australian International Islamic College are implementing both the PS and Adolescent programs in their school.
Publications, presentations and conferences
BRiTA Futures has been published in the International Journal of Mental Health Promotion and presented at the 18th World Conference on Health Promotion & Health Education in Melbourne and the Multicultural Families Conference at University of Sunshine Coast.
For finding out more about BRiTA Futures contact:
Farah Suleman
BRiTA Futures Program Officer
Farah_Suleman@health.qld.gov.au
Elvia Ramirez
Mental Health Promotion, Prevention
& Early Intervention Coordinator
Elvia_Ramirez@health.qld.gov.au
Ph. (07) 3167-8333
Fax (07) 3167-8322
This project is aimed at reducing stigma that exists around mental illness and increasing mental health awareness in multicultural communities in Queensland.
What is Stigma?
Stigma is a negative attitude. It judges someone as being 'wrong', 'inadequate', or so different that they aren't fully accepted.
Other words for stigma are shame or taboo and stigma is often applied towards people with mental illness, their carers, family, friends and mental health professionals.
Stigma can have very serious negative impacts on people, families and whole communities and adds to the burden of living with a mental illness.
Why a multicultural project for stigma?
Stigma happens around the world in every culture and mental illness does not discriminate, it can happen to any person in any culture.
Each culture has its own values that can protect against stigma or contribute to any stigma that may exist.
Running a project for multicultural communities uses cultural values and belief frameworks and empowers communities to address the issues in ways that are most appropriate for them.
What is the project?
There are currently 12 communities that have Bicultural Mental Health Promoters who are working directly with them to raise awareness of stigma around mental illness, and running free group education programs with interactive activities in a range of community languages.
This program is open to all community members where a Bicultural Mental Health Promoter is working including:
There are currently 3 communities that QTMHC is working directly with (without Bicultural Mental Health Promoters) using diverse community engagement strategies.
Which communities are currently part of the project?
Communities with Bicultural Mental Health Promoters currently include:
|
Community |
Bicultural Mental Health Promoter |
|
Afghani Community |
Seyed Majid Mortazavi |
|
Burundi Community |
Eunia Simbagoye |
|
Chinese Community (Mandarin Speaking) |
Tanya Shih |
|
Iranian Community |
Seyed Majid Mortazavi |
|
Italian Community Italian Community - Cairns |
Rossana Wullems Vilma Moriconi |
|
Japanese Community – Cairns |
Shigeko Hirayama |
|
Korean Community |
TBA |
|
Maori Community |
Andre Pirini |
|
Muslim Community |
Sheik Ahmad Ghazaleh |
|
Samoan Community |
Felise Tautalasoo |
|
Serbian Community |
Nikola Tomasevic |
|
Spanish Speaking Community |
Miriam Lamperein |
|
Sudanese Community |
Sebit Lako |
|
Turkish Community |
Ozlem Gemalmaz |
|
Vietnamese Community |
Chi Yen Le |
QTMHC's Transcultural Approach to Honouring the Mind & Body Program aims to tackle the problem of chronic disease and depression amongst people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds through exercise, self-management skills and better links with CALD communities.
Mind & Body is part of the Queensland Strategy for Chronic Disease 2005-2015, which aims to reduce the incidence and prevalence of chronic disease by better managing healthcare, improving people's quality of life and avoiding hospitalisations.
Mind & Body includes:
1) depression and chronic disease self-management group sessions where participants work on cognitions, goal setting and problem solving
2) bilingual community health promoters to provide cultural mediation between the culturally diverse communities and the health system and
3) a focus on making physical activity more accessible to CALD communities.
The program will start in September, will be run for 4-years and will be facilitated by bilingual allied health professionals. Initially, it will target adults living with a chronic condition and depression from Indian, Vietnamese, Filipino, Arabic and Spanish-speaking backgrounds.
