Consultation Response Refugee Council response to Review of the future role and scope of the London Councils Grants Scheme November 2010 About the Refugee Council The Refugee Council is the largest organisation in the UK working with asylum seekers and refugees. We not only give help and support to asylum seekers and refugees, but also work with them to ensure their needs and concerns are addressed by decision-makers. We also have X years experience working with refugee community led organisations across England in their work with vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers. About this response This document has been written following meetings with Refugee Community Organisations (RCOs) based in London. Some of these are directly funded by London Councils now and some have been in the past. It is also informed by discussions with the Black and Minority Ethnic Advice Network (BAN) whose members include many RCOs. We also write from our experience as a support organisation working with RCOs and on principles built up through this work. Response to specific questions from London Councils London Councils is proposing in the future that its grants scheme be limited to funding genuinely London-wide services as described in the introduction and the accompanying background document. To what extent do you support or oppose this proposal as described at point 1.5 in the background document? 1. Strongly support 2. Tend to support 3. Neither support nor oppose 4. Tend to oppose 5. Strongly oppose 6. Don t know 7. No opinion Please summarise your reason/s for this below: Although the Refugee council broadly agrees with the need to fund Pan London funding, we do not agree with the categorisation or criteria applied here (see Page 1 of 5
comments at Section 3 on this). However, in principle our experience is that there is a lack of genuinely pan London funding to support our client group. This is particularly important as refugees and asylum seekers may not reside permanently in one borough as they may be homeless and/or relying on the goodwill of friends, family and community members. Many refugee community organisations working with them report that people come from across London to use their services. Pan London funding also supports efficient cross working between organisations and communities, both in cost and access to equitable London wide services. Indeed this was the main reason for the establishment of the London Councils grant scheme. Refugee community organisations (RCOs) provide a bridge into mainstream services for people who otherwise may not access them. It is important that they are linked with their communities but also important that they are connected to wider projects and organisations to identify common issues, coordinate and provide a genuine pan London service. However, we are also aware that services decided locally and in discussion with local communities can be a major benefit to our client group. It makes sense to seek a balance between locally organised and Pan London funding in order to best support refugee communities in the capital. We are concerned that, at a local authority level, the use of large commissioning processes rather than smaller grants have led to many groups feeling excluded from council funding. This is important as refugees and asylum seekers are also supported locally by small organisations run by volunteers. These groups make an important contribution to ensuring equality in outcomes for their communities but are often not viewed as large or complex enough to be commissioned. Equally, many groups are concerned that Local Authority priorities are moving away from support to vulnerable communities and that this transition may not actually support their work. We would expect to see an equalities impact assessment carried out to ensure that care is taken to address inequality in any new funding arrangement (see further detail on this in section 6) Please consider the list of services in categories A, B and C. Please indicate if you think any service should be put into a different category. You said that the service 38 should be in category A Please summarise your key reasons why below: We believe that the service 38 (Improve access to advice for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and refugee and migrant communities) should be categorised as a Pan London service (category A). Organisations which have come together to provide this service receive clients from across London. For those organisations that work on a community basis -for example specialist provision to London s Somali Community as part of the wider BAN advice project - one particular community may be scattered across several London boroughs. We feel that a categorisation based on the needs of the beneficiary group is more accurate. For example, we know that the unavoidable transient nature of refugee and asylum seeker movement means that they often travel across London and access services from other boroughs depending on their needs. This project is unique in that it brings together community based organisations from many of London s largest communities to allow those groups to access their rights. It was envisaged and encouraged to be Pan London and working across communities at its inception. Please rank the following options on a scale of one to four, where one is your most preferred option and four is your least preferred option. 1. All current funding ends on 31 st March 2011 (whether or not the term of the original approval has been completed). (4) 2. All funding under category A continues to be funded through London Councils for Page 2 of 5
the remainder of the term of the original approval (even if this is beyond 31 st March 2011) and services in categories B & C end on 31 st March 2011. (3) 3. All funding under category A, and some of categories B and C continue to be funded through London Councils for the remainder of the term of the original approval with funding for the remainder ending on 31 st March 2011. (2) 4. All current funding continues for the remainder of the term of the funding agreement, under London Councils administration. (1) You said that Option 4 is your most preferred option. Please explain your answer below. We feel that grant agreements should be honoured for their full term for the following reasons: Fairness and good practice it is widely understood to be poor practice and against the spirit of the Compact to cut funding before the term is due without any concern given to delivery and affected service users This will allow organisations to put in place strategies to seek alternative funding that will protect vulnerable clients and build on the investment already made. Continuing funding will also allow organisations to embed partnerships that have taken time and resources to develop, and to discuss future strategies. It would allow time for an equalities impact assessment (as outlined in the Compact agreement) to be carried out regarding this major change. You said that Option 1 is your least preferred option. Please explain your answer below. We feel that grant agreements should not be cut before their term is completed for the following reasons: Fairness and good