Reach In

Facilitating volunteer placements for refugees within housing providers to improve refugee employment prospects, address the skills gap within housing and enable housing providers to deliver better services to refugees.

Reach In is improving refugee employment prospects, addressing the skills gap within housing and enabling housing providers to create cohesive communities.

Many refugees in the UK experience unemployment, despite being highly educated and having valuable skills. Many housing providers need skilled staff, as well as those with awareness of refugee housing and integration issues.

Reach In has been developed by HACT to fill these gaps and has already involved 80 refugees having six-month volunteer placements with housing providers across England. There has been three waves of placements over three years, including a training module.

This will provide a Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) accredited certificate for each participant.

For the housing providers that took part in the first 3 waves – including Accord, Ashiana, Blue Mountain and Family (Birmingham) – the project helped them to strengthen their links with local refugee communities, to meet skills shortages within their own organisations, as well as to tackle worklessness within their neighbourhoods.

One of the first volunteers, Nadine Tunasi, featured in an article about the project in Inside Housing. You can also read more about her, and her fellow volunteer, Priscilla. Other volunteer stories that have appeared in the press include Nelma and Alain.

Reach In facts and figures

To date 80 refugee volunteers successfully completed Reach In.

13 of them have found paid employment in housing and related organisations, of which 6 volunteers were employed by their host organisations.

One third of the placements of the total placements hosted were extended beyond the original duration (4 – 6 months) because both, the volunteer and host organisation felt that extending the duration of the placement will be mutually beneficial.

34 volunteers passed the CIH course, of which 13 passed the course with merits. Another 11 volunteers have now completed the course and waiting for their results.

Download a presentation about Reach In