OKDHS Partnership

All Spero health education classes take place either in Spero classroom sites located within apartment complexes where participants live, or within families residences. This is specifically to eliminate the barriers, such as finding transportation and childcare, which are often present for families in the resettled refugee community to be able to access educational and mental health services.

Medical systems include emergencies, primary care providers, specialists, mental health providers, dental and vision needs. In addition to the many differing and often confusing elements present in navigation of medical systems is the added barriers of transportation and language support that families who have recently arrived often face. Spero’s Medical and Mental Health Navigation and Support program exists to specifically address this and provide families with supports that lean towards long term sustainability and understanding. This happens through tangible support for families as well as through partnership, training and coordination with medical providers and medical systems within the greater Oklahoma City community. Often families in the resettled refugee community face the barrier of translation services when seeking medical and mental health navigation and support. Additionally, research suggests that a significant amount of health and medical history related information can be lost if appropriate translation is not made available. Program participants will have access to in-person translators, based in the Oklahoma City area, who will be able to assist families in accessing needed medical care, as well as ensuring the completion of appropriate documentation and understanding follow up care and future health related access.

Spero has a history of facilitating adjustment based therapeutic groups for newly resettled refugees who have arrived through traditional refugee resettlement. Newly arrived families are navigating the transition shock of many intersecting realities. Arrival in a new country, with a new culture, language, and surroundings. All of the known and unknown facets that families face in making a new place their home contributes to their experience of shock in the process of transition. Spero programs specifically are trauma informed and built in such a way to support the layered experience of pursuing stability. Currently Spero operates four weekly adjustment groups developed and overseen by a team member with a Masters in Counseling and a certificate from Harvard’s Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery Program. These groups are supervised by a Licensed Professional Counselor. There are three primary ways that adjustment groups work to support families with an overall emphasis on skills to navigate emotional regulation. Having an understanding of the realities of trauma response help individuals regulate their emotional response to all the intersecting components happening in transition.