Feedback from an asylum seeker in Hertfordshire on the Know your Employment Rights course:

Good day! Hope you doing well! We have finished the course with Ronza. We learned a lot and I really appreciate everything that you did for us. Ronza is a good teacher - she was excellent we learned a lot from her. It was really informative and worth all the knowledge so I'm grateful for everything. Thank you so much!

Our IELTS courses are proving extremely popular. We've had this feedback from a client in Essex:

I would like to say thank you for the opportunity to join the IELTS preparation course. This course is so useful and the teachers are amazing, they help so much. I enjoy learning with your team!

Thank you again.

And this one from Bedford:

I am writing to say a huge thank you for accepting me for this English for IELTS course which is really helpful. I have tried ESOL courses previously but they were too basic and given that I am still in process of setting up my family's life here, I couldn't afford time-consuming course with no visible improvements. 

Unlike my previous course, the one you have offered is incredibly helpful and I see my skills development. 

Thank you and the rest of the team. 

SLC are an excellent provider of online IELTS and OET courses. Read more about their work with us and other funders here: Language Training for Refugees – Specialist Language Courses

East of England LGA, Strategic Migration Partnership (SMP)

Employability for Overseas Nationals

Project Report April-June 2024

Overall project aim: We provide an intensive, wrap around model of support across the region with a focus on registering 590 clients to provide general employment support to a range of overseas nationals, including Ukrainians, Hong Kongers and highly skilled workers. We also work with asylum seekers before a decision is made on their asylum claim to assist them with the transition if they are granted leave to remain in the UK.

Overview

EON - EELGA SMP started in November 2023 to meet the needs of clients who cannot access the Refugee Employment Programme (REP) | Get Set UK and STEP Ukraine | World Jewish Relief. At that time it was funded through central government funds held by the SMP and International Recruitment East. It has been enabled to continue into the 2024/25 financial year thanks to funding from 23 local authorities in the region.

1. Employment advisers’ activities delivered.

The employment advisers (EAs) work hard to create/edit CVs, assist with applications, offer a range of advice and refer clients to various external organisations. These external referrals are for services including ESOL, apprenticeships and other training. Internal referrals to the ENIC qualification equivalence service remains a core service, with 45 certificates of equivalence requested in the quarter.

2. Successes, achievements and milestones delivered during this reporting period.

The EAs are seeing a wide range of nationalities and clients with a number of different immigration statuses. Local additional activities vary across the region. Some clients who were assisted into adult social care roles under EON 2023 have successfully received their £500 grant for related expenses from the International Recruitment East programme. The second employability workshop for Hong Kongers in Hertfordshire took place and was extremely popular. IKEA in Peterborough is an outstanding employer which recruited 4 clients initially for short-term placements but with the opportunity of a permanent position at the end of the placement. Overall, with 206 clients enrolled and 26 people finding work, we have an employment rate of 12.5%.

The SMP Hong Kong Hub’s efforts to advertise EON to Hong Kongers, including sharing information through their new Facebook page, have seen success with an increase in referrals from the online form and 26 enquiries in the quarter.

3. Challenges experienced.

The EAs and other partners continue to experience some lack of engagement from referrals. People have busy and often complicated lives so their level of commitment to moving into work may vary significantly over time. Reasons included poor or changes to housing, health problems and part-time work hours. Other challenges include low technical skills or digital exclusion from not having access to appropriate devices.

At the end of the quarter we were informed that our Cambridgeshire employment adviser is leaving for another role in a local authority. So recruitment is ongoing to replace this EA: VACANCIES | HELP (helpcharity.org.uk).

4. Work with asylum seekers.

The number of asylum seekers currently housed in hotels who arrived before the Illegal Migration Act (IMA) came into force on 7/3/2023 was lower than expected. This is being remedied as the EAs are now developing a better understanding of the IMA. Consequently, some asylum seekers in the Contingency Accommodation (CA, mainly hotels) are now eligible for EON because they arrived in the country through legal routes but claimed asylum after the cut-off date. The IMA does not apply to these people so we will start to work with more of them next quarter. Access to people in contingency and dispersed accommodation was initially very slow but is improving. For example, the EAs in Bedfordshire have been able to visit 5 hotels but the EA in Cambridgeshire is still trying to get access to the 2 hotels in his area. Accessing people in dispersed accommodation has been particularly slow in Norfolk and challenging in Suffolk as there are so few asylum seekers now living in the county. The EAs in Hertfordshire and Essex are also working hard to visit hotels in these areas and build up relationships with potential clients. The EAs have found asylum seekers to be interested, welcoming and grateful for the interaction. However, many asylum seekers want to apply for permission to work or ask for assistance that the EAs are not able to provide. This may relate to requests for example for alternative housing, food or clothes.

People remained highly concerned about the Rwanda situation (before the new government announced that this policy would not be pursued) and a general resolution to their claim. Some of our EAs are working with asylum seekers for the first time and they are building up the skills and expertise. It is notable that this group is more likely to experience digital exclusion and are only able attend online meetings/lessons using smartphones since they have no access to other devices.

5. High skills clients.

The work with doctors and the 1-to-1 support for clients is progressing well with the continuing free offer of clinical attachments from East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust although we had only one client start an attachment in the quarter. Accommodation remains a challenge for the clinical attachments that are available since they are rarely offered where the doctor has their home. Over the past quarter work has been ongoing with the Medical Professional Group to offer more clinical attachments and other training opportunities for doctors. Links have been made with Refugee Action to offer mentoring for pharmacists. Other mentoring opportunities have been offered for IT and tech careers with RefuAid. We are investigating a volunteering opportunity with Anglia Ruskin University for refugee doctors to work with current medical students. Work is ongoing to send CVs to various NHS Trusts in the region to enable staff to review and encourage applications based on the review. A connection has been made with the Restore programme for nurses in Sheffield with the potential to offer a similar programme in the East.

6. Entrepreneurialism.

Our partner MENTA has registered 35 clients in total for EON 2024. Over 70% of these are Ukrainian with a few other nationalities represented. The number of Hong Kongers is disappointingly low at just one. The services on offer include 1-to-1 meetings, a personality profile and business planning workshops. The virtual networking event that took place on 11^th June was a success with 9 attendees. Although clients are juggling a range of commitments and there has been some lack of engagement, most clients are progressing well with the course. 11 of the 28 clients from the EON 2023 programme have now (July 2024) started their businesses after working with MENTA and some case studies from these clients are available here: Employability for Overseas Nationals (EON) (menta.org.uk).

7. ESOL.

It is pleasing that the integration courses produced under WW4RI were able to restart under EON 2024. These will be delivered face-to-face in Peterborough, Ipswich and Hertfordshire and online for the rest of the region. Driving theory remains very popular with 14 clients taking part in the first course with GLADCA in Peterborough and 28 online.

We have been preparing a 6-unit housing and homelessness module in partnership with the Greater Manchester Law Centre’s housing expert and Specialist Language Courses (SLC), which will be ready to deliver next quarter.

The IELTS and OET courses also remain extremely popular with 22 students starting SLC’s IELTS courses between April and June. We expect to continue scheduling more IELTS courses very soon.

8. Summary.

The employment advisers have worked very hard to build up relationships with asylum accommodation providers and asylum seekers themselves as a new target group. Across the region they saw 206 new clients of whom 52 are asylum seekers. This puts us in line to reach our target for the year in the third quarter of the project. The EAs will continue to assist asylum seekers in the future. We will work flexibly to develop our services in response to feedback from our funders’ priorities and the new government’s policy and legislative framework.

Please direct any questions about this report to: Gill Searl at gill.searl@eelga.gov.uk or 07790 973101

East of England LGA, Strategic Migration Partnership (SMP)

Employability for Overseas Nationals

Project Report July-September 2024

1. Employment advisers’ activities delivered.

The employment advisers (EAs) work hard to create/edit CVs, assist with applications, offer a range of advice and refer clients to various external organisations. These external referrals are for services including ESOL, apprenticeships and other training. Internal referrals to the ENIC qualification equivalence service remains a core service, with 22 certificates of equivalence requested in the quarter.

2. Successes, achievements and milestones delivered during this reporting period.

This quarter all of the employment advisers have been successful at both registering new clients and working with existing ones. It is pleasing to see that the work done since the start of the financial year is paying off with a rise in the number of clients. For example, the Essex EA is now working with clients in Southend and the Cambridgeshire EA finally has access to a hotel housing asylum seekers and has been building relationships with referral organisations outside Peterborough. The Suffolk EA is expanding his area of work beyond Ipswich by providing short-term employability courses. The first, which took place in Haverhill, was well-received and more are planned.

3. Challenges experienced.

The riots and attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers outside our region in August had a detrimental effect both on our partner organisations (some of whom were forced to close premises) and our clients. Some of the hotels also prevented access by our EAs and others in order safeguard residents during the month of August.

It remains difficult to reach Ukrainians and Hong Kongers in Hertfordshire; however the EA is resolving this by interacting and networking more with referral organisations.

One further challenge has been to find childcare so that a doctor is able to attend a clinical attachment (work placement) outside of her normal place of residence.

4. Work with asylum seekers.

After a long period of contact building, our EAs now have access to nearly all of the hotels housing asylum seekers in the region. Demand varies between the hotels so the EAs are making choices as to which hotels to visit more or less frequently.

In Bedfordshire the EAs have visited 6 hotels in total and will continue to visit some of these. Demand is so high, especially in Luton, that the EAs are having to limit new registrations in order to have the capacity to work with those they have already registered.

The work permit situation of asylum seekers is complicated and EAs have to take care to only assist people with finding jobs that they are permitted to undertake. More asylum seekers than expected have permission to work but some are only permitted to accept work on the Shortage Occupation List or the new Immigration Salary List. Others are able to take any type of work.

Asylum seekers frequently ask for assistance beyond the EAs’ remit, such as moving out of the hotel, more ESOL classes or access to devices. This last issue also causes some people to drop out of our integration courses.

5. High skills clients.

Five high skilled clients were referred to World Jewish Relief for a 12-week mentoring programme within the Royal Household; we are awaiting outcomes to see which, if any, have been selected. We have also relaunched our own mentoring programme and will shortly be matching mentors with clients.

We are now able to financially support up to 10 doctors with costs associated with the requalification process.

Work is ongoing with guiding high skills people back into their profession. Although the focus remains on medical careers, referrals now cover a wider range of work including IT, software and engineers.

The business start-up/self-employment programme through MENTA remains very popular with a total of 36 people registered. EAs have made more referrals and some people will start the programme in October. 19 have fully completed the activities. We already have 11 confirmed businesses started and 4 more are known to be trading but are yet to complete the registration. This is an excellent start-up rate and we expect the numbers to further increase before the end of the financial year.

The IELTS and OET courses remain extremely popular with new classes starting each month. 65 people are now enrolled on or have completed an IELTS or OET course this financial year. The final 3 courses commissioned for the financial year are also filling up very quickly. Learners find these courses highly beneficial and enable them to take the exam with confidence.

It is pleasing that the integration courses produced under WW4RI were able to restart under EON 2024. These are being delivered face-to-face in Peterborough, Ipswich and Hertfordshire; online classes are now open to the whole region thus providing additional options if face-to-face classes are unavailable or fully booked. Driving theory remains very popular with learners. Some classes have completed in all locations including online with more scheduled.

We have been preparing a 6-unit housing and homelessness module in partnership with the Greater Manchester Law Centre’s housing expert and Specialist Language Courses (SLC). Delivery will start in October and November.

Feedback from the ESOL providers shows that asylum seekers frequently have a lower ESOL level and therefore benefit from personal feedback and peer support.

Attendance was a challenge over the summer for various reasons, including some Ukrainians returning to their home country. The ability of some learners to connect to online lessons is also a difficulty to overcome with many asylum seekers accessing online lessons on their mobile phones. They usually do not have any other device available to them.

The employment advisers have worked very hard to build up relationships with asylum accommodation providers and asylum seekers themselves as a new target group. They are now working with 433 people across the region (against a full-year target of 590) of whom 35.5% (154) are asylum seekers. In the first quarter of 2024 this number was 52 so work with this target group is expanding rapidly. However working with asylum seekers places extra demands on the EAs as they a challenging group to work with. Demand from other target groups remains strong, meaning that EAs are under greater pressure than before to meet the needs of all of their clients.

We expect to reach our 590 client target in the third quarter of the project.

Funding requests have been issued to local authorities around the region for the 2025/26 financial year. We are aware that STEP Ukraine will end and we also expect REP to close to new applicants by December 2024. We hope to continue being able to fund EON from the commitments made by the local authorities in the East of England. We will work flexibly to develop our services in response to feedback from our funders’ priorities and the new government’s policy and legislative framework.

Please direct any questions about this report to: Gill Searl at gill.searl@eelga.gov.uk or 07790 973101