| Integration-Net Infocentre
Title/Titre: Professionalization of the Settlement Service Sector |
Professionalization of the Settlement Service Sector*>> Adobe®Acrobat format, size: 36K, 6 pp Resource Persons:Sherman Chan, Multilingual Orientation Services Association for Immigrant Communities (MOSAIC), Vancouver; E-mail: <schan@mosaicbc.com> Marie-Claire Rufagari, Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI), Montreal; E-mail: <tcri2@cam.org> Diane Fisher and Jeremy Hexham, Alberta Association of Immigrant Serving Agencies (AAISA), Calgary; E-mail: <contact@aaisa.ca> Lauren Johnson, British Columbia Settlement and Integration Workers’ Association (BCSIWA), Burnaby; E-mail: <bcsiwa@telus.net> Moderators: Adnan Türegün and Nancy Worsfold This two-part workshop explored strategies to improve the professional standing of the settlement sector. Among the issues discussed were training, accreditation, and national standards for agencies and workers. In the first part, the panellists presented innovative projects and practices originating from different regions and organizations. In the second part, the audience were engaged in a structured small group discussion. Part I: Panel DiscussionAs the first panellist, Sherman Chan of MOSAIC provided background information on the National Voluntary Sector Initiative (VSI) Working Group on Settlement Standards, Professionalization, and Accountability, which he co-chairs on behalf of the settlement sector. Although VSI held its second and last national settlement conference in 2003 (October 2-5, Calgary), the working group continues to look at ways of contributing to professionalization in the settlement sector as part of the social services sector. The discussion of the issue at this workshop is a positive development in itself. The issue needs to be discussed in consideration of the diversity of constituent agencies in the sector and also of the availability of resources. We need to continue these discussions and communicate the results both to the national table and to our respective agencies. Mr. Chan also gave an overview of what has been achieved to date in terms of establishing settlement services as a sector. The history of settlement services in Canada has been a gradual progress. In the early years, when immigrants and refugees came to this country, they were helped by relatives, friends, church groups, and ordinary Canadians on a voluntary and informal basis. As the years went by, the informal help has been institutionalized in the form of settlement services to newcomers. For example, in 1922, the first settlement service agency was established to serve Jewish refugees (Jewish Immigrant Aid Society). By the 1970s, immigrants and refugees were receiving settlement services, as well as general social services. After moving from informal to formal settlement services in 82 years, we are now debating, in 2004, whether we should professionalize our sector. Reflecting on his work with MOSAIC, CCR, and VSI, Mr. Chan referred to three national documents which had discussed the historical progress and future direction of the settlement sector. Produced by CCR in 1998, the first document is titled Best Settlement Practices: Settlement Services for Refugees and Immigrants in Canada. The second document, also from CCR, is titled Canadian National Settlement Service Standards Framework (2000).1 So, in discussing the issues of professionalization and standardization across the country, we have a history and “historians” to refer to. Our work has not stopped and we continue to discuss the issues. When the idea of VSI came about, we as a sector had the opportunity to approach CIC for a joint working group to look at settlement standards and professionalism. With government and sector representatives from across the country, the resultant Working Group on Settlement Standards, Professionalization, and Accountability hired a consultant to do research and come up with a discussion paper to look at accountability, professionalism, and standardization. Developed for the Second National Settlement Conference, the discussion paper, National Settlement Service and Standards Framework, is available on Integration-Net.2 The paper, which is the third document Mr. Chan referred to, defines the settlement sector as a sub-sector of the social services sector providing primary services through community-based and non-profit agencies governed by voluntary boards of directors. It also looks at standards in terms of agency, programme, and practitioners. In her presentation, Marie-Claire Rufagari of TCRI addressed the challenges of working with newcomers. Working with newcomers requires more and more skills, in terms of knowledge, in the sense of both understanding and know-how. In fact, as well as having a good knowledge of the social, cultural, political, and economic context of the host society, the worker needs to have a good grasp of the diverse realities of immigrants and refugees in terms of the processes, the experiences, the life course, and the obstacles that these newcomers face in their adaptation and integration. This presupposes a good understanding of the issues of displacement and the various changes inherent in migration. Through its training programme, TCRI (in existence since 1989) has been able to realize the degree to which interventions with newcomers are complex and require constant adjustment. This has led us to offer a