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Although it is widely recognized that the most marginalized people tend toface extra barriers when accessing mainstream services intended to serve everyone, few studies have dealt with the specific barriers and challenges that immigrant and refugee youth from small, marginalized communities encounter when seeking access to services aimed at facilitating their settlement and integration into Canadian society. Our exploratory study of the participation of young African newcomers in youth programs in Metro Vancouver goes some way towards filling this gap. In this paper, we report our key findings and their policy implications. The central finding of this study is that there are many gaps between the needs of young African newcomers and the services available in the wider community. While gaps inhibit successful integration by maintaining a separation of youth from mainstream society, bridges create a continuum of services that offer a stable pathway for youth and promote their integration into mainstream society. Unfortunately, in their attempts to access formal support networks, young African newcomers encounter more gaps than bridges. While newcomers from all countries have particular needs and challenges, the experiences of the young Africans described in this study provide an important reference point for scholars and practitioners who are concerned about the predicaments of newcomer youth, particularly refugees and those from marginalised communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the contributions made by the concept of Neighbourhood Houses (NH) in helping newcomers to Canada. It mentions the services offered by NHs to newcomers including sharing their settlement house roots with the development of the social work profession, upheld the principles of social justice and the traditions of community building. Moreover, it also highlights the policy implications for the social work profession.

Working with multicultural groups poses routine challenges for many mental health professionals in Canada. This article reports on a study of 30 frontline social workers and how they reflect on their own cultures when working cross-culturally. The strategies used are identified and analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With ethno-culturally diverse immigrants arriving in con- stantly increasing numbers, connecting newcomers to residents in the local community is a growing challenge. Settlement houses have traditionally been the "machinery of connection" that bridges such diverse groups. This article reports the results of a study on settlement houses in an urban center located in western Canada. The results show that by embracing bridging as their mission, promoting volunteering, and providing holistic services to meet needs, settlement houses have successfully helped newcomers build cross-group social ties and integrate into the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the large amount of literature on cross-cultural social work practice, the meanings of culture and crossing have not been empirically examined. This article presents the findings of a study involving 30 social work practitioners in a Canadian metropolitan city. Grounded in the lived experiences of the practitioners, at least three different modes of crossing are identified. The findings also indicate that many practitioners tend to define culture as a complex whole, but not in a deterministic manner. Interwoven with race and ethnicity, culture interacts with an individual's preferences and environment. The author contends that to integrate theory and practice, we need to examine how frontline practitioners understand some important but taken-for-granted social work concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]