The Refugee Council Lived Experience Career Development Project

WRKWLL has been working with the Refugee Council on a major project to develop career pathways and progression opportunities for staff and volunteers with lived experience of the asylum and refugee protection system across the refugee and migration sector. The project aims to pilot innovations designed to ensure colleagues with lived experience can achieve their full potential, with all the positive impacts this would entail for individuals, the refugee and migration sector and society more widely. 

Abi Long, Executive Team Manager and Refugee Council’s lead for the project explains:

“We chose to work with WRKWLL due to their excellent knowledge of the charity sector, having a wide variety of consultants with different specialisms and their principles of co-creation. We also consider it important to work with organisations whose values align with our own.”

Phase 1 of the project from autumn 2023-24 involved extensive primary research to understand the barriers to career development and map a range of possible responses. This formed the foundation for Phase 2 from autumn 2024-25 - the design, delivery and evaluation of a major pilot programme trialling a range of interventions.

The project has placed lived experience at its core, with the WRKWLL team including a number of colleagues with relevant lived expertise. WRKWLL associate Amina Kadogo reflects on her role, applying the lens of lived expertise at each stage of the project design and delivery

"I love being part of the WRKWLL family and contributing to the project. It feels empowering to use my lived experience to enhance accessibility and inclusivity, especially for those, like myself, navigating the challenges of integrating into the UK work environment"

In addition, the project’s LEx-led steering group has driven decision-making about the project’s scope and focus. The steering group co-designed and delivered the primary research, stakeholder engagement workshops, project outputs and the subsequent design of  the pilot programme.  Reflecting on her membership of the steering group, Natasha Gallagher, Poverty and Social Exclusion Senior Officer at Mind comments:

"It has been a pleasure being part of the LECD project working with the Refugee Council and WRKWLL. Throughout the process I met wonderful people with a wealth of knowledge which provided the opportunity for myself, and for others with lived experience, to be heard in a space where our views were always valued and which supported learning."

The scoping phase of the project included extensive desk research to:

• Collate existing evidence about barriers to career progression for those with lived experience of the refugee protection and asylum system as well as other forms of social injustice. 
• Map and analyse a wide range of interventions designed to overcome these barriers.

This informed our primary research phase, which included 23 depth interviews with a wide range of participants, including current and former Refugee Council employees and volunteers, others leading innovative practice in this space from across the refugee and migration sector and organisations with pioneering approaches to supporting those with lived experience in other sectors. 

Our initial interview findings were shared with Refugee Council colleagues and stakeholders from across the sector at remote and in-person workshops in April 2024. The feedback from these workshops was invaluable in ensuring the research findings are as comprehensive and well-evidenced as possible. A selection of visual summaries of the workshop discussions, created by Illustrated Live is here. 

Our research report provides a  comprehensive summary of the themes that emerged from the interviews workshops in order to: 

• Inform the scope and focus of the pilot schemes to be developed by the project Steering Group.
• Aid the Refugee Council and other organisations across the sector to develop a clearer understanding of the barriers to career progression and development faced by colleagues with lived experience in order for them to consider their own potential interventions.

Insights shared by research participants about their own lived experience or that of colleagues informed the development of an analytical framework, with barriers broadly grouped into three categories:

1. Factors shaping individuals’ experiences and perceptions of career progression and development;
2. Inhibiting factors at the organisational level: 
3. The wider context of structural barriers across the sector and broader society.

The steering group used this analysis framework and our research on possible responses to these barriers to design a pilot programme with three objectives designed to support and empower people with lived experience and improve the support systems around them:

1. Working to embed anti-racism across the sector.
2. Building a holistic ecosystem of support through strong line management and inclusive, accountable recruitment.
3. Building individual skills, confidence, and aspirations

The pilot programme, open to Refugee Council staff and colleagues across the sector includes 17 different initiatives for those with lived experience as well as their line managers and colleagues. Some of the pilots include:

• Developing anti-racist leadership
• Training for managers on leading career development
• Evaluating inclusive recruitment practices
• Improving English Language skills

In addition to running some of the individual pilot programmes, WRKWLL is working alongside the Refugee Council in the project management and evaluation of this flagship programme. Please let us know if you’d like to receive updates about the emerging findings from this exciting and innovative programme! 

Abi Long sums up the Refugee Council’s experience of working with WRKWLL on this project.

“We hugely value WRKWLL’s critical friend approach, bringing both knowledge, support and challenge wherever needed. WRKWLL are consistently reliable, communicative, collaborative and understand the value of lived experience.”

Find more information about the pilot programme please contact Amie Hewka at the Refugee Council.