An Ally and Friend

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound of a fist pounding on the door echoed through the house.

Thump! Thump! The sound intensified as a muffled voice called for help.

Kendal Carswell pulled open the door and a sharp blast of frigid wind, snow and ice blew into the house. A slender young man wearing his stocking cap pulled low and a tattered coat – a size too small – blew in through the door, too.

“Help! My sister needs your help,” he uttered in a heavy accent. “She’s in the car.”

Months earlier, Carswell had gone to the woman’s tiny apartment to help connect her with social resources after her husband unexpectedly died, leaving behind a toddler and another child on the way. Her brother and friends now gathered to help interpret because she spoke little English, and Carswell worked to connect her with social security benefits, income-based housing, and other social resources.

Her brother ventured out in the wicked Kansas blizzard because the young woman had gone into labor during what she thought was weeks before her due date. Scared and not knowing where to turn, they called on a valued advocate in the community – Carswell, an FHSU assistant professor of social work and then the Kearny County Hospital’s Pioneer Care Advocacy Team Coordinator. With his support, they could make the right connections to see a new child welcomed into the world safely and connect them with the resources they needed to start anew.

“They see me as an ally and a friend,” Carswell said.

The young woman was a Somali refugee living in Garden City. Carswell’s relationship with her and her family – and the entire community – would help fuel the region’s expansion of social services for under- served populations.

“There is a staggering need for social workers in Kansas, as less than five percent of the state’s licensed master’s social workers, specialist clinical social workers and psychologists work in western Kansas,” Carswell said. “If we can educate people at home, there is a higher likelihood they will stay at home to practice and fill the service gaps that exist in rural areas.”

Fort Hays State is one of only a handful of universities in the United States – and the only one in Kansas – to offer the Bachelor of Social Work and Masters of Social Work online. Carswell is the field practicum director, helping connect aspiring social workers to secure practicum opportunities in the community of their choosing and working with the populations they have a passion for working with.

The practicum provides an essential learning experience where students get the training to apply the information and knowledge they learn in course content with actual clients in the agencies and offices, including substance abuse treatment facilities, mental health facilities, medical clinics and hospitals, schools, family preservation offices, foster care services, as well as probation and parole offices.

In 2015, Carswell accepted a position at Kearny County Hospital in Lakin, leading the newly created Pioneer Care and Advocacy Team (PCAT) in addressing social determinants of health – a range of factors that influence people and communities’ health status. While his work wasn’t initially focused on serving immigrant populations, he quickly found that his experience and skills were needed to connect with Garden City’s diverse population.

Garden City is the most diverse community in Kansas, with only about 40 percent of the population identifying as white, non-Hispanic, and more than 27 different languages are spoken in the school district. It’s a vibrant community that has bucked the trend of declining rural populations by embracing a pro-immigrant ethos that embraces the “tired, poor and those yearning to breathe free” to build a thriving oasis in western Kansas.

“Garden City does an incredible job celebrating diversity,” Carswell said.

Home to Tyson Foods, Inc., the world’s largest beef processing plant, the region thrives on the agriculture industry and depends on immigrant labor to produce food and products distributed worldwide. The diverse workforce in southwest Kansas earns a stable living wage in the agriculture sector and generates demand for additional services, stores and ethnic restaurants, creating the building blocks of a culturally rich community.

Through Carswell’s work with the hospital and local employers, a $100,000 Tyson grant was secured in 2018 to place case managers with Tyson meat processing plants, which employ a high number of immigrant workers. These caseworkers were able to meet with employees in the community and work closely with nurses and physician assistants to take blood pressure and monitor for at-risk health conditions such as high cholesterol and diabetes.

Eventually, a liaison who worked for both Tyson Foods, Inc. and the Kearny County Hospital was added to provide a worker in the plant a few days a week who could connect employees with case managers when needed. This initiative was a precursor to the expanded health clinics Tyson Foods has announced it will be opening at several U.S. plants this year.

As a vital part of the immigrant community in Garden City, Carswell has grown to be a champion of diversity and human rights in southwest Kansas.

He started identifying other needs in the community, for instance the barrier to getting a driver’s license. Without a license, people are reliant on those who do have a license to get to work, shop for food, pick up children from school, get to medical appointments and other essential and basic tasks.