continuous education programme with modules for upgrading that respond to the needs of the workers and to the questions they pose themselves. We have identified three important constants in the training needs: issues and challenges arising from intercultural communication in an intervention; the necessity to adapt practices and, therefore, to develop new types of intervention; and the need to get deeper into the shocks experienced by the workers which are the source of numerous blockages during interventions. Among the topics included in training are, for example, cultural shock, losses inherent in migration, bereavement, the threat to identity in the context of intercultural intervention, and resources available to workers in such situations. Ms. Rufagari pointed out that, when working with newcomers, it is now clear that we cannot make things up as we go along. In fact, we observe that other agencies are referring cases more and more frequently to settlement agencies when they are confronted with complex cases. Academics are also interested in the innovative practices developed in recent years by those working with refugees and immigrants at the grass-roots level. The diversity of the journeys, life course, and experiences of refugees and immigrants is reflected in the complexity of interventions. This leads us to say that not only is there room for innovation, but we need to be continually getting training and improving our skills. Diane Fisher (Training and Accreditation Committee member) and Jeremy Hexham (Administrative Assistant – Settlement Workers Training Project) of AAISA described the training and accreditation activities of their organization. Representing 21 immigrant-serving agencies from seven communities across Alberta, AAISA began the discussion about professionalization in the settlement sector as early as 1986 with the development of two committees – the Training Opportunities Review Committee and the Settlement Worker Professionalization Committee. After about five years of meetings and development, the first Settlement Worker Training Programme was launched in 1991 as a pilot between AAISA and Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton. Although excellent, the model did not have all the components necessary for sustainability and did not succeed beyond the pilot phase. The issue was taken up again in the late 1990s with funding from Alberta Learning. The past experience was a stepping stone and the challenges were revisited and explored further. The following complexities needed to be addressed:
The new project involved an AAISA Settlement Worker Training Advisory Committee and a team of consultants along with a staff person. The new training model involved the following steps:
Accreditation is designed as a combination of the training modules attended, other relevant courses (Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition), and experience through documented case studies. An accreditation review committee is now in place to review applications. The AAISA model includes three levels of accreditation, in addition to a first level at which orientation is given by a settlement agency:
Fisher and Hexham informed the audience that the accreditation process has been piloted and is “good to go.” “We are very pleased and excited at the model we have to offer for the accreditation of settlement professionals through the AAISA model,” they said in conclusion. The last presentation was made by Lauren Johnson of BCSIWA. Ms. Johnson spoke about the roles of practitioners, accountability, subsidizing government training in British Columbia, and consumer protection in relation to the issue of professionalization in the sector, particularly, in her province. She began by asking a few questions. Do we value the work of settlement practitioners? Immigrant-serving agencies value the work of settlement practitioners. Does the government value the work of settlement practitioners? If we value it, how much is it worth – in dollars and cents? What does this job entail? It can be argued that settlement workers have more specialized expertise than comparable social service work in a second, third, or even fourth language. This is “two professions in one”: delivering the service in the original language of a newcomer and being a social worker and an interpreter. The starting rate for interpreters is approximately $26 an hour. For social workers, whose work is not different from that of settlement practitioners, the starting rate is a little less than $22 an hour. Settlement practitioners have a holistic approach to the betterment of a client, knowing how to interpret and translate and having the well-rounded knowledge of the issues from housing to legal services – all the issues a client has to overcome in order to fully integrate into the community. Settlement work is a profession of its own with the added stress and excessive workload. It is hard to imagine a more integral and crucial profession in our community when we deal with clients trying to survive. Beyond all this, a settlement practitioner has contractual obligations such as data collection, financial reporting, and so on. S/he should also maintain the levels of professionalism in the areas of development and training. And all of this is just to meet the requirements of the job! Ms. Johnson then moved on to the issue of accountability. According to her, the government is spending money to