Children and youth under the age of 18 make up more than half of the world’s 25 million refugees, putting pressure on school psychologists to provide targeted psychoeducational services. Schools are inadequately prepared for the growing enrolment of refugee youth, due to lack of professional expertise and limited resources. This chapter begins with an overview of the preflight, flight, and resettlement experiences that impact the child’s development, learning, and well-being. Next, we draw upon cognitive-developmental theory as a foundation for school-based service delivery. We then appraise trauma-informed care (an approach that has been well regarded in clinical practice), and review the evidence base of school-based mental health interventions. Given that the majority of refugee youth may be affected in ways that might not be adequately explained by symptomatology, we recommend that services address broader psychoeducational concerns. We conclude with suggested guidelines for effective school-based service delivery.

The objective of this chapter is to reflect on the role of collaborative mental health care for refugees in a school and community context. Conditions of adversity both preceding exile and during refugee resettlement may affect refugee children’s mental health. Access to mainstream health care services may be limited, and even when those services are available, they are most of the time underutilized by refugee families. Here, community and school-based services ensure a broader outreach and help refugees avoid stigmatization. In this chapter, we review community- and school-based collaborative care services and interventions for refugee families. We show how collaborative care models develop a protective network around vulnerable refugee youth and families. Subsequently, we present a specific collaborative care model that was developed in the context of action research. This project, conducted with refugee students and their families in Quebec schools, indicates the value of addressing the refugee youth’s psychosocial and educational needs within the school setting through an enhanced family-school collaboration.