Co-producing a contextual and cultural adaptation of teaching recovery techniques (TRT) to implement with refugee claimant parents housed in temporary accommodation sites in Montreal

  • Aseel graduated as a medical doctor from the University of Jordan in 2017. Her research interests involve early childhood development, refugee populations' mental health and psychosocial interventions in low- and middle-income countries. She pursued her master’s degree in War and Psychiatry from King’s College London through Chevening Scholarship. Currently, she is doing her Ph.D. at McGill University, mental health program.  

Aseel Alzaghoul, a student of McGill University, will be focusing on co-producing a contextual and cultural adaptation of teaching recovery techniques (TRT) to implement with refugee claimant parents housed in temporary accommodation sites in Montreal. This work is in partnership with the Welcome Collective. 

In this project, Aseel seeks to generate a better understanding of adapted TRT’s meaning and pertinence for a multicultural population of refugee claimants. The aims of this proposed research project are to:

  1. Implement a process of cultural and contextual adaptation of the TRT, in partnership with refugee claimant parents themselves, to enhance TRT’s fit within the context of temporary lodgings in Québec and improve its cultural suitability for a diversity of refugee claimant families;

  2. Conduct a process evaluation of a) the process of the adaptation co-production, and b) the pilot implementation of the adapted TRT.   

 Aseel will be using an ethnographic framework, informed by a participatory research action perspective (PAR) which is compatible with process evaluation and cultural adaptation. Further, a PAR approach is also central as she will be collaborating directly with refugee claimants as authentic partners ensuring that the research process is driven by the actual needs and perspectives of the refugee claimant families it aims to serve. 

This project is co-funded in partnership with Mitacs.