This toolkit offers research-backed, trauma-informed strategies and practical guidance to help clinical and non-clinical service providers support the well-being, resilience, and dignity of unaccompanied and separated children across a range of settings.
This practice guide equips service providers with trauma-informed, child-centered strategies — grounded in the CARE framework — to support children and youth experiencing prolonged detention in ORR custody and beyond.
This toolkit offers mental health and emotional wellness resources for advocates and service providers navigating the stress of policy changes affecting immigrant communities.
This research brief warns that since family detention centers reopened in March 2025, the number of detained families has more than tripled while a growing number of others have lost a parent to deportation, causing documented harm to children’s development, mental health, and education.
This policy brief argues that government-enforced family separation is not merely a regulatory decision but a traumatic severing of family bonds that undermines child welfare, destabilizes communities, and violates children’s fundamental right to safety and belonging.
This policy brief documents how the Trump administration is using government agencies to separate families and remove thousands of children from the U.S., disregarding children’s rights and safety while deepening trauma and blocking reunification, and calls for urgent action to restore protections for family unity and children’s well-being.
This brief details interviews with child care providers who report that the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda is causing families to withdraw toddlers from care, children to experience heightened anxiety, and providers to fear for their own safety while trying to support immigrant families.
This study examined the emotional responses and the immigration socialization process for children in California navigating the immigration policy climate.
This systematic review synthesized data on the detrimental impact of immigration detention on children’s mental health, including high rates of depression and PTSD, underscoring the need for alternative immigration policies that eliminate the detention of children and families.
This study explores the challenges faced by Mexican and Central American mothers and youth reunifying in the U.S. after migration-related separations, highlighting the ongoing trauma, ambiguous loss, migratory grief, and attachment disruptions that impact their relationships, while also noting mothers’ efforts to repair these bonds.
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