Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Program (URMP)
The Unaccompanied Refugee Minor Program (URMP) takes responsibility for refugee children who arrive in the U.S. with no parent or guardian. The program places the minors in foster care with specially-trained local families and provides culturally and linguistically appropriate social services support. This includes:
training foster families
assisting the minors with educational and medical issues
helping these refugee children to adjust to life in America
preparing them to live independently as adults
The program began in 1995, when MORI and the Massachusetts Department of Social Services (DSS) agreed to provide unaccompanied refugee minors with the same range of child welfare benefits and services available to other children in Massachusetts who require such services. The benefits and services allowed may include:
foster care maintenance payments (room, board, and clothing)
medical assistance
expenses incurred in establishing legal responsibility
Under the agreement, an unaccompanied refugee minor is defined as (1) someone designated by the USCIS as a refugee according to the Refugee Act of 1980 and (2) someone under age 18 (or a child over 18 who qualifies for child welfare services in Massachusetts under certain conditions of the Social Security Act), who entered the United States as a refugee unaccompanied by either a parent, an adult relative willing to serve as the child’s guardian, or an otherwise legally qualified guardian.
MORI and DSS work together to provide a smooth transition for unaccompanied refugee children. DSS contracts Lutheran Community Services of Southern New England (LCSSNE) to provide direct services to the refugee minors. The enrollment ceiling is currently at 80 slots. In 2001, LCS opened a satellite office in Worcester which now serves 17 minors.
In 2004, there are 61 (53 males and 8 females) minors in the program with 6 Sudanese young men living in a Residential Living Program “Imatong House” in Arlington. The ethnic breakdown of the refugee minors is very diverse as follows: 2 Albanian, 7 Chinese, 2 Hondurans, 43 Sudanese, 4 Liberian, 1 Russian, 1 Mexican and 1 Guatemalan.
For definitions of terms used by the Office for Refugees and Immigrants, please view the Glossary.
This information is provided by the Office for Refugees and Immigrants.