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JADE
Justice.Aid.Diversity.Equality
SalusWorld’s JADE (Justice, Advocacy, Diversity and Equality) Center assists refuges, immigrants, trauma survivors, and resettled families in distress living in the greater Denver area and does this by providing asylum evaluations, legal consultations, mental health services and other immigrations support services to refugees and asylum seekers in the greater Denver area.
The JADE Center encompasses a mental health clinic and a legal aid referral center. The center consists of a mental health and legal aid office headquartered in the Human Rights Shared Space Center in Denver. Professional psychologists with years of experience working with refugees both nationally and internationally staff the center that is shared with a local nonprofit designed to combat human trafficking. The center also houses a legal aid center that is headed by one of the premier immigration attorneys in Colorado. Services provided are supervised by the staff and delivered by interns from law schools and graduate psychology and social work programs in Colorado. These would be unpaid internships with the hours of service to be counted as a requirement toward graduation.
Local and international refugee statistics
At any given time, there are 20 million refugees worldwide. Approximately 75,000 refugees are admitted to the United States yearly and over 30,000 immigrants now call Denver and Aurora communities home. Amnesty International estimates that between 30-50% of refugees and asylum seekers have suffered human rights abuses including torture, various forms of abuse and war trauma. According to the Colorado Refugee Mental Health Screen (2005), Colorado is home to numerous refugees and asylum seekers who have come to our state for jobs and in hopes of resettlement. It is estimated that 1,300 new refugees enter Colorado each year and 1,000 of those settle in the Denver metropolitan area.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2004) named social-emotional isolation and discrimination as the two most common and unsettling issues for new refugees in this country. They arrive with few resources and significant emotional scars as a result of suffering political or economic repression in their home countries. This emotional distress is related to and intertwined with the lack of availability to affordable legal aid services to address the issues inherent in relocation. Torture survivors seeking asylum struggle to access knowledgeable attorneys to help them through the confusing immigration courts. Progress through the asylum courts often requires an expensive asylum mental health evaluation, the cost of which is often prohibitive. While resettlement agencies can help refugees get their basic needs met, these agencies largely ignore the social-emotional needs of refugee families experience as they assimilate into the majority culture.
Upon coming to the JADE Center, refugees and asylum seekers undergo an intake to access the need for mental health or legal services. Depending on services needed, clients will be referred to either a mental health counselor or a legal aid attorney. Legal interns will provide free or low-cost legal services and mental-health interns will provide evaluations for asylums or immigration courts, individual, family and school counseling to both adults and children in a culturally-appropriate manner.
Connecting communities
JADE is profoundly impressed by the dignity and courage of survivors and respect the fact that schools, churches and community centers are active and dynamic social mediating centers for Colorado neighbors to meet and cooperate. JADE programs therefore aim to bring together schools, clinics, and other organizations to help new residents heal from their physical and emotional wounds and connect with new neighbors.
JADE program objectives
- Educate the community on the symptoms and effects of trauma, displacement, integration and inclusiveness
- Train medical and social service professionals to work with survivors of war trauma
- Reassure refugees and immigrants they aren't alone in their pain and that help is available
- Develop referral systems among the local clinics, legal aid, and organizations
- Create care systems that can respond to refugees who are emotionally unstable and war trauma survivors.
How we collaborate
- We work with teachers so a child who has seen her homeland devastated by war knows that her teacher will give her the extra attention she needs.
- We work with health-care providers so that when they recognize the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, they have places to refer patients to when they are in distress.
- We work with community activists so they know someone is there to help them build healing communities.
Who is assisted by JADE?
JADE’s clients are from the world’s most impoverished countries with the most deplorable human-rights records. Frequently, our clients are the political, social and religious leaders of their communities, whose maltreatment is intended to leave lasting damage and debilitating consequences in their lives and communities.
Our expertise in assisting survivors of trauma has been acknowledged by our funding through international grants and private contributions.
How is assistance provided?
JADE offers free and confidential mental health treatment in easy-to-access and safe settings. While survivors may find it unbearable to describe the pain and suffering they have endured, their symptoms speak for them. Our clients frequently demonstrate the symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). JADE provides counseling through both individual and group therapy programs. JADE’s therapists have particular expertise in cross-cultural counseling and in providing counseling through interpretation. Our therapists use a variety of treatment approaches appropriate for trauma recovery. JADE also provides mental health profiles for use in Immigration Court for clients seeking asylum. Other staff members have legal expertise to assist our clients with their compound needs.
In addition to its treatment programs, JADE has developed unique training programs. JADE trains and supervises masters’ and doctoral level psychology and social work students so they have the capacity to work with culturally diverse clients, thus extending and sustaining the resources of JADE. JADE collaborates with and trains immigration attorneys so they are better prepared to represent survivors in asylum cases. JADE also trains personnel in other agencies that have contact with refugees and immigrants who may be survivors, such as community volunteers, English as a Second Language staff, and personnel from mental health and health care agencies. Based on the training provided by JADE, these professionals can better assist their clients by recognizing their unique experiences and needs, by learning best practices for working with their survivor clients, and by referring their clients to JADE for more specialized assistance. JADE provides support groups for the case managers in these agencies around issues of secondary traumatization and burnout. JADE also presents community education programs concerning the issues of human rights and integration. |
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