What you need to do

This chapter spells out the first steps that can be taken to create participation opportunities in your service or organisation. 

Step 1

Identify the person/people who will take responsibility for developing and supporting refugee participation. As discussed earlier, commitment from senior leadership (e.g. management team or a board of trustees) is essential and appointing a dedicated officer within the team will help get the work done. Staff who work with communities and/or have engagement, cohesion or related experience would be a good choice. However, it is likely that the appointed person/people will require additional training and development. It would be useful to add the required tasks into their role description, as your service or organisation will most likely benefit from developing sustainable expertise in participation.

Step 2

Develop a Refugee Participation Plan and ensure that it is signed off by the senior leadership in your organisation. This Plan will include a range of tasks and actions, as well as the rationale for developing refugee participation (see various sections in this toolkit). Make sure that you:

• Set clear objectives and what needs to be achieved, including what is important for refugees 
• Establish the likely impacts on the service/organisation, users, and communities
• Define key roles and responsibilities
• Identify key stakeholders, with details about engagement
• Describe the training and development that will be provided to staff and to participants
• List all envisaged participation methods and activities, including details about the recruitment of refugees
• Identify all resources that will be required to develop refugee participation (both internal and external), included a dedicated budget
• Design monitoring and evaluation activities, including criteria for success 
• Establish clear timescales and mechanisms to sustain participation over the long term, where relevant

Step 3

Consult with people with lived experience about your Plan, to ensure that it is realistic and likely to deliver the expected impacts – as these may be your first attempt to develop refugee participation, all you need is a brief appraisal of your Plan. You can, for instance, contact Migration Yorkshire or any of the participation resources listed at the end of this toolkit for advice and support.

Remember that participation should be proportionate to your objectives and available resources. The Plan can be as short and basic as needed, especially if you’re are part of a small organisation or team. By developing a Plan, we mean making your participation aims, methods, and resources explicit early on, which will increase transparency and accountability, and is likely to contribute to successful outcomes.

You may want to test participation out on a more topical issue first, before deciding to develop a long-term participation structure. It could be that you want to involve refugees in the development of a new service or policy or consult them about some proposed changes. Or you may simply be seeking their feedback on existing provision or a new translated document. The context is less important that the acknowledgement that seeking the views of refugees will contribute to meeting their needs and to successful integration.

Suggested actions

• Identify your first or next occasion to test out your proposed approach to refugee participation. It could be that you want to obtain feedback on an existing service or project, or you want to find out how to make your service or organisation accessible to new refugees or asylum seekers settling in your area. Draft an early version of a Refugee Participation Plan. This will help you frame the main issues, questions, and challenges. Mind you, you will still want to read through the rest of this toolkit and consult other resources before fully embarking on developing a full Plan
• Think about all the stages of the service that you provide. What are the best times to involve refugees to maximise the benefits of participation? You can draw a timeline (it could be the business or commissioning cycle, or the timeline of a specific project) and try to ‘insert’ refugee participation at the points where you think it would most relevant and impactful. Timing is of the essence and consideration should also be given to duration of participation activities and its effects on project timescales.