The Bay Area Asylum Mental Health Project is receiving more requests for *pro bono* evaluations than our clinician network can provide. Recent changes in ICE procedures have resulted in many asylum seekers having much shorter time periods to compile necessary documentation for their cases.
Many asylum seekers do not have documentation of their trauma history and related symptoms to support their asylum application. Since asylum seekers who are declined asylum status are often sent back to their communities and families where political, gang, gender and sexual orientation-based violence are often pervasive, it’s of great importance that asylum officers and immigration court have access to an accurate and full picture of an asylum seeker’s mental health, trauma history, and the possible effect on their mental health of being forced to return to their home country.
The training provides instruction on conducting the asylum seeker interview, report writing, small group activity as well as a presentation on the asylum process provided by an immigration attorney from one of our partner organizations.
After attending the training you will be provided a mentor, a peer consult group, sample interview questions, report templates and sample reports. Asylum seeker evaluations are typically 3 hours, done at your preferred time in your office or virtually, with a translator provided, if needed, by the attorney. Although the details of the evaluation interview process will be discussed in the training, it is essentially a standard evaluation that all licensed mental health clinicians are trained to provide, with a more detailed traumatic events history component. Report writing time varies based on individual writing style. New evaluators are typically given cases with a one- to two-month deadlines. No history of working with immigrants is required.
**We ask that clinicians who attend this January/February 2023 training be able to accommodate in their schedule two evaluations over the subsequent few months: Accepting a first evaluation assignment by April 2023, and accepting a second one by August 2023.**
**If your schedule does not allow for evaluations in this time period, please wait to sign up for our next training.**
The training fee is $100. Training fees support the operation of the Asylum Project.
Please make your payment *before the training* through Paypal using this link:
If you haven't done so, please be sure to join our network before the training at
https://goo.gl/forms/uCZlXGyEjh6tgZiI3
*Please email us, *ahead of the training* to
cliniciandocs@riww.org :
Your professional license, liability insurance, and CV. If you don't have a current CV, please send a brief document with information about your graduate training and current mental health work.
Reminder: You will need to be licensed in CA and have liability insurance to perform asylum evaluations. If you don't have these, you can still volunteer for the Asylum Project in non-clinical ways. Please email us at
info@riww.org for more information.
We hope you will join us in this incredibly rewarding work and look forward to meeting you.