provide settlement services that have low levels of standardization in terms of delivery. Given all of the job demands of a settlement practitioner, it can no longer maintain providing non-regulated, non-standardized, and insufficiently compensated settlement services. The government chooses how the money is spent but not the quality of service the money could provide. In this context, Ms. Johnson referred to a recent (2004) study by the Community Social Planning Council of Toronto which found that the service programmes of non-profit community organizations are under-funded, especially, in such areas as employee benefits, frontline supervision, and core organizational functions.3 As a result, agencies are using their “other income” from charitable and other sources to cover the deficits in government-funded service programmes. In British Columbia, BCSIWA is making some advances. The association offers travel subsidies for settlement practitioners to attend training sessions and other events such as CCR meetings. Specialized training exists in the province. BCSIWA conducts an annual survey to determine, in each region, what the needs of settlement practitioners are. Based on the survey results, the association secures a training workshop facilitator who understands the content of settlement work and who typically volunteers part of her/his time in facilitating the workshop. As far as consumer protection is concerned, immigrants and refugees have a right to be served by qualified practitioners. The level of integration immigrants achieve depends not only on themselves but also on the quality of orientation information and settlement services they receive. The government should make sure that there is a network of trained and certified settlement practitioners who are competent to provide settlement services. How can a BC settlement practitioner go her/his own way to get professional training with an average hourly pay of $15? In conclusion, Ms. Johnson emphasized that there is a lot of excellent work being done in the settlement sector and that it needs to be legitimized and recognized. One of the ways to do this is the accreditation process – a process similar to the one which is being implemented in Alberta. It is also important to have a regulating, licensing body. The recognition of this service sector is long overdue and the salary should reflect the demands of the job. Part II: Small Group DiscussionsFollowing the presentations, the audience were divided into small groups to discuss any one topic from a list provided by the moderators and to come up with strategies for the training of better educated workers delivering higher quality services. The topics included education, accreditation, service models, “community-based” versus “professional” concerns, and strategies. Concerning education, the groups were asked: In an ideal world, what would be the education requirement for frontline settlement workers and settlement programme managers? Who should provide that training? The questions relating to accreditation were: Would a process of accreditation help the process of professionalization? What or who would be accredited – agencies, workers, or both? What body would control such an accreditation? Should it be provincial or federal? Concerning service models, it was mentioned that funding is focused on individual client service and group services for individuals. Often, there is a need for community development and other ways of approaching problems? The groups were then asked if this was an issue in service delivery. As for the “community-based” versus “professional” concerns, the groups were asked how individual workers and programme managers could balance between the contradictory pressures from clients and maintain appropriate professional relationships. At the end of the discussions, each group gave its feedback to the rest of the audience. The session was concluded with a resolve to pursue the issue further. *. This is a summary of the same-titled workshop held as part of the Fall 2004 Consultation of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), November 18-20, Victoria. The summary was first published in INSCAN: International Settlement Canada, vol. 18, no. 4 (Spring 2005), pp. 12-15. 1. Both documents can be viewed online at: <http://www.web.net/%7Eccr/bpfina1.htm> and <http://www.web.net/%7Eccr/standards.htm>, respectively. 2. The URL for the document is: <http://integration-net.ca/inet/english/vsi-isb/conference2/working-travail/p04-00.htm>. 3. Titled Community Capacity Draining: The Impact of Current Funding Practices on Non-Profit Community Organizations, the study is available online at: <http://www.socialplanningtoronto.org/CSPC-T%20Reports/Community%20Capacity%20Draining%20Report.pdf>. |
This information has been provided by an external source. Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the content, the Centre for International Migration and Settlement Studies (formerly Research Resource Division for Refugees), Carleton University, does not offer any guarantee in that regard. Cette information provient d’une source externe. Même si tous les efforts ont été déployés pour assurer l’exactitude et la fiabilité du contenu, le Centre d'études sur la migration internationale et l'établissement (anciennement la Division de ressources pour la recherche sur les réfugiés) de l’Université Carleton ne peut offrir aucune garantie à cet égard. |