practice it is widely understood to be poor practice and against the spirit of the Compact to cut funding before the term is due without any concerns around delivery. This will not allow organisations to put in place strategies to seek alternative funding that will protect vulnerable clients and build on the investment already made. Terminating contracts for services would undermine efficient working practices which have developed and been invested in. It would not allow time for an equalities impact assessment (as outlined in the Compact agreement) to be carried out regarding this major change. We have made the following wider comments as the automated response service did not permit space to make them. They appear in our formal response under any other comments. Comments on the difference between funding determined locally and via the London Councils Grants Scheme The intrinsic nature of working with refugees and asylum seekers at a community level means that clients come from across the city to use a service. There may be a greater concentration in one borough than another but not a sufficient mass for a Local Authority to consider supporting a service there. We also know that refugees and asylum seekers often move from one borough to another as they are often forced to depend on friends, family and community or are made destitute as a result of asylum decisions and/or inadequate state integration support. Therefore RCOs have a particular need for funding which is not limited to one borough as this restricts who they serve. We are also concerned that unpopular issues such as support for refugees and asylum seekers will be squeezed out of local authorities priorities as they make Page 3 of 5
spending cuts, which will significantly impact on the equality of access to services for our clients. According to the London Mayor s integration strategy, London Enriched, RCOs make a major contribution to the integration of refugees and asylum seekers. This strategy is underpinned by coordination and investment across London. This priority is not mirrored at a local level given that National Performance Indicators to support refugees and asylum seekers are not included in Local Area Agreements. Comments on how funding sources and criteria affect the work of refugee community organisations RCOs need to find a balance between being locally rooted and connected with wider networks and open to working with clients from across London. Their value is in their openness and the bridge that they provide between vulnerable populations and mainstream services. The London Councils funding allows organisations to operate at a level, which meets their clients needs. Locally funded projects can create barriers to working with clients from a particular borough. This is more difficult for RCOs to manage than an organisation like a Citizens Advice Bureau. Firstly, there may not be an equivalent organisation in another borough to refer to. Secondly, RCOs operate on a basis of trust in their community and there is an expectation that community members will be supported, which can lead to work being carried out that, is not funded. We are aware of local authorities recognising the particular needs of refugees and asylum seekers at community level and continuing to work in innovative ways with RCOs to support communities. For instance, Camden Council funds the Sudanese Women s Association to provide much needed services to refugee women in the borough. In fact Kiran Patel, Capacity Building Manager at Camden Council said: Sudan Women s Association is funded under a category of access to services. What Camden has recognised very, very clearly is that because of language and cultural difficultly for women in our community, they tend to congregate in their own communities that s a great point of access to other statutory services. Sudan Women s Association fulfils that very important role, as well as helping people to feel positive about themselves and alleviating isolation. Poverty is also an issue, as well as children in schools. (http://www.thebasisproject.org.uk/casestudies/sudan+women%e2%80%99s+association). Another example of council recognition of RCO local services is Sutton Council and Southwark Council who have identified RCOs, Refugee Migrant Network Sutton and Southwark Refugee Communities Forum as strategic partners and fund them for their specific roles in those boroughs (http://www.thebasisproject.org.uk/casestudies/refugee+and+migrant+network+sutton). Comments on the potential impact on services if the London Councils Grants Scheme funding was discontinued? The withdrawal of this funding so quickly may mean that offering this service is no longer viable. The impact on clients would be increased isolation, lack of access to services and issues such as increased debt, missing payments to landlords and utilities providers, homelessness and an increase in poverty. We would also predict increased pressure on other services provided by local authorities; the spending cuts will inevitably lead to substantial social fall out, with potentially fewer small community organisations being able to pick up the pieces. This may result in various Local Authority services being overburdened with requests for support e.g. health services, educational support, and training and employment support. The Afghan Association say that since they lost funding for their advice work in Spring 2010: our association has since not been able to help and advise the community as effectively as we may have in the past. We receive cases regarding immigration, benefits and other local issues on a daily basis but in various cases are unable to provide the best services from our association with out the advisor. This in turn has placed more strain on local authorities who are forced to deal with the situation themselves. Finally, those organisations that have been serving their community for up to 25 years would find themselves in a very precarious financial position. With pressure coming from Local Authority grants and commissioned services and this additional pressure, even groups with a Page 4 of 5
relatively diversified income base will struggle to maintain a professional service. The potential loss in leadership and investment by local authorities, communities, trusts and foundations over many years would be enormous. Groups that previously received London Councils funding such as the Afghan Association report that This situation has made it highly difficult for our association to provide our services to the community to the best of our own abilities. These organisations have come together to work across communities, to work with other voluntary sector partners, to seek greater efficiency and provide a genuinely London-wide service as encouraged by London Councils funding. These efforts would be lost. In an interview London Council s Head of Overview and Scrutiny stated: There s an emphasis, in London and elsewhere, on organisations working together to deliver these services across geographical areas and organisation type http://refugeecouncil.typepad.com/basis_project_blog/2008/06/ian-redding-int.html. November 2010 Fazil Kawani Executive Director for Integration Page 5 of 5