What We Do

USCCB/MRS is a leader among non-governmental agencies in addressing the needs of children forced to flee their homes, and others caught up in the migration phenomenon in the United States. Working with a broad network of Catholic and other agencies, MRS assists refugee and undocumented children who have been separated from adult relatives in:

• Safely joining their families once in the United States and providing post release follow-up services in their communities through our Safe Passages Program.

• Placing children in foster homes or other community-based placements through the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URM) program.

• Operationalizing direct service programs throughout the U.S. and its territories for immigrant children and families. USCCB/MRS provides national child placement coordination, monitoring of sub-grants for compliance and quality assurance, trends and outcome analysis, and training.

• Increasing knowledge and expertise among public and private child welfare providers about the needs of and services for foreign-born children and mixed status families

• Building capacity and improving service delivery through the provision of consultation and technical assistance on policies and procedures, program implementation and community resources related to migrating children and families. 

• Producing toolkits and resource guides on the unique needs of children and families affected by a variety of migration issues. Examples include the intersection between juvenile justice issues and immigration and immigrant children affected by mental health and substance abuse issues.

• Researching and writing practice-oriented papers addressing key issues for migrating youth, and analyzing programmatic trends to identify policy solutions and recommendations for practice shifts.

• Facilitating peer exchanges of recognized experts in the field on key issues and disseminating this collective wisdom through reports.

• Providing rapid response to assist with child assessments and capacity building in forced migration contexts.

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Examples of our Successful Outcomes Include:

• Thousands of children separated from their families due to migration have received protective social services, including home studies and community based services, regardless of the their location across the country.

• Development of a federally-funded program that provided formalized recommendations for thousands of children in immigration custody resulted in protecting children in trafficking and other dangerous and exploitative situations.

• We developed the first policies and procedures manual and a nation-wide curriculum on the prevention of maltreatment of migrating children at the request of the U.S. federal government office responsible for the custody and care of thousands of unaccompanied undocumented children in immigration custody.

• We have provided training and consultation to government and non-government entities, both domestically and internationally on a number of issues affecting children in migration.