What you need to do

Recruiting for refugee participation can be a challenge. If you work with a very small number of refugees, you will naturally want to engage directly with as many as you can. If the number of service users with lived experience is high, you will need a specific recruitment process, such as when working with advisory groups or forums, but are also relevant when you work with a ‘sample’ of a larger group of refugees.

There are a few principles to observe:

• Participants will ideally be ‘representative’ of the diversity of groups and individuals within refugee communities (see access and inclusion). This also means that you may need to target certain groups at times.
• Participants will ideally have the skills and abilities to accurately ‘represent’ the wider community. By effectively being representatives of other refugees, their brief is to voice not only their lived experience, but also those of others. It is possible to facilitate the representation by, for instance, supporting communication between group members and the wider community (for example, social media), or even using nomination and voting processes.
• The recruitment process needs to be open, transparent, and fully accessible. Avoid limiting yourself to picking participants because of previous engagement, or assume they fit best.
• Ensure that the participation roles are specified, including what is required from participants. Participation is an active role, so it should include a range attributes and responsibilities, as well as information about the behaviour and values associated with the role.
• Avoid competitive processes. Declining or refusing participants can have a negative impact on the process. It is good practice to meet participants before they are finally recruited (in an informal interview context). These meetings should be an opportunity for applicants to assess if the role if suitable for them. Everyone should be encouraged for participation.
• This means that setting up ongoing application processes and avoiding strict deadlines If you need to close applications early on, you may have to deal sympathetically with enquiries from those who did not apply before the process was closed.
• Focus on psychological safety and wellbeing. Ensure people reflect on if and how participating may impact on them, and any boundaries or support that may need to be in place to meet their needs.

Pay close attention to how you promote your participation opportunities. It is likely that these will attract individuals who have already established strong relations with organisations of different types, as employees, volunteers, or trustees, for instance. These people have a great deal of experience that can be relied upon in participation processes, but it is worth engaging with refugees who do not have that networking experience. You can do that by promoting participation opportunities in service provision settings (for example, appointments, drop-ins, outreach surgeries) by having staff and other providers explain and discuss these opportunities with clients. (make sure that you make your recruitment of participants as inclusive and accessible as possible – see ‘accessible and inclusive participation’).