The bilingual liaison support program for refugee families at Hagley has established a successful way to work with various communities of refugee parents and Christchurch schools to ensure that refugee students achieve their full potential for educational achievement.

The service provides as a bridge between refugee parents and schools by providing support, understanding and assistance with issues that include interpreting and translation work and cultural understanding for both parties.

The liaison program aims to link refugee parents from many ethnic and cultural backgrounds to the Christchurch schools so that they can be more involved in their child’s educational progress and participate confidently in their child’s schools. The liaison work also involves advocating for refugee families experiencing educational, social, and emotional problems that may left unseen and could be a barrier to their educational engagement. Bilingual liaison support has helped both refugee families and school systems which are often unable to deal with communication challenges ranging from the most basic – e.g. parents informing schools of child absence – to the more complex issues —e.g. student behaviour management, special needs support, early school leavers, paying of fees and concerns about bullying and underachievement.

The community liaison officers for Bhutanese/Nepali, Somalian and Afghani communities based at Hagley had actively provided support in:

• ESOL and teacher aide support in schools with high numbers of refugee students
• Work with schools and school systems in meeting the needs of refugee students
• Assisting parents with school enrolments, parent teacher meeting, translation and interpreting work and also in understanding the New Zealand education system
• Appropriate referrals of concerns from refugee students to the parents, teachers or appropriate specialist agencies
• Communicate about the refugee related programmes to the refugee community in cooperation with resettlement agencies and other refugee-focused organizations
• Home visits for school and student related issues, concerns, notices, promotion and encouragement to participate in refugee related programmes in the wider community
• Support and delivery of community-based tutoring programmes such as the Homework and Study Support Centre at Hagley, NCEA holiday programmes, NCEA and Pathways information session for parents and students
• Send information to parents about availability of educational and developmental opportunities for their children around Christchurch
• Assistance with Study Link and Work and Income issues for families from refugee community at school