Pathways to Prosperity: Canada

Pathways to Prosperity (P2P) is pleased to announce a new Call for Nominations for the project Developing an Evidence Base and Sharing Settlement and Integration Practices that Work (DEB).

ABOUT THE PROJECT
Pathways to Prosperity has been contracted by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to share innovative promising practices in immigrant settlement and integration with an empirical basis for their effectiveness. To date we have produced 25 videos and briefs for this purpose, and over the next five years we will be producing an additional 40 videos and accompanying briefs on promising practices, targeting a range of service areas, providers, and client groups.

HOW TO NOMINATE A PROMISING PRACTICE
A new Call for Nominations is now open and you are invited to participate in this research project through nomination of one or more promising practices.

Promising practices are innovative practices that have an objective basis for claiming effectiveness in achieving their stated aims and that have the potential for replication. Thus, promising practices are defined in terms of their innovation and effectiveness, which can be empirically measured as successful outcomes of the practice. Our approach focuses not only on identifying truly promising practices, but on analyzing and sharing key features that can be replicated. Of course, promising practices may have faced challenges in their initial implementation, and these challenges are also considered and analyzed so that others can learn from these experiences.

P2P is seeking nominations of promising practices from a variety of stakeholders involved in the settlement and integration of immigrants and refugees across Canada. Practices do not have to be IRCC funded and can be self-nominated. Practices must be able to demonstrate their effectiveness through an external evaluation or within-organization measurement of outcomes that can be shared (e.g., website URL; you would be able to send it). Because the areas of practice we are profiling in this round are focused on responses to the pandemic and the changes it has required, preliminary evidence of effectiveness will be accepted in this round.

Promising practices in this round should focus on one (or more) of the following areas:

Providing Settlement Services Online
Most agencies had a week or less to suddenly shift their entire organization to a remote and digital service delivery model as a result of the pandemic. There have been challenges and successes. You may have been more, or less, ready to make this move. What were you doing with technology before the pandemic that made this shift fairly easy? If you were caught less prepared, but feel you have been successful in the shift online, what does your service delivery model look like now, and how will you maintain what you have learned post-pandemic in a hybrid or blended service delivery model?

Providing Information to Newcomers During the Pandemic
Settlement agencies, LIPs and RIFs, and other organizations working with immigrants are often system navigators and points of reference for newcomers and local communities. During the pandemic and the shift to remote/digital work, what role did you play in helping newcomers to understand the supports available to them from the government and understand how they could access supports from agencies? In addition, what role did you play in providing useful, authoritative, up-to-date, and relevant information about COVID itself, and how to deal with the pandemic?

Collaboration Among Service Providers During the Pandemic
How did you step up your collaboration with other agencies in your community to ensure that client and community needs were met? What role did technology play in helping you to do that?

Pandemic Supports Provided by LIPs and RIFs
LIPs and RIFs are by design community convening and research bodies. While agencies were busily and hastily trying to figure out the shift to remote/digital service delivery, what role did you play in helping them do that? What role were you able to play to identify the technical literacy and digital equity challenges and opportunities among newcomer communities in your city or region?

Addressing Digital Equity
Throughout the pandemic the sector has become more aware of and is working to address digital equity/inclusion and the digital divide in our communities. It is clear that digital equity intersects with other systemic equity issues, such as racism, poverty, discrimination, etc. How have you been working to address this challenge in your work with newcomers and communities you serve? What projects or solutions have you come up? Where have you been innovative and inclusive?

Nominations will be reviewed by the Consultation Committee (constituting a team of settlement and research representatives across the country) in late January 2021. A set of promising practices from this Call for Nominations will then be selected and featured on the Pathways to Prosperity website through videos and accompanying briefs (click here for examples).

Note that videos will be shot online in February – April 2021. Videos will feature several individuals who developed and use the practice discussing the essential ingredients that would need to be replicated in order to transfer the successful practice to other locations and to related areas of practice.

A nomination of a promising practice will take approximately 20-30 minutes to complete. Feel free to nominate as many promising practices within the areas listed above as you would like. Participation is completely voluntary. You may refuse to participate, refuse to answer any questions or withdraw at any time with no effect on your relationship with P2P, AMSSA, or any of the settlement umbrellas who may be sending out this call. No compensation is provided for submission of a nomination, though the individuals who participate in the video and brief production at a later stage will receive compensation for their time.

Submit one or more nominations here:
https://uwopsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3E4J6EuGBp8zK2V

(A copy of the nomination form is available here for your information, but please submit your responses through the online link above.)

By submitting a nomination, you are consenting to participate in the initial nomination stage of the research process and to have the description of your submitted promising practice considered for possible follow-up for video and brief production. This description will be viewed by the members of the Consultation Committee for this purpose. Any information presented or published about the initial submissions will appear in aggregate form only in combination with other submissions. If your practice is selected for follow-up, separate consent will be obtained for the video and brief production, and you will not be obligated to participate in that separate phase unless you choose to do so.

Information collected in this initial nomination phase will have identifying information of your organization (organization name, phone number, website) so that we can potentially obtain further information about the practice. In addition, we will obtain your contact information in a separate link not directly attached to your responses so that P2P can potentially follow-up with you for more details, and can contact you at a later time to invite your participation in video and brief production.

Your responses will be collected through a secure online survey platform called Qualtrics. Qualtrics uses encryption technology and restricted access authorizations to protect all data collected. In addition, Western’s Qualtrics server is in Ireland, where privacy standards are maintained under the European Union safe harbour framework. The data will then be exported from Qualtrics and securely stored on Western University’s server. Representatives of The University of Western Ontario Non-Medical Research Ethics Board may require access to study related records in order to monitor conduct of research. You do not waive any legal right by consenting to this study.

There are no foreseeable risks of this research and you may not benefit directly from your participation, though the results are expected to benefit the settlement sector as a whole through the sharing of promising practices and the key components that make them work.

DEADLINE
The Call for Nominations will be open from January 4 – 29, 2021.

QUESTIONS
Should you have any questions about the project or call for nominations, please contact Alina Sutter at p2p@uwo.ca.

If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant or the conduct of this study, you may contact The Office of Human Research Ethics at Western University, (519) 661-3036, 1-844-720-9816, email: ethics@uwo.ca. This office oversees the ethical conduct of research studies and is not part of the study team. Everything that you discuss will be kept confidential.

We look forward to receiving your nominations.