Northern Refugee Centre

Improving services and opportunities for refugees and asylum seekers in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

Introduction

The Development Services team exists to develop the capacity of our service users in Yorkshire and Humberside, as individuals and through organisations and fora, to identify and address issues affecting their lives and their relationships with the wider community. We aim to act as a bridge delivering services at the grass-roots level and working at the strategic level to ensure that our service users' experience informs and influences policy and practice locally, regionally and nationally.

For further information, please see our development plan or contact Development Services Manager Ian Martin at

Strategic Development

In order to deliver this vision, NRC is involved in a range of initiatives at a strategic level and alongside partner organisations, including:

We provide support to the development of:
South Yorkshire Refugee Communities Forum and
South Yorkshire Network for New Migrants

We also convene the Refugee Voluntary Sector group for Yorkshire and Humberside. This body brings together voluntary sector organisations focussed on meeting the needs of refugees and asylum seekers to share information and address issues of common concern.

This group also elects a representative to the Regional Strategic Group for Yorkshire and Humberside, bringing together public, private and voluntary sector organisations to provide a strategic overview of asylum and refugee issues across the region

We are an active member of the Refugee Community Development Workers' Network for Yorkshire and Humberside. We have been leading on the delivery of a ChangeUP funded project, aiming to increase refugee participation in policy development and decision making. For further information, click here to go to our ChangeUP project webpage.

At a local level, NRC is also engaged with the development of Integration Strategies in Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield.

Strategic Development Projects

Within the development of all of these bodies and strategies, NRC tries to implement the above vision based on the experiences of our service users. Two of the key issues emerging through our direct work with refugees and asylum seekers are:

1. Access to childcare for refugees and asylum seekers

The issue of access to childcare for refugee and asylum seeker women came to our attention through its identification as a priority by the South Yorkshire Refugee Communities Forum and Sheffield Women's Conversation Clubs. The issue was then directly taken up by the South Yorkshire Network for New Migrants and subsequently raised and met with common appreciation in a variety of related fora at a local, subregional and regional level. Discussions and preliminary research carried out within these arenas has identified that lack of childcare is a barrier to refugee and asylum seeker women accessing services and opportunities. We are extremely concerned about the negative impact this has on an individual refugee or asylum seeker woman's ability to integrate and the subsequent impact on her mental health.

In order to address this we are currently seeking funding for 2 projects:

a. A research and policy project leading to the development of best practice and briefings on access to childcare for refugees and asylum seekers in the context of wider integration.

b. A 'Refugee Childcare Training Project' that aims to provide greater access to childcare that is sensitive to the needs of refugees as well as helping to suort refugee women in accessing employment opportunities.

2. Access to employment for asylum seekers and refugees

The Northern Refugee Centre's Refugee Employment Project aims to facilitate refugee integration through developing better pathways to appropriate employment for refugees in the Yorkshire and the Humber region. This project relates closely to the aims of the Regional Refugee Integration Strategy.

Our Team