Refugee Response Co-ordination Work Group and Engagement Structure

  1. Review of Taskforce and Sub Group Structure

The Refugee Response Coordination Team has carried out a review of experience from the first four weeks of the Refugee Taskforce and Sub Group structure to identify what’s working and where improvements could be made. Officials engaged with SRC, Cosla, News Scots strategy represenratives, key Taskforce members and colleagues. The key issues identified include:

  • Membership of the Integration Sub Group is sizeable. Its strengths are in the breadth of the partnership, the skills and expertise of the members and the enthusiasm to participate. However, the size and fluidity of attendance has made it unmanageable as a mechanism to progress issues.
  • The Accommodating Refugees Sub Group is smaller and has settled to an effective and focused programme of work.
  • Some key elements of the Taskforce’s work are not currently captured by the existing structure. Including work such as negotiations on the VPR scheme would strengthen coordination.
  1. Proposed Structure Changes

After reviewing learning, some changes – see diagram on next page - to the structure are recommended:

  • Taskforce: Ensures strategic coordination and linkages across all themes and issues. The Cosla VPR Officers Group is also included in the structure to represent the delivery mechanism for the strategy.
  • Integration Forum – meets once a month chaired by John Wilkes. The Forum would engage members around the key issues. The Forum would identify and explore key issues and inform the work of both the Taskforce and Work Groups feeding in directly through its Chair. It would also sense check issues and ideas developed by Work Groups. Its membership would be more fluid to encourage participation.
  • Work Groups: small, time limited groups working collaboratively on specific tasks and issuesaligned with New Scots strategy. The Groups would report through the Taskforce making recommendations and would work collaboratively with the Integration Forum and the Cosla VPR Officers Group.

Cosla and SRC Taskforce leads have a key role in this new structure working closely together to make links and connections between the Work Groups, ensuring that the right issues are referred to the Taskforce for discussion.

  1. Alignment with New Scots Strategy

The structure has been developed to build on implementation of the New Scots: Integrating Refugees in Scotland's Communities strategy. It reflects the key areas identified by the strategy: Employability and Welfare; Housing; Education; Health; and Communities and Social Connections. The proposal is to utilise the existing New Scots groups building on expertise, established collaborative working and capitalising on work already done. A high level workplan would be developed capturing the work of the Work Groups, defining key tasks, ownership and timescales.

Detailed monitoring of the Work Groups would be undertaken by the existing New Scots Core Group – the Core Group would also link the work on the Syrian Resettlement Programme with wider work on refugee and asylum seekers to ensure a coherent approach is developed for the long term integration of all those coming to live in Scotland.