Research Projects

Welcome Haven (2020-2024 Research; workshops ongoing)

Founded in 2021 at the Jewish General Hospital, the Welcome Haven offers an innovative model of service delivery to provide specialized and much-needed services to refugee claimants to protect mental health. The program offers a welcoming space for families, providing psychosocial support, alongside the provision of information. This evidence-based approach combines self-expression through art, and assistance in service navigation, to promote the well-being of refugee claimant children and families.

Welcome Haven currently offers regular drop-in workshops in temporary shelters & community centres across the Island of Montreal. For children who have fled war, access to psychosocial services is imperative. In the past 6 months alone 1200 individuals attended these hotel workshops, 791 adults and 419 children.

From 2021-2024 we studied the implementation of the Welcome Haven.Through an ongoing process of mixed-methods program evaluation, including interviews with participants, arts-based data collection with children, and ethnographic observation, we sought to understand the challenges of implementation, as well as what such a program means to the people using it. 

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Safer Havens and Seeking Home without Housing (2024-2028):

Participatory action projects to understand the temporary shelters and early resettlement trajectories for asylum seeking families in Ontario and QuebecRising numbers of asylum seekers arriving in Canada have created significant new challenges for resettlement and psychosocial support.  Nearly 93 000 claims for refugee protection were made in 2022, double that of the previous high in 2017. These mass arrivals, which continue in 2023, have outstripped the capacity of refugee shelters, and prompted the federal government to open hotels as temporary accommodation sites.

Since January 2023, our Welcome Haven Research Action team was providing workshops for parents and children lodged in hotels for months at a time. Our preliminary data show that, in many hotels, refugee claimants receive few if any psychosocial services during their 2-3 months stay, and that children appear to be under significant stress. Claimants already face a high burden of precarity and social exclusion, and how the hotel shelters may protect resilience or exacerbate inequalities is unknown.

AIMS: Using ecosocial and postcolonial frames this participatory action research aims to understand the first-person perspectives of children and parents staying in temporary hotel shelters  in 4 cities, and the practices and discourses that shape the shelers to illuminate current practice challenges. In collaboration with our Refugee Claimant Advisory Committee and partners we will mobilize this knowledge to develop policy and practice recommendations to mitigate potentially harmful reception conditions.

METHODS and OBJECTIVES

I)   We use in-depth interviews with parents, Photovoice with youth, and sandplay or collage with children who are living in hotel shelters  and conduct a follow-up interview/photovoice with some participants @ 2 months after they leave. We ask: what is day-to-day life like for children and parents in the hotel shelters, and what are their experiences in the months following their hotel sojourn?

II) We conduct participant observation in 5 hotel shelters  in ON and QC to understand What are the differences across shelters and provinces in terms of practices, institutional culture, services, and space?

Using a Roadmapping method, our participatory knowledge mobilization will shift the gaze of policy makers and practitioners towards the lived experiences of children and families to generate policy and practice recommendations with the objective of decreasing the impact of this adverse context on children and families. Finding upstream solutions—that come from AS and the networks who support them—to improve reception conditions will have impact in Canada, and internationally, where the rising numbers of forcibly displaced people will continue to present formidable challenges.

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RECONNECT: (2021-2022)

Objective. The Reconnect project adopts a community-based action research approach to investigate the experiences of newcomer youth and their families during and after the pandemic, and to look especially at how school-based interventions can mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Results from our study will contribute to the development of a best practice guide and arts-based dissemination tools for the promotion of wellbeing and resilience in the wake of the pandemic among racialized newcomer communities.

Method. Based on the extensive work of our research team in Montreal during the pandemic, in collaboration with knowledge users and youth, we  adapted and implemented specialized classroom- and community-based interventions for newcomer youth and their families. Youth (ages 10-13) attending classes for newcomers participated in the Reconnect interventions. Qualitative (focus groups, fieldnotes) and quantitative data were collected to explore the experiences of youth, parents, facilitators and teachers and changes in wellbeing (reduction in COVID-related stress, psychological distress) and resilience (positive school climate, family cohesion) from before to after the intervention.

Results. We are disseminating critical insights to schools, teachers, and ministries of education. In the long-term, findings will support policy development to address social and health disparities between migrant and non-migrant communities.

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A Photovoice Exploration of Refugee Claimant Youth’s Experiences in Canadian Temporary Shelters

Abstract: Each year, there is an unprecedented number of refugee claimants in Canada. The present crisis of mass arrivals has exceeded provincial shelter capacity, prompting the opening of federally-run Temporary Shelters (TS). Research has shown that refugee claimants face a disproportionate burden of psychosocial distress. These disparities are heightened for refugee claimant youth, who experience unique structural barriers and high levels of social isolation during a key developmental period. Using photovoice, this proposed study aims to capture the first-person accounts of refugee claimant youth to understand their experiences and psychosocial wellbeing while residing in TS. Photovoice is a participatory, arts-based method that employs co-creation of meaning and knowledge around pictorial images, fostering agency in communities with limited power. Participants aged 14–25 (N=25) in TS will be recruited to document their day-to-day lives over the course of one week. Participants will have complete control over choosing which photos to share with the research team. Participatory conversations will be conducted to elicit narratives of life lived in the TS. To showcase research findings, a vernissage will be organized with participants and community partners supporting newcomer youth. Local decision-makers will be invited, to encourage dialogue on the lived experiences of newly arrived youth and their wellbeing. Given the novelty of TS and the lack of structural support for this highly vulnerbalized group, this research will promote community advocacy and structural change, by shifting the gaze of decision-makers and the general public to the plight of refugee claimant youth.

Funding: The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS), SHERPA University Institute

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Co-producing a Culturally Safe Contextual Adaptation of Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT) Intervention for Refugee Claimant Families in Montreal: A Mixed-Method Feasibility Study.

Researcher: Aseel Alzaghoul

In my PhD project I am focusing on Co-producing a contextual and cultural adaptation of Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT) to implement with refugee claimant parents housed in temporary accommodation sites in Montreal. 

In this project, I seek to generate a better understanding of adapted TRT’s meaning and pertinence for a multicultural population of refugee claimants. The aims of this proposed research project are to: 1) implement a process of cultural and contextual adaptation of the TRT, in partnership with refugee claimant parents themselves, to enhance TRT’s fit within the context of temporary lodgings in Québec and improve its cultural suitability for a diversity of refugee claimant families; 2) conduct a process evaluation of a) the process of the adaptation co-production, and b) the pilot implementation of the adapted TRT.   

I am using an ethnographic framework, informed by a participatory research action perspective (PAR) which is compatible with process evaluation and cultural adaptation. Further, a PAR approach is also central as I am collaborating directly with refugee claimants as authentic partners ensuring that the research process is driven by the actual needs and perspectives of the refugee claimant families it aims to serve. 

Funding: Social Science Research Council PhD Scholarship (Canada Graduate Scholarship) 2023-2027, Bourse d’excellence de l’Équipe de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les familles réfugiées et demandeuses d’asile – Doctorat, 2022, Mitacs Accelerate Funding 2023- 2024