Supporting Youth and Families in Navigating Acculturation Challenges

Jeanette Lopez-Urbina, LCSW

Training Description

When parents immigrate to the United States from another country, particular those countries plagued with trauma and poverty, they often arrive with hopes and dreams for a better future, especially for generations to come. Families with recent immigrant roots often hope that their children will have a future with less poverty, trauma, and other challenges that parents may have experienced in their country of origin. However, upon raising children in the United States, they may experience tension with their children, particularly in the adolescent years, as children learn the culture and customs of the United States and they continue to negotiate the cultural ties of their parents’ ethnicity. Often this tension impacts the parent-child relationship which further exacerbates typical challenges faced in the parent-child system found in normal adolescent development. Parents and their children may not fully comprehend the challenges of acculturation, rather they may personalize the conflict. The family may be at odds due to misunderstanding each other’s cultural roles and identities. Acculturation is not a linear process and it often is a story told only by each individual. Therefore, in service delivery and when working with system involved youth and their families, it is important that we learn how to support families in navigating this challenge in order to strengthen the parent-child relationship and reduce the conflict/tension that may be occurring which supports them in increasing resilience.

Learning Objective

• Review impact and significance of culture on system involved youth and their family system
• Review acculturation, including strengths and challenges for LatinX immigrant system involved families
• Identify and practice strategies in supporting system involved immigrant LatinX youth and families in navigating the tension related to acculturation

Agenda 

10:00am-10:15am Introduction

10:15am-11:00am Overview of the significant of culture for system involved youth and their family system

11:00am-11:30am Overview of acculturation and its impact on LatinX system involved youth and their families

11:30am-12:00pm Identify strategies in supporting system involved LatinX youth and families in navigating tension related to acculturation due to immigrant roots

12:00pm-12:30pm Break (CEUs will not be issued for this time)

12:30pm-2:00pm  Practice and apply strategies in supporting system involved youth and their families in managing acculturation challenges.

02:00pm Adjournment

Meet Our Trainer

Jeanette Lopez-Urbina, LCSW has worked in the mental health/social services field since the year 2000, in various settings in Northern and Southern California, including residential and community-based services, through services such as Wraparound, psychotherapy, and violence prevention work. Jeanette has worked extensively with youth and families, especially in the area of trauma, including supporting youth and families in specialized services that address gang involvement, sexual exploitation, immigration trauma, and issues related oppression, racism, and acculturation issues. Jeanette is a bilingual first-generation Salvadoran-American practitioner who enjoys practicing mostly from a social justice, relational, and psychodynamic approach. She currently holds a Private Practice in Berkeley, is part-time faculty in a mental health graduate program in the Bay Area, and has been a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare. Jeanette provides trainings throughout the Bay Area on topics related to the LatinX population, trauma informed care, and culturally responsive services.

This course meets the qualifications for (3.5) BBS CEUs for LCSWs and MFTs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences & is provided by Fred Finch Youth Center, CAMFT Provider #045295.