In this blog post, we dive into our project to develop career pathways and progression for staff and volunteers with lived experience. These are some of the key findings of our research, and you can learn about what’s next for us as we move into the pilot phase. You can hear more about the barriers to employment in voluntary organisations in this interview on the Third Sector Podcast.
In our 2021-2025 organisational strategy, we committed to “encourage and enable our staff, volunteers and trustees to make the best use of their skills and abilities, provide excellent selection processes and high-quality development training“. In 2023, we commissioned WRKWLL to undertake with us a major project to develop career pathways and progression for staff and volunteers with lived experience of the refugee protection system.
The project aims to pilot initiatives designed to ensure colleagues with lived experience can achieve their full potential, with all the positive impacts this would entail for individuals, the refugee and migration sector and society more widely. We committed to making sure these pilots were grounded in evidence, and that they would be tackling key barriers to development.
Eight months in and we’ve made considerable progress, co-producing each step of the way with an incredible steering group made up of experts from both the Refugee Council and the wider migration sector (80% of whom have lived experience).
This research report focuses primarily on the first-hand accounts we recorded via interviews and workshops, centring the voices and personal experiences of those who participated in the process. In recognition that language is so often a barrier to inclusion in this sector, we also commissioned a live illustrator at the workshops to visually capture the discussions: these are embedded within the report, and shared in full in the appendix too.
So, how did we get here? Back in October, we conducted broad research into both the barriers those with lived experience of any kind face in developing their careers, and the good practice they’ve been a part of to overcome them. This included exploring both practices within the migration sector, but also looking beyond that to organisations across health, homelessness, LGBTQIA+, those supporting people with multiple disadvantages, and several organisations doing dedicated work in career development in commercial sectors too.
This background research raised key themes that we dove into with primary research specifically focusing on the Refugee Council and those in the wider refugee and migration sector, including a qualitative survey, 23 interviews and several workshops. Guided by the findings, we created an analysis framework that grouped the barriers into three interconnected and overlapping levels: structural, organisational and individual.
“There is structural and systemic racism and this is where the sector needs to shine a light and there is a lot of hesitancy and being very timid to call it out, and until we call it out for what it really is, we are not going to resolve these issues.”
Once we’d explored the barriers to development, we asked participants what approaches and activities we could pilot in the next phase of the project to really start to address some of the key challenges raised. We were really struck by their feedback that while some interventions should be designed to support people individually, there was strong consensus that initiatives will only have meaningful impact if they co-exist together to form connected parts of a holistic ecosystem of support.
“A foundational element highlighted by all participants was the importance of raising both systems awareness and self awareness around the barriers faced by colleagues with lived experience. Initiatives cannot happen in a vacuum if they are to be successful.”
In the final section of the report, we explore the possible initiatives indicated by the research to pilot; including feedback from participants around what works well and what to avoid.
“It is crucial for line managers to have a nuanced understanding of the reality of the people with lived experience because this will help create a reflective environment where there is mutual learning by the manager and the person with lived experience.
This will also help shift the mindset whereby people with lived experience are not seen as a “burden” requiring extra work to develop them, rather they should be seen by managers with no lived experience as assets with tremendous value, not least because they understand better the issues that the organisation is working towards addressing.”
So, what’s next? The steering group have interrogated the variety of barriers presented in the report, and reached consensus on those they felt were most important to tackle as part of the pilot programme.
We’re now going through a co-design process to map out what these initiatives could look like, how many we could run within the allocated budget and who we could bring onboard to collaborate with. We’re running two focus groups in July (one internally, one with externally) to feed into the design process.
We’re aiming to launch the pilots in autumn this year, with a clear commitment to embed impact measurement in each.
Want to hear more? Reach out to the Refugee Council’s Exective Team Manager Abi Long for more information.
