Obstacles In The Kitchener-Waterloo Region: Level Of Individual Refugees

Investigating the Problem When answering the question of why refugees in the Kitchener-Waterloo region have difficulties finding employment, I think it is useful to make the distinction between obstacles that occur at the level of individual refugees and those that exist at a system level. Drawing this distinction will help to focus recommendations at addressing these obstacles in a more effective manner.

INDIVIDUAL LEVEL OBSTACLES

Among the individual obstacles, the majority of obstacles can be further broken down into two further categories, skills and competing priorities. Obstacles of skills are perhaps the most apparent of obstacles that refugee face in their quest to receive full employment. Language competency was frequently cited,

These are more variable between individual refugees as they are highly personal. For example, the competing priorities faced by a single adult are likely to be very different from the ones faced by a parent with a young family. Some common competing priorities that have been raised include: the immediate need to find housing, family needs, medical problems, emotional/mental health needs, language acquisition. While skills based obstacles, all operate based on so real or perceived deficit of a core competency required to work, competing priorities impact a refugee’s ability to work because they also draw on the time available for refugees to navigate a complex system

Refugees, like all other Ontarians, can accesses government funded employment services through Employment Ontario. EOA exist in a system where they must compete for clients to secure government funding. To secure funding, EOA are also incentivized to not duplicate services already provided by other providers. This creates a system where there must be a great deal of cooperation between service providers for people utilizing the system be successful, but coordinating between so many actors is a difficult task. An example of this difficulty in working cooperatively, that was mentioned at the RH visit is that the system requires working between organizations, and limits the ability of working between individuals at RH and the EOA. This might make sense in a well designed system where the difference between individual employment councilors was small, but based on the experience of RH, there is actually a very high degree of variability. Since RH cannot ensure that refugees sent to an EOA will speak to the people who show aptitude at working with refugees, RH has a difficult time ensuring refugees are receiving the best services. There have been positive developments in the KW resettlement system’s organization as a result of the Syrian influx, but the sustainability of those innovations remains to be show once we return to business as