MedicoLegal Partnership for Children

In keeping with its mission to create a world of hope for the most vulnerable and poorest of our children, Community for Children is undertaking a project to forge a partnership between the Brownsville Community Health Center (BCHC) and Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid (TRLA).

Under the guidance of the national organization Medico-Legal Partnership for Children, BCHC and TRLA will work together in an effort to better meet the needs of the Lower Rio Grande Valley community and its children.

From the Medico-Legal Partnership for Children website:

The Medico-Legal Partnership for Children promotes collaboration between pediatricians and lawyers at sites around the country. The lawyers help to meet children’s basic needs, including food, housing, health care, education and safety. MLPC, by providing technical assistance and funding to active and nascent sites, seeks to transform the practice of pediatrics and the delivery of legal services by introducing preventative law to the clinical setting. By drawing on the strength of two powerful professions, community resources can be leveraged, and children and families can realize the promise of integrated, preventive services that promote health and well-being.

Participants in the elective will have the opportunity to help forge this partnership from its infancy, working with both attorneys at TRLA and social workers, physicians and staff at BCHC.

Children in Immigration Detention: A Medical/Mental Health Perspective

In keeping with its support for the Universal Rights of a Child, Community for Children offers participants the opportunity to work with the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR), an agency formed to provide high quality pro bono legal representation to the thousands of immigrants detained in the Rio Grande Valley, primarily seeking protection in the form of political asylum. Over 400 are unaccompanied children from Central America – children who have fled their home countries and journeyed to the United States without parents or guardians. These children are housed in federally run shelters and foster care homes while they are placed in deportation proceedings to be sent home. Many of them are escaping some form of violence, either physical or sexual abuse and many suffer the ongoing effects of emotional, mental and physical trauma and illness. The participants will have the opportunity to witness the conditions in which the children are living, hear first hand the experiences they have survived, and attend a court docket, while working with ProBar to establish best practice guidelines for attorneys interviewing these most vulnerable of children, including identifying resources in the area for children who have suffered trauma.

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

Since 1939 Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) has worked to create welcoming communities for newcomers — immigrants and refugees who have been forced to leave their homes and begin anew.

LIRS helps people seeking safety from persecution in their home countries and reunite families torn apart by conflict. They resettle refugees and protect vulnerable children who arrive alone in the United States. They advocate for compassion and justice for all migrants. LIRS is a champion for all uprooted people.

Community for Children participants work with LIRS social workers doing intake interviews with refugee children who have just be apprehended in the United States from Central America. The students investigate effects of post-traumatic stress syndrome on children separated from their families.

Cameron Park Colonia Project

Colonia is a Spanish term for neighborhood or community. In Texas, colonia refers to an unincorporated settlement that lacks basic water and sewer systems, paved roads, and safe and sanitary housing. The development of Texas colonias dates back to at least the 1950s. Using agriculturally valueless land, land that lay in floodplains or other rural properties, developers created unincorporated subdivisions. They divided the land into small lots, put in little or no infrastructure, then sold them to low-income individuals seeking affordable housing. Houses in colonias are generally constructed piecemeal by their owners and may lack electricity, plumbing and other basic amenities.

Dilapidated homes, a lack of potable water and sewer and drainage systems, and floodplain locations make many colonias an ideal place for the proliferation of disease. Texas Department of State Health Services data show that hepatitis A, salmonellosis, dysentery, cholera and other diseases occur at much higher rates in colonias than in Texas as a whole. Tuberculosis is also a common health threat, occurring almost twice as frequently along the border than in Texas as a whole.

Community for Children participants have opportunities to develop programs for families who reside in the community. They conduct needs assessments through discussions with mothers and grandmothers, provide health education classes and other interventions.