“We saw this as a social determinant that affected the overall health of the refugee and immigrant populations,” Carswell said, “and there simply weren’t enough translators to help people who only speak some English take their test.”

Carswell helped create a volunteer network to aid immigrants in obtaining a driver’s licenses in 2017. The program helps pair test takers with vetted volunteer translators to support 15 different languages: Somali, Arabic, Sudanese, Burmese (Karen dialect), Swahili, Filipino (Tagalog dialect), Amharic and Oromo.

Over the years, Carswell stepped away from his role as the coordinator of the PCAT, but he has continued to manage a grant for Kearny County Hospital called the Integrated Voter Engagement grant funded by the Kansas Health Foundation.

The goal of the project is to increase voter registration and turnout in local, state and national elections, create more engagement and dialog between elections and improve the overall health of the community. Those outcomes will then help to shape public policy that benefits everyone – especially at-risk populations such as immigrants and refugees.

Curriculum for the project was provided by the Wichita Civic Engagement Academy. Carswell has worked to track the number of people participating in the civic engagement opportunity, and the information will be used to create more translated materials that can then be shared with young adults and high school students to generate more conversation and dialog regarding civic engagement.

Often, refugees have fled their homeland to escape corrupt political systems and have never had the opportnity to practice democracy. One of the challenges in teaching refugees about the United States political system is communicating the different roles and levels of government and the differences between political approval and political funding.

“There are not many things as rewarding as seeing an individual who is elated because they were able to vote for the first time in their life,” Carswell said. “People tell me regularly that they are excited not only to vote for the first time, but because they are experiencing what it means to participate in a democracy.”

The Department of Homeland Security reports that refugees and asylum-seekers like those in Garden City have a naturalization rate of 70 percent during their first decade in the United States. Refugees can apply for citizenship after five years as permanent residents and then register to vote.

In 2019, Carswell hosted a series of nonpartisan presentations to help underserved populations understand how American democracy works in the African Shop, just a few blocks from his home.

Behind the shelves of canned mangos, lentils, basmati rice, fava beans, teff flour and tea, people gathered to learn about the political process and to share their concerns and questions. He was even able to coordinate a town hall meeting with U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall.

“I have more plans for other opportunities – panel discussions, educational events and more opportunities for civic engagement,” Carswell said.

In these stories, Carswell isn’t acting in an official professional capacity, but as a friend, advocate and champion for refugees while offering advice and helping them connect with critical resources. Another case where his compassion helped was when he received a call from a Somali truck driver. The man’s parents had recently moved to the area.

They spoke no English, and his father was disabled, having lost a leg due to a violent attack by individuals wielding machetes in his home village in Somalia. He is currently working through the process that allows refugees to become U.S. citizens.

“Many of these immigrants have horrific trauma in their life,” Carswell said. “They just want to live here peacefully, raise their family and to feel like they are a welcome member of the community.”

Carswell was able to help the man and his parents make important community connections by inviting the man to the African Shop. There he was met with open arms by people who shared his native language and similar life experiences. These relationships and connections made all the difference in his ability to navigate services.

Carswell’s commitment to finding new ways to advocate for the immigrant community in western Kansas was put to the test again this year as the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Heartland. Carswell quickly took action to help protect his community, family and friends in Garden City.

“While the state government was working to provide materials translated in Spanish, there are many different languages spoken in Garden City,” Carswell explained. “We needed to translate pandemic information, health recommendations and guidelines to ensure that Somali, Burmese and other immigrants and refugees have the same access to the latest health guidance.”

At the same time, Carswell, along with many other advocates in the community, have continued to work on improving city services. Their goals include securing a lighted crosswalk near refugee housing and property to construct a mosque, and identifying youth to become future leaders and advocates in their community.

“There are high school and collegeage youth in the community who will be great leaders someday. They are counted on early in life because they are bilingual and educated,” Carswell said. “Our goal is to set them up for leadership training and higher education so they can continue to support their community.”

As Fort Hays State’s social work programs have continued to expand to meet the demands for trained professionals throughout Kansas, the Garden City community may soon see its first refugee student graduate and start a career in the community. That prospect would not have been possible without FHSU’s online learning flexibility, empowering students with limited finances to honor their culture and continue to support their family while pursuing a degree – and without the dedication and devotion of Carswell.