My Practicum at Big Bear Child and Youth Advocacy Centre (CYAC) helped me to understand how theoretical and academic learning meet together with real world community work. My practicum at Big Bear made me aware about child abuse, negligence. My work also focused on particularly immigrant mothers and their abused children and as part of this practicum I developed a handbook through which immigrant mothers can navigate their needs.

Big Bear is an wonderful place where the main issue is to provide safety and wellbeing of children. this organization connects multi sectoral agencies such as police, prosecutors, child protection, medical officers, social workers, counsellors, and other community partners. I understood through this organization that given the age of children, their state of trauma should be addressed during inquiry, or prosecution. This organization helped me to understand how trauma can be managed.

As part of my research for my handbook, I learnt as newcomer mothers these women face overlapping problems such as language barriers, misinformation, financial dependency, lack of knowledge on Canadian law, cultural difference. They don’t even know that there are available support systems for them. the researches show due to these barriers, immigrant mothers do not seek help even if they and their children face severe harm. keeping these in mind I developed this handbook as resource that explains in simple language existing barriers, key Canadian Laws and where to go for support in case of need. This handbook is to empower immigrant mothers with vulnerable childrren in Kamloops, BC, Canada.

My work: