Our members spoke out about the impact on themselves and their families of not being allowed to work.  Click here to read their testimonies and watch our film to hear how they feel

BBC North East filmed with us for the Politics Show

More photos from our campaigning. A special thanks to Samouka, Lusine and Elvis for taking the lead.

In 2018 we joined the national Lift the Ban campaign coalition led by Refugee Action. Our members contributed much of the evidence contained in the report that launched the campaign, which you can read here.

Examples of our work include:

• Contributing to research to better understand what helps young refugees to integrate. Policy Lab is a small team in the Cabinet Office that supports government departments to develop ‘human-centred policy’. Several young refugees agreed to take part in filmed ethnographies of their daily lives. The Policy Lab understands that ‘gaining first-hand insights is a necessary first step before working towards potential improvements. (They) hope the study can build greater empathy for service users within the policy making process’.
• Carrying out peer led research, commissioned by the North East Migration Partnership, to hear the lived experience of refugees arriving under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Programme  (SVPR), helping to identify what works and what could work better from their perspective.

• Submitting our views to national consultation calls, including the design of Home Office asylum support contracts and the Government’s New Plan for Immigration.

• Collaborating with national NGOs, such as with Detention Action to produce the North East’s submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry on the use of immigration detention in the UK

We have

• Worked with the region’s DWP to submit a proposal to the Home Office for a practical offer of Move on support that could be systematically and equally available to all new status refugees. A pilot was trialled by the Home Office and DWP in the North East, Yorkshire & Humberside and then rolled out nationally as the ‘Post-Grant Appointment Service’. 

• We joined advocacy for a more comprehensive Move on support service to be part of the statement of requirements when the Home Office re-designed its support contracts from 2019. The AIRE contract included a telephone accessed Positive Move on Advice service. 

• We contributed recommendations to the design of one of 4 pilot employment, housing and integration support services commissioned by the Home Office under ‘RTOF’, which became North East RISE.