The Bay Area Asylum Mental Health Project of RIWW links San Francisco Bay Area immigration attorneys with licensed mental health clinicians who can provide psychological evaluations for asylum seekers. The Project has over 100 clinicians in the Bay Area who provide pro bono or low fee evaluations for asylum seekers.
If you are an attorney or accredited representative and would like to request an evaluation for your client, please click here.
Please note that the Project prioritizes cases with legal fees that are pro bono or up to $1,000, and after that cases in which legal fees are between $1,000 and $3,000. We are unable to accept referrals whereby the legal fee charged to the client is over $3,000.
If you are a mental health professional and would like to join our network please click here.
Training and mentoring mental health clinicians. The Project provides training, mentoring, and support to mental health professionals so that they can provide high quality forensic mental health evaluations for asylum seekers.
RIWW training is conducted in collaboration with the Justice & Diversity Center of The Bar Association of San Francisco, and Well Clinic, San Francisco. The training helps clinicians understand the asylum application process, the role of mental health evaluations, and how to provide a high quality evaluation and report.
We offer mentoring by connecting mental health professionals who are experienced in providing evaluations with those who have been recently trained. We facilitate the referral process between attorneys seeking evaluations and available mental health professionals.
If you are a mental health professional and would like to attend a training in the Bay Area and join our Project please click on this link, and complete the application form. The next training in San Francisco will take place in the fall of 2019. We will email information about the upcoming training to all clinicians who have applied to join the Project.
Training immigration attorneys and law students in trauma informed practice. Immigration attorneys and law students who work with asylum seekers are often challenged when working with traumatized individuals. Our training helps immigration attorneys and law students use best practices in interviewing asylum seekers with a history of traumatic events. It also helps attorneys and law students manage secondary trauma that may impact them directly.