Nested Service Delivery Model

MFRS has developed a Nested Model of Service Delivery based on ten years of responding to immigrant and refugee families and youth through participant-driven programming. The Nested Model is a strength-based and systems-of-care philosophy designed to address the multiple needs of families as opposed to a deficit-based approach that focuses on one need in isolation from others. This philosophy leads to critical/iterative processes where we witness many of our past participants become volunteers for MFRS programs.

The Nested Model is depicted by three birds' nests, representing the stages in settlement of the families involved in MFRS programs. Each nest is made up of inputs and support. The families and other actors are depicted as birds contributing to the building of each nest.

The Nested Model of Service Delivery has been successful in supporting new immigrant and refugee families we serve to address the multiple barriers they experience in the course of settlement through a holistic and interconnected process. The model starts by looking at the new immigrant and refugee families' needs, hopes, and dreams. With the inputs and activities of MFRS, cultural brokers, and facilitators, and community partners, the new families are linked to community resources that address their immediate needs and are able to co-create a new space, a foundation , for themselves in Canada. 

Cultural Brokering: Knowledge and Practice

Cultural Brokering is “the act of bridging, linking, mediating between groups of persons of differing cultural backgrounds to reduce conflict and producing change.” (Jezewski, 1999)

Cultural brokering is at the root of the MFRS approach. Our collaborative relationship with our sister organization, the Multicultural Health Brokers, weaves this practice into our holistic family support programs that acknowledge the value of a newcomer's home culture and unique pathways to settlement.

Organizational Structure

The Multicultural Family Resource Society is a non-hierarchical organization that takes its direction from the many participating ethnic communities it serves in Edmonton. Decisions are made collectively by all the people in the circle.