Building Equitable Newcomer Crisis Help (BENCH) – Research Component

What is the Building Equitable Newcomer Crisis Help (BENCH) project?

Building Equitable Newcomer Crisis Help (BENCH) is an evaluative research study designed to identify a service model that bridges critical gaps between newcomers and culturally-responsive, accessible crisis intervention support. As part of this project, we will develop recommendations based on mixed methods research.

Newcomers face significant cultural and linguistic barriers when faced with a crisis. Past studies have shown that such barriers include varied cultural understandings of mental health, unclear pathways to appropriate support, miscommunications through untrained or biased interpreters, and difficulty in finding an interpreter or cultural broker when urgently needed. We aim to identify a model that effectively bridges settlement organizations with expertise in culturally-responsive services with crisis intervention organizations with expertise in crisis response to fill this gap.

How will this be accomplished?

The project will be accomplished using the following methods:

1. We will first investigate existing peer-reviewed research focused on relevant studies in English-speaking and high-immigration countries.

2. In concert with a literature review, we will conduct an environmental scan to identify existing models deployed in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and other high-immigration countries. The environmental scan will identify models that:

● Leverage a collaborative approach between settlement and crisis intervention organizations

● Focus on community-based resources and responses

● Connect language and/or cultural resources with crisis response teams

3. We will distribute surveys to volunteers and staff of participating organizations: TIES, Centre for Newcomers, Calgary Catholic Immigration Services, and Distress Centre Calgary. The survey’s purpose is to gather contextual information about staff and volunteers’ awareness of existing protocols for culturally-responsive client support, relevant training, and other perspective-based information.

4. We will also conduct a series of phased semi-structured interviews and focus groups with stakeholders throughout the project’s duration. Stakeholders include members of the project’s steering committee and staff from participating organizations which include TIES, Centre for Newcomers, Calgary Catholic Immigration Services, and Distress Centre Calgary.