Good practice in social care for refugees and asylum seekers
About this guide
The purpose of this guide is to support commissioners and providers of social care services to work effectively with refugees and asylum seekers. It is based on the belief that refugees and asylum seekers have rights, including the right to a high quality of assessment and provision in response to their social care needs. This guide is designed to enable practitioners to navigate the complex terrain of policy and practice relevant to asylum seekers and refugees. It is worth noting from the outset that this is an area where the legislative and policy framework changes frequently and some details may quickly become out of date. However, the general principles and approaches described in this guide will be longer-lasting. The guide provides:
- A rights-based approach
- Key messages from the research evidence
- Legal and policy framework
- The social care needs of asylum seekers and refugees
- Barriers to accessing appropriate high quality services
- Principles for practice
- Suggested good practice
- Practice examples
- Information about resources and useful organisations.
The guide draws heavily on the research report (SCIE Report 31: Good practice in social care for refugees and asylum seekers). This features a focused literature review and a practice survey, including focus groups with asylum seekers and refugees and a survey of disability charities, asylum seekers and refugee organisations and local authorities across England, Northern Ireland and Wales in order to identify indicators of good practice and practical examples, which are discussed in this guide. These examples have not been validated as good practice or evaluated, but serve to illustrate local developments in practice designed to encourage a positive response to promoting the rights of asylum seekers and refugees.
Who is it for?
This guide is aimed primarily at professionals working in local authorities in children’s and adult services. It is aimed at both a strategic level for those planning and commissioning social care provision for asylum seekers and refugees and at professionals involved in everyday practice. It may be particularly useful for those organisations that have relatively little experience of commissioning and providing social care services for asylum seekers and refugees. It will also be of interest to asylum seeker and refugee organisations and relevant charities who may be providing social care, and to other organisations with a responsibility for meeting the broader health and social care needs of asylum seekers and refugees, namely primary care trusts (PCTs), mental health organisations and housing providers.
About the development of this guide
This guide has been developed by Karen Newbigging and Nigel Thomas from SCIE Report 31: Good practice in social care for refugees and asylum seekers.
The project research team included Karen Newbigging, Zemikael Habte-Mariam, Nadia Ahmed, Dr Manjit Bola, Laura Buckley, Professor Ajit Shah and Joanna Hicks (International School for Communities, Rights and Inclusion, University of Central Lancashire), and Professor Nigel Thomas (School of Social Work, University of Central Lancashire).
See the Key messages from the research section or more details.
Scoping and searching
Initial scoping was done by SCIE in June 2006 to inform external commissioning of a research review to a registered provider. A full account of SCIE’s required research review methodology can be found in Research Resource 01: SCIE guidelines for systematic reviews.
The review has been published as SCIE Report 31: Good practice in social care for refugees and asylum seekers.
Stakeholder involvement and consultation
The Project included a research review and a practice enquiry and a call for examples of good practice, plus a summary of relevant legislation and policy. A Project Advisory Group including users and user organisations steered the project.
Peer review and testing
The Project Advisory Group and a topic expert reviewed the recommendations for the guide.
How you can help
SCIE welcomes comments on any aspect of the guide which will inform future updates. We are also very interested in collecting further examples of good practice. Please send us your feedback.via email at publications@scie.org.uk.
Acknowledgements
We are deeply grateful to those individuals and organisations that have supported this work. We are particularly grateful to the women, men, young people and children, seeking asylum or refugee, who gave their time so generously to help us with this project. We are also appreciative of the time and interest from refugee and community organisations and local authorities. Special thanks go to the additional support and advice that we received from Laura Buckley, Eileen Jackson, Henry Mumbi, Dr Azim el-Hassan and Pete Fleischmann.
We are grateful to members of our Project Steering Group for their time and invaluable comments. We would also like to thank those other individuals and organisations that have given freely of their time and advice and have agreed to be included in this guide.
Project Steering Group members: Zemikael Habte-Mariam (chair), Dr Azim-el Hassan, Pete Fleischmann (SCIE), Henry Mumbi (Community Health Action Trust), Nadia Ahmed, Karen Newbigging and Professor Ajit Shah.
