UTA School of Social Work Professor Examines How Immigrant Families Navigate Identity, Resilience and Well-Being
The University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work is home to faculty whose research advances understanding of families, resilience and well-being across the globe. Among them is Dr. Saltanat Childress, associate professor of social work, whose scholarship examines prevention of interpersonal violence and adverse childhood experiences, immigrant and refugee adaptation, and the cultural factors that shape family health. Her career reflects a commitment to improving services for vulnerable populations and ensuring that institutions are equipped to meet the needs of diverse communities.
Childress’s recent work, published in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, Children and Youth Services Review, and Global Social Welfare: Research, Policy, & Practice, explores how immigrant families from Central Asia, Ukraine, and the Middle East and North Africa in the U.S. navigate cultural and social challenges while building new lives.
“We tried to better understand how these groups of immigrants acculturate or navigate their challenges and what their resilience strategies are,” she said. “We wanted to use their own concepts, own lived experiences, and own words and explanations as guides.”
Dr. Saltanat Childress, UTA School of Social Work associate professor, poses for an official photo.
The study highlighted stark differences between generations. Children often adjusted quickly through school, while their parents struggled with identity, employment and shifting family roles.
“The children were quickly adapting to the language and culture,” Childress said. “But children’s adaptation frequently created intergenerational conflict, around religious practices, beliefs about gender boundaries, and respect for elders.”
For many immigrant men from Central Asia, moving to the U.S. meant a reduction in social status. Women, on the other hand, often found new professional opportunities. “We saw a lot of male backlash against women’s expanded economic and social agency, which unfortunately sometimes resulted in violence and conflict in the family,” Childress said.
Service providers echoed these concerns, saying they felt unprepared to respond.
“They shared that they lacked the training, especially in terms of understanding the effects of trauma on education and child development,” Childress said. “I hope my research will inform social services to become more culturally aware and equip practitioners in schools and public health institutions to provide targeted and effective assistance.”
Her research also revealed differing attitudes toward mental health. “Central Asian immigrants and Middle Eastern refugees related mental health to mental deficiencies and said it was really common to ignore those needs,” Childress said. “In contrast, Ukrainians normalized seeking psychological help.”
Despite challenges, families demonstrated resilience. Many placed strong value on education as a path forward for their families. “There was this positive outlook around schools being a non-threatening environment, a place for kids to thrive,” Childress said. Families also embraced bicultural identity, balancing American opportunities while retaining heritage and language.
Childress uses mixed methods in her research, combining qualitative interviews with tools of implementation science. In Kyrgyzstan, she is adapting U.S.-based prevention programs to local cultural settings. “I’m using hybrid effectiveness-implementation design to measure child and caregiver outcomes while also understanding how to deliver these interventions in Central Asian settings,” she said.
Her ultimate vision is twofold: “In Central Asia, I hope my work will lead to structured interventions that can be scaled up and institutionalized,” Childress said. “In the U.S., I hope community-based organizations will be able to improve their services by better understanding the hidden challenges and struggles of immigrant families.”
For Childress, the work is deeply personal. As an immigrant from Kyrgyzstan herself whose original career as a concert pianist was cut short by the collapse of the former Soviet Union, she understands the weight of cultural adjustment. “There’s a lot of adjustment to make even in the best kind of cases,” she said. “I wanted to contribute to this area because of my own experiences and the stories I’ve heard from the immigrant community in the DFW area and elsewhere.”
Though her career as a social work researcher has evolved far from the concert halls she once envisioned as a young pianist in Kyrgyzstan, Childress said her journey reflects the resilience she studies in others. “Families are the essential social unit that reproduces human life and contributes to society,” she said. “That’s why I care and do this work.”