Counseling For US Immigrant Youths: Adapting To A New Environment

Develop a Group Proposal & Announcement outlining a group experience to be conducted in a counseling setting. An announcement for publicizing, recruiting and/or screening for group membership will also be included. S

Objectives of the Counseling Group

Currently, the interest to use group approaches with broad variations has workplaces, learning institutions and other settings significantly. Operating in a group is essential because it simplifies work through sharing of ideas and coordinating well. In treatment groups such as counseling groups, structured groups and psychoeducational groups are established to ensure cost-effective treatments. Our group is in the field of counseling. Therefore, the group will focus on solving problems that the youths experience upon shifting to a new environment particularly the United States. The group will majorly lay more emphasis on adoption of new cultural setting in order to adopt to a new environment. Immigrant youths who forms the group to be addressed will be guided to have a better understanding of the settling problems they endure as well as addressing cultural conflicts to enhance appropriate life style. To solve the issues experienced by the United States immigrant youths, the counselling group will tackle several topics involving them directly.

Our group is a counseling group whose main purpose is to help immigrant youths experiencing settling problems due to cultural diversity. The group will focus on providing excellent guidelines to the youths to help them adopt the United States living style within the shortest time possible. Through counseling, the youths will successfully address the cultural changes therefore adopting the new environment (Stewart, 2014).

The counseling group is essential in addressing the challenges the youths undergo especially when settling in a new environment. Youths undergo psychological problems as they try to adopt new environment due to cultural diversity. The problems they undergo strengthen the time they take to settle therefore interfering with the anticipated plans. The aim of this group is to engage the United States immigrant youths with the best strategies of addressing the potential problems they undergo. Through this, it will be possible for the group to help these youths avoid the depressing situation and lead happy lives in their new environmental settings. Also, the group will help the youth from suffering stress diseases (Corey G, Corey M, Corey C & Callanan, 2014).

The objectives of this group will be;

1. To develop and practice a relapse prevention plan and plan for healthy living amongst United States immigrant youths.
2. To understand and develop a work plan for examining the common problems the immigrant youths face as they settle in new environment.

• To enhance cultural diversity acceptance amongst immigrants.

1. To understand and develop better relationships between United States immigrant youths and the native people.

Through this objectives, the immigrant youths will learn about better stress management strategies and how to build helping relationships which enable them adapt new environment easily.

The group members are entitled to the right of benefiting from the group. Members expect that the group will play a significant part in counseling and providing guidance in times of difficulties (Stalker et al., 2016). Members also have a right to exit the group if they are not comfortable to partake its activities anymore.

Leadership and Regulations

It is essential for the leadership of the group to be known to all members. The group will append the list of all leaders alongside their qualifications.

The group members will be required to observe the rules and regulations formulated by the group to ensure that the group remains intact in operation. Specific rules that need action to be taken in case of issues within the group will resolve problems and arrive at amicable solutions (Kangaslampi, Garoff & Peltonen, 2015). Members who don’t adhere to these ruled will be expelled from the group.

The group will consist of individuals who have outstanding knowledge in the field of counseling. This is because the primary objective of the group is to support immigrant youths undergoing struggles and trauma as they try to adapt to their new environment. The members will be expected to be professionals and experience will be an added advantage. Age will not be a determining factor but professionalism and expertise. The inclusion in the group will be voluntary. Individuals without interest will not be included. Characters who have no social interest will not be added as the primary aim of the group will involve improving the welfare of immigrants to enhance optimal development (Ukasoanya, 2014).

Individuals interested in becoming members of the group will agree and sign a form of consent indicating that they voluntarily joined the group. Before the initialization of the projects, the group members will be equipped with the appropriate knowledge which will see them execute their duties accordingly. This will involve preparing them with the best counseling skills so that they can successfully handle United States immigrant youths undergoing trauma and struggles in the process of improving their welfare (Slobodin & De Jong, 2015). For adequate preparation and obtaining the adequate knowledge, the members will meet consecutively. The meetings will be held twice a week for two hours. The entire meeting duration will be sixteen hours and attendance will be keenly observed.

To address the welfare of immigrants and address their general well-being a counseling approach will be employed. This will involve assessing the potential problems that the immigrants might be undergoing then formulating possible solutions (Corey M, Corey G & Coery C, 2014). The counseling will notify the victims that their condition is not permanent and there is always a promising tomorrow. The counseling will involve real-life examples so that the immigrants can see sense.

Membership Criteria and Voluntary Participation

The key topics to be addressed in the counseling include group interaction and building rapport, cross-cultural issues, strengths and weaknesses and personal acceptance (Poureslami et al., 2013). The process will ensure that the immigrants accept their conditions and work tirelessly towards improving their general welfare. This will be achieved through interaction with different people, forming networks and working towards improving their lifestyle. For better results, the topic will be continuously discussed from a professional point of view involving the immigrant youths. The immigrants will be expected to actively participate in the discussion to make the expert identify strengths and weaknesses. This will ensure that the issues are addressed successfully.

To monitor the progress of the process, I will observe the progress of the immigrant youths and interview them on their development. If the welfare of the immigrants has improved significantly, this will indicate that the group was useful in implementing the task. Lack of improvement means that the counseling did not work effectively and there were some aspects which were missing (Ukasoanya, 2014). The evaluation can also be determined through observing the lifestyle of the immigrants. If the process was effectively the results will be found through improved lifestyle and welfare of the immigrants.

This notice pertains recruitment process of members interested in guiding and counselling US youth immigrants. This is a voluntary process and parties interested should have the following qualifications:

1. Professional in counselling area
2. Experience in guidance and counselling

The qualified individuals will work towards achieving the following objectives:

1. To develop and practice a relapse prevention plan and plan for healthy living amongst United States immigrant youths.
2. To understand and develop a work plan for examining the common problems the immigrant youths face as they settle in new environment.

• To enhance cultural diversity acceptance amongst immigrants.
• To understand and develop better relationships between United States immigrant youths and the native people.

References

Corey, G., Corey, M. S., Corey, C., & Callanan, P. (2014). Issues and ethics in the helping professions with 2014 ACA codes. Nelson Education.

Corey, M. S., Corey, G., & Corey, C. (2014). Groups, Process, and Practice (Ninth Edition). Belmont, CA: Cengage.

Haire-Joshu, D., Schwarz, C. D., Steger-May, K., Lapka, C., Schechtman, K., Brownson, R. C., & Tabak, R. G. (2018). A Randomized Trial of Weight Change in a National Home Visiting Program. American journal of preventive medicine, 54(3), 341-351.

Poureslami, I., Nimmon, L., Ng, K., Cho, S., Foster, S. and Hertzman, C., 2013. Bridging immigrants and refugees with early childhood development services: partnership research in the development of an effective service model. Early Child Development and Care, 183(12), pp.1924-1942.

Slobodin, O. and de Jong, J.T., 2015. Family interventions in traumatized immigrants and refugees: A systematic review. Transcultural psychiatry, 52(6), pp.723-742.

Stalker, C.A., Riemer, M., Cait, C.A., Horton, S., Booton, J., Josling, L., Bedggood, J. and Zaczek, M., 2016. A comparison of walk-in counselling and the wait list model for delivering counselling services. Journal of Mental Health, 25(5), pp.403-409.

Stewart, J., 2014. The school counsellor’s role in promoting social justice for refugee and immigrant children. Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy/Revue canadienne de counseling et de psychothérapie, 48(3).

Ukasoanya, G., 2014. Social adaptation of new immigrant students: Cultural scripts, roles, and symbolic interactionism. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling, 36(2), pp.150-161.