Ann Moroney & Nadette Foley look back at the legacy of Access Ireland and its work to help integrate refugees from around the world during a time of unprecedented change for Irish society
Access Ireland came into in being 1998 – a long 15 years ago. Fifteen years that, as we are constantly reminded, have seen enormous changes across Irish society, not least in the lives of refugees and migrants who make up a significant part of the ethnic minority population of Ireland.
Its setting up was prompted by the period when Ireland was adapting to the arrival of refugees in large numbers for the first time in recent history. Looking back, one could characterise these refugees as pioneers in a pattern of expanding inward migration that was to continue rising over the next decade.
The mood of the time about this phenomenon was a complex mixture of optimism and caution. The optimism included the view that a new population entering the country in such numbers was an opportunity: Ireland now had the resources to rise to the challenge and was in a position to develop a multifaceted response that would successfully promote the integration of refugees.
Conversely, caution included a fear that services would not be able to cope with the new demands; and a generalised fear of the unknown, which often included prejudice and indeed racism.
Most western European countries were experiencing increasing numbers of refugees at this time and a significant development was that, in 1997, the European Union established major and innovative funding specifically directed at the social integration of refugees in all EU host countries.
Access Ireland, which was originally established as a sub-project within the Irish Refugee Council, was set up with the help of this funding together with creative co-funding from the Eastern Health Board (now the HSE) and from Fás. The group later became an organisation in its own right and gradually expanded its focus to include ‘people of diverse cultures living in Ireland’.
Throughout its 13 years, Access Ireland built up a strong partnership with the HSE through accessing funding, delivery of HSE staff training, work placements for refugees and migrants and supporting individual health service providers and their clients. Access Ireland facilitated some of the consultation processes and helped to influence the development by the HSE Social Inclusion Unit of the first Intercultural Health Strategy for Ireland.
Integration and community development
From the beginning, Access Ireland adopted the guiding principles of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) in relation to the EU Integration Funding, that integration “begins on day of arrival in the host country” and “is a two-way process”. This means that whether or not refugees seeking asylum ultimately remain in the host country, it is important to support and invest in them. The relationship between refugees and indeed all migrants and their host society can and should be reciprocal and mutually beneficial, if the right supports and structures are in place.
Inspired by these integration principles and community development methodology, the core work of Access Ireland over its 13-year lifespan was in developing initiatives that would promote the integration of refugees and migrants in Ireland, with a focus on their health and social wellbeing, using community development principles. A central cornerstone of the work was harnessing the skills and talents of refugees and migrants.
The following are some of our main initiatives:
- Training a team of people from refugee backgrounds to work as trainers in intercultural competence for staff of health, social and other services.
- Running a three-year training and integration programme for women seeking refuge in Ireland, in partnership with the North Wall Women’s Centre in Dublin. This project successed in two ways: through providing key skills training for the participating women, it facilitated their entry into Irish society and the Irish workforce; and also facilitating a vibrant dialogue between these newly arrived women and longer term members of the local community.
- Developing the model of intercultural mediation, a professional discipline that had already been developed and tested in many other EU countries. In broad terms, the intercultural mediator – a trained person from an ethnic minority background – acts as a communication link between service providers and the ethnic minority users of services in order to assist the user in easier access and better outcome from services. The concept fitted well with Access Ireland’s core values, in that people from migrant or ethnic minority backgrounds are trained in the essential skills to deliver the service.
Over a period of some seven years, a number of people from African countries, China, the Middle East and from the Roma community participated in this training and went on to do some groundbreaking work as intercultural mediators.
Facing forward from where we stand now
Looking back on those 13 years engenders mixed feelings of satisfaction and regret for all of us who have participated in the Access Ireland project. There is the obvious regret that, for reasons mainly to do with the economic downturn, intercultural mediation has not been established formally within mainstream health and social services. The work already done by the trained mediators and their commitment and enthusiasm for the concept, together with positive feedback from service providers and ethnic minority users, indicate that it has much to offer in promoting equality of access and outcomes for people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
However, the work of people like Gabi Muntean and Flora Okobi shows also what has been a major source of satisfaction and inspiration throughout the life of Access Ireland – the rich knowledge and the contribution to the work that refugee and ethnic minority community development brought to it by members of the ethnic minority population themselves.
We are also pleased to report that as its final publication, Access Ireland has produced a lasting legacy of its work in the field of Intercultural mediation. This is the Intercultural Mediation Training Resource: A Practical Training Manual and CD, which was formally launched on Thursday 30 May.
The production of this training resource involved working closely with the team of Intercultural mediators, a collaborative partnership with HSE and with partner organisations in other EU countries who have already developed intercultural mediation. The project was funded also by the HSE and by the European Integration Fund, which is administered in Ireland by Pobal.
At local level around Ireland, many other migrants and refugees are now taking their responsibility for fostering integration as a two-way process.
Because the work of Access Ireland grew out of the Irish Refugee Council, it is a huge regret that that agency has had to recently highlight the continuing discrimination against those seeking asylum evidenced by the ‘direct provision’ system. Since the year 2000, unlike their peers in other European countries, refugees at asylum seeking stage in Ireland are effectively barred from integrating into Irish society until a decision has been reached on their application. Until then, they continue to be institutionalised and in many cases experience damage to their mental and physical health, living in ‘direct provision centres’ that maintain their distance from Irish society.
Looking forward, we hope that all the mediators and trainers who came through the programmes run by Access Ireland may continue to use their skills in intercultural mediation in some extraordinarily creative ways, as the work of Flora and Gabi illustrates.