The first component of Mind & Body will be 8 weekly-sessions in a depression and chronic disease self-management program. Participants will gain skills, such as goal setting and problem solving to help them manage their condition and emotions. They will also learn about the overall benefits of exercise - how it maintains healthy weight and helps improve mental wellbeing.
Bilingual community health promoters will support participants in-between sessions. They will also provide culturally appropriate health education, advocate for individual and community needs and coordinate existing resources, group programs and other health services.
The final component of the program will aim to ensure physical activity is more accessible to culturally diverse communities. This will entail making existing community exercise programs and information more appropriate to the needs of people from CALD backgrounds.
If you know someone from the Spanish-speaking, Arabic-speaking, Indian, Vietnamese or Filipino community, who may benefit from the program please contact the Program Coordinator:
Andres Otero-Forero
Email: Andres_Otero-Forero@health.qld.gov.au.
Ph: (07) 3167 8333
Fax: (07) 3167 8322
This project operated since August 2004 until June 2006 and aimed to learn how to prevent family violence among the Samoan community in the Logan, Caboolture & Ipswich-Inala areas. The project also aimed to learn how to increase the capacity of services to provide more culturally appropriate services to Samoan families. The project officer, who is a religious leader, was instrumental in establishing linkages with other religious leaders in this community as Samoans strongly revolve around church groups. Up-skilled bilingual Samoan Community Facilitators conducted community information sessions that were catalysts to initiate discussions on family violence and culturally appropriate ways to prevent it. Regular dissemination of information through Samoan radio programs - including a song developed by the project - was also an effective means of communication.
The report describes how ten CALD communities prepared and showcased their traditional practices to maintain mental health and wellbeing.
Early Intervention and Clinical Care Project for Refugees on Temporary Protection Visas. This project focused on the outreach and provision of support to refugees on TPVs to access mental health services and is a partnership between the Qld Program of Assistance to Survivors of Torture and Trauma, the Princess Alexandra Hospital Division of Mental Health, South Brisbane Child & Youth Mental Health Service and QTMHC.
Between 2002 and 2003, the QTMHC worked in collaboration with the Islamic Women's Association of Qld to increase the knowledge and skills of isolated women to enable them to manage and participate in group physical activities that promote their mental and emotional wellbeing.
The project involved the broadcasting of a series of radio programs on mental health and wellbeing topics in 14 languages. "Family Help Kit" and "Health and Wellbeing of Older People" are two series of radio interviews with bilingual mental health professionals that are now available free of charge in up to 15 languages from QTMHC. The audio resources were developed by the Transcultural Mental Health Centre (NSW) and have been adapted for Queensland by the Australian Transcultural Mental Health Network and the QTMHC. These valuable compact disks will be offered to language specific radio programs and could be used for group discussions or lent to families and individuals. Contact the Library and Resources Officer for more information.
A partnership project with Youth Affairs Network of Qld Inc. This study involved Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. It explored the needs of young people, carers and service providers in regard to young people dealing with anxiety, depression and extreme stress. A final study report Coping in a New World along with 15 snapshots of the communities involved in the study were produced followed by a journal article: Gorman, D., Brough, M. and Ramirez, E. (2003) How young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds experience mental health: Some insights for mental health nurses. In International Journal of Mental Health Nursing 12(3). 194-202, available from the QTMHC Resource Library.
The EFFORT Program was an exercise and conversation program that aimed to promote the mental health of men and women from a refugee background by engaging them in a safe environment where they exercise in a group and discuss psycho-social topics. Pre and post program evaluation showed that EFFORT was effective in decreasing some symptoms of psychological distress and increasing feelings of emotional and social wellbeing. EFFORT was a partnership between QTMHC, the Princess Alexandra Hospital Mental Health Services, the Qld Program of Assistance to Survivors of Torture and Trauma (men's programs), the Multicultural Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing Inc (women's programs), the QEII Hospital Community Health Services and the School of Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland. A DVD on the first men's exercise program is available from the QTMHC Resource Library.
Other languages