Equal-Works

Background

Asylum seekers face a variety of challenges that affect their ability to integrate into everyday life in Birmingham and Solihull. Learning language skills, coping with trauma, making a new start and finding a role when work is not an option are all significant barriers that would challenge most people in similar circumstances. In addition to this, the negative attention and hostility directed towards them in some sections of the media make the process of integration even more difficult.

ASPIRE’s objectives fit with the UK policy rationale that centres on involving asylum seekers in useful pre-vocational activities that will improve their employability status in the UK or elsewhere. It is a sub-regional DP focusing on Birmingham and Solihull. Within the Aspire DP there are over 30 partners representing the statutory sector (e.g. Learning and Skills Council, City Council) and voluntary sectors (e.g. Birmingham Voluntary Sector Council, refugee community organisations and networks).

Aims 

The Asylum Seekers Pursuing Integration, Refuge and Empowerment (ASPIRE) Development Partnership aims to pilot creative ways of helping individuals and organisations support asylum seekers and ensure that time awaiting a decision on their case is spent in a constructive and useful manner, that enables them to prepare more effectively for their next step.

The main aim of the DP has been to ensure that asylum seekers in the sub-region are integrated effectively and able to make a positive contribution to the community in which they are living while awaiting a decision on status.

Objectives

• Improving access to and delivery of services to asylum seekers.
• Promoting community cohesion through the arts.
• Developing English for speakers of other languages (ESOL).
• Capacity building for refugee community organisations (RCOs).
• Creating volunteering opportunities.
• Transnational cooperation with partners in Italy, Germany and Poland.

Target groups

Asylum seekers in the Birmingham sub-region.

This partnership came together from an existing Strategy Group in the Refugee Support Partnership. The Birmingham Voluntary Sector Council was the lead delivery partner, in collaboration with voluntary sector agencies.

How integration works best

The collective experiences of the participating organisations indicate that the most effective ways of engaging with asylum seekers include a combination of activities that involve:

• arts
• customised ESOL support
• new capacity-building models for individuals and organisations
• providing opportunities for volunteering
• promoting networks for organisations supporting asylum seekers.

All these aspects of support facilitate the eventual future integration and employability of asylum seekers.

Access to reliable and relevant information

This is key to successful intergration. Asylum seekers experience difficulties in accessing reliable and relevant information. Problems in relation to the context, process and context of information provision are explored, as well as possible avenues for addressing these problems. Aspire has developed the following:

• a welcome pack
• a service directory
• the Aspire web site: http://www.aspire-birmingham.org.uk/

Capacity-building

There are problems in responding to capacity-building needs of individual asylum seekers, especially within the context where there are formidable barriers to participation in a range of social and economic activities. These can be as follows:

• promote culturally sensitive counselling skills
• disseminate value-focused tools
• maintain IAG through RCO
• disseminate developing staff
• RCOs improve engagement with mainstream providers.

Developing a collective voice

Asylum seekers need to be able to develop a ‘collective voice’: this would greatly enhance the capacity of the host country's services to identity and respond to real needs. 

Solutions include:

• development and production of newsletters and videos by asylum seekers for their communities
• establishment of placement opportunities for women in non-RCO organisations
• established ‘green’ volunteering opportunities
• development and piloting of impact analysis tools within volunteering – relates to soft indicators and distance travelled
• piloting of skills audits within volunteering environments.

Enabling services to accurately identify and respond to the needs of asylum seeker clients

There is a need to direct the challenges for services in host countries to identify accurately, and respond effectively to, the needs of asylum seeker clients.

Particular challenges relate to:

• sharing information between services
• ensuring that relevant information is made available in the right place at the right time
• overcoming difficulties in ascertaining real needs within a variety of different cultural and linguistic contexts.

Solutions include:

• the development of existing relationship with RCOs in their dealings with non-RCO bodies
• the establishment of an ESOL and Asylum Seekers Network
• facilitating a maximum of four community conversations with asylum seekers and key stakeholders.
• creating a network of arts-related organisations.