Brita Futures: A resilience-building program for children and young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds – Program description and preliminary findings

Abstract

AbstractAustralian children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds may be vulnerable to stresses involved with migration and acculturation, which can interact with risk factors and lead to psychological distress. The BRiTA Futures Primary School and Adolescent programs were designed to promote resilience and positive acculturation in children and young people from CALD backgrounds. This paper describes the BRiTA Futures program and profiles the demographic characteristics and levels of wellbeing and resilience among 117 BRiTA Primary School and 192 Adolescent participants attending BRiTA Futures programs in Queensland. A repeated measures design investigated changes in wellbeing and resilience between the commencement and conclusion of the program. Most participants were born overseas (Primary School 63%, Adolescent 81%) and spoke a language other than English (alone or in addition to English) at home (Primary School 83%, Adolescent 89%). Pre-program results showed considerable proportions of primary school children (between 8.8% and 20.2%) and adolescents (34.1%) with poor levels of wellbeing upon commencing the program. Upon completing the program, primary school participants showed significant improvements in global quality of life (P = 0.014) and weak evidence of improvements in resilience (P = 0.057). Adolescent participants showed significant improvement in wellbeing (P = 0.006) and weak evidence of improvement in resourcefulness (P = 0.079). The BRiTA Futures program fills an important service gap for young CALD people and shows some promising initial results. Future directions include developing an adult version of the program, and providing programs in other states. The purpose-designed resilience measures are undergoing further development. Immediate post-program data collection requires concerted effort to maximise completeness; longer-term follow-up should be pursued to investigate whether gains are sustained over time.Keywords: resilienceprogram evaluationadolescents and childrenculturally and linguistically diverseprogram descriptionrisk factorsmental wellbeing