Jeremy Varela/Las Cumbres
On Feb. 14, Las Cumbres Community Services celebrated a partnership with the Mexican Consulate to expand trauma-informed care. Left to right are José Gonzalez, Las Cumbres Santuario del Corazón program manager; Stacey Frymier, Las Cumbres interim executive director; and Norma Ang Sanchez and Priscilla Perez, representatives of the Mexican Consulate.
Las Cumbres Community Services is providing crisis services to immigrant families and children in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our organization is addressing ongoing and urgent mental health needs, parenting support and basic needs assistance — including access to food.
Robyn Covelli-Hunt
We are particularly concerned for families with caregivers who do not have legal status, have lost their jobs and do not qualify for unemployment or other benefits. This includes families caring for children who have recently come to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors.
Throughout Santa Fe, Rio Arriba, Los Alamos and Taos counties in New Mexico, we are conducting daily health video and phone sessions, as well as providing home-based services for families with urgent needs. Home-based services are operating at a minimum, and all precautions are being taken to avoid spreading the virus.
Some families wholeheartedly receive the personal contact as our staff acts selflessly and make themselves available, often after hours. Many individual case managers have children of their own at home. A dedicated cadre of family navigators are working daily to help families access food, household supplies, alternate employment such as landscaping and cleaning houses, and to provide emotional support.
Many migrant families prefer a phone call, WhatsApp message or text message over a Zoom call. Engaging can be challenging as parents are at home attending to children and their needs. Securing internet access for children to complete homework assignments during isolation at home is also a challenge; many families do not own computers. Our staff has assisted families interpreting and translating homework assignments.
In January 2019, Las Cumbres created Santuario del Corazón (the Heart Sanctuary) in response to the border crisis. It was designed to address and reduce the impact of traumatic stress on migrant children and their families. Santuario uses family navigation and clinical services to meet the critical human rights and the social and emotional needs of immigrant children. Many of them have experienced traumatic separation from a caregiver due to arriving unaccompanied in the United States, family separation at the border or deportation.
The pandemic has curtailed travel by the agency’s clinicians and case managers to the border region of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where a mobile unit was being deployed monthly to assist children and families seeking asylum. However, these same families are still receiving assistance from Las Cumbres’ teams in northern New Mexico.
According to Program Manager José Gonzalez, things have worsened for migrant children during the pandemic. They face various emotional challenges leading to understandably deteriorating behavior at home. Many of the youth are expressing their desire to simply be in school as they miss the social interaction with their peers and teachers.
Barriers to access
The immigrant community as a whole faces various social challenges that create obstacles for families and children seeking adequate care. This compromises their safety and limits their access to basic needs. Barriers to access include a constellation of factors: fear, disconnect, disengagement and overall distrust of the system within which resources exist. These factors can impact an immigrant family’s environment and overall wellbeing to meet their basic needs.
Understanding these barriers requires understanding the migration journey itself, and the difficult situations families found themselves in in their countries of origin through no fault of their own. Many, if not most, seeking safety in the United States, are fleeing gang violence, corruption, poverty and persecution in Central America and Mexico.
The mission of Santuario del Corazon is to provide services and resources to these individuals and families who seek a better future away from violence, poverty and constant threat and hope to find safety and sanctuary in the U.S. One family navigator explains, “I’m the voice for my clients when they are afraid or not confident enough to speak. The families I work with want what every family wants, a feeling of security that their family is safe and belong to a community.”
Arriving on a path to thriving
With the help of our bicultural and bilingual family navigators and clinicians, immigrant families and children of all ages are able to successfully navigate these challenges and barriers. As a result, their basic needs met. By also meeting their social and emotional needs through our behavioral health services, families are able to process their trauma and thrive in their new homes in northern New Mexico.
Our family navigators take an intensive approach to assess and triage, thoroughly evaluating the social and emotional needs of families and children. These include access to adequate health care, mental health services, translation/interpretation services, transportation, food assistance, in-home-based services and connections to legal services. Navigators play a unique and vital role in the lives of our clients. It is in the one-on-one relationship that the most important work is done, which is the heart of Las Cumbres’ mission.
The simplest procedures that we might take for granted could potentially grow from molehill to mountain, such as obtaining a required vaccination for a child to enroll in school. They may not have proof of medical care received from their country of origin. With the patient assistance of our staff, migrant youth are slowly gaining equitable access to schools. Housing is also an issue: Many families share a residence with others, or are living in homes that are too small.
It’s important to note that local partnerships are key to getting families the complete supports that they need. Strong collaborations are currently in place with the Mexican Consulate, Refugee Health Provider Network, Santa Fe Dreamers Project, United Way of Santa Fe, Santa Fe Public Schools’ Adelante Program for youth experiencing homelessness and Gerard’s House for grieving children.
These children and their families may be ostracized or misunderstood, particularly by some authorities. I am reminded of the Dr. Seuss story, “Green Pants with Nobody Inside Them” in his book “What Was I Scared of?” from which I offer these words: ”But then a strange thing happened/Why those pants began to cry!/Those pants began to tremble./They were just as scared as I.”
Robyn Covelli-Hunt is the director of development and communications at Las Cumbres Community Services. Las Cumbres, in existence for nearly 50 years, works with approximately 7,000 individuals each year in Santa Fe, Rio Arriba, Los Alamos and Taos counties.
