From Xenophobic Community to Learning Community: Creating Safety and Local Solutions for Torture Survivors in a Rural Minnesota Context

This paper will describe lessons learned from a 9-month government-funded project to build a “learning community” focused on improving coordination and integration of behavioral health services for war-traumatized refugee... [ view full abstract ]

This paper will describe lessons learned from a 9-month government-funded project to build a “learning community” focused on improving coordination and integration of behavioral health services for war-traumatized refugee populations in St. Cloud, MN, USA. St Cloud is a small city in a rural area experiencing considerable xenophobia and racial tensions in response to an influx of 10,000 Somali refugees over the past decade. We measured achievement of the project’s goal through the following:
a. Recruitment, hire, and usage of a trusted local leader in the Somali-American community to ensure project credibility and ensure Somali community participation so that Somali community input could drive the process, which it did: the largest attendance in focus groups and trainings, and the most solutions generated, came from Somali community members themselves. We see this as a measure of success for a key sub-goal of the project: to engage the communities of survivors in their own healing.
b. Recruitment of diverse constituencies to attend focus groups and constituency-specific trainings that identified local needs and local solutions to improve coordination and integration of behavioral health services for St Cloud’s refugee populations. This included behavioral health providers; front-line community members who encounter behavioral health concerns working in the schools, public health nursing, child protection services, domestic violence, and basic needs/social service agencies; and refugee community members, including patients and their family members.
c. Integration and networking of normally segregated communities via a full-day conference in which the different constituencies received separate-track training they had previously identified that they need to begin addressing refugee behavioral health for the first half, followed by a half-day of working together in integrated small groups to build relationships, engage in bi-directional cross-cultural dialogue on the project’s topic, and identify next steps.
d. Establishment of an ongoing learning community in St Cloud that outlives the grant and is not led by the grantee but instead by the community, including significant refugee community representation. This community task force continues to meet monthly to implement local solutions generated as ideas during the grant period. Their immediate priority is to build a sustainable network of local providers, culturally relevant resources, and point-persons who have regular contact, trust, and opportunities to share knowledge with one another. They see this as a necessary first step and springboard for creating further improvement in community systems promoting behavioral health integration.