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Healthcare and Justice for Immigrant Children and Families
What We Do
Terra Firma is the first medical, legal, mental health partnership in the United States specifically designed for unaccompanied immigrant children in the community.
Terra Firma National is the first and only organization in the U.S. dedicated to launching and supporting a national network of programs that integrate medical, legal, and mental health services for unaccompanied immigrant children and migrant families to improve health and legal outcomes.
The Terra Firma Model
Developed in the South Bronx in 2013, the Terra Firma Model achieved national recognition for its pioneering approach to integrating immigration legal services for unaccompanied children into a community health center. Responding to a growing need, the Terra Firma model subsequently expanded to include migrant families.
Now, Terra Firma National is building a national network of Terra Firma programs.
The Terra Firma Model is based on the following principles:
Medical Home: An optimal setting to provide healthcare for children and families who have not had access to comprehensive care in their countries of origin.
Healthcare-Legal Partnership: multi-sector professionals working side by side to increase access to services and improve health outcomes and immigration legal decisions.
The Terra Firma Model connects patients to legal services, which drastically increases the odds of a successful outcome in immigration court.
Asylum Medicine: Healthcare providers conduct evaluations that document torture and persecution. Testimony by healthcare providers serve as critical evidence in immigration cases.
Terra Firma provides medical, mental health, and legal services to immigrant children and families located throughout the five boroughs of New York City and beyond.
Terra Firma National starts, supports, and sustains a national network of Terra Firma programs that implement the Terra Firma Model—providing medical, legal, and mental health services to immigrant children and families—and develops best practices.
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