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A recent study commissioned by the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance (Reconfiguring Settlement and Integration: A Service Provider Strategy for Innovation and Results) argues that the settlement sector as a whole has an existential interest in strengthening its intellectual capacity and its ability to manage innovation.  To date, sector growth has focused chiefly on delivery capacity. Information for the study was gathered through workshops, focus groups and interviews conducted across Canada with the heads of settlement and ethno-cultural agencies, senior provincial and federal officials and executives from mainstream organizations such as the United Way and community foundations.

The main conclusion to emerge from the study is that governments and settlement organizations have a shared interest in working collaboratively to achieve successful settlement and integration outcomes.   This conclusion is based on the observation that the settlement sector possesses unique skills and knowledge and that meeting emerging challenges will require precisely those skills in which settlement organizations enjoy a comparative advantage over other organizations.  The challenges identified by the study based on academic and government research and policy assessments include fiscal constraints, the shift towards longer-term social and cultural integration objectives (as distinct from economic and near-term settlement goals), greater immigrant dispersion, continuing concerns with inclusion and urban poverty among newcomers, growing complexity resulting from the need to combine programs from multiple jurisdictions, and the entry of new competitors for a sub-set of services.

The study proposes that the comparative advantage of settlement agencies manifests itself in four strategic capacities.

• An ability to comprehensively assess client needs and to cut across program silos, assembling services from multiple departments and governments;
• An ability to focus on families rather than individuals;
• A ‘place-based’ ability to channel services to neighbourhoods and to promote ‘bridging’ between mainstream and newcomer communities; and
• An ability to assemble services in moments of crisis.

Critically, the knowledge and skills that endow the sector with these capacities can only be acquired tacitly, on-the-job.  Similarly, the ability to bridge and mediate between established and newcomer communities results from working hands-on with mainstream and ethno-specific organizations, thus earning their respect and trust.   Governments cannot replicate these capacities because program knowledge is often siloed and ministries tend to be unfamiliar with program intersections and interactions.   The fact that the settlement sector’s strategic capacities must be acquired ‘on-the-job’ means that the sector’s strengths cannot be replicated by other agencies, giving the sector a durable, strategic advantage.

Because of this strategic advantage, the paper concludes that governments and settlement organizations have a shared interest in strengthening the settlement sector.  This will require investment in five areas:

1. Investment in the settlement sector’s intellectual capacity, notably its ability to analyze intervention outcomes and to bolster program and service innovation.
2. Acceleration of the shift to measuring outcomes rather than activities and adoption of accountability regimes that allow greater flexibility in programming and offer stronger support for planning and analysis.
3. Investment in universal front-end assessment capacity to optimize referrals and support specialization so as to improve client service and reduce transactional inefficiencies.
4. Investments in better connectivity between the settlement sector and ethno-specific and mainstream organizations in order to improve services and strengthen links between newcomer and host communities.
5. Service eligibility should be expanded in response to evolving policies and population dynamics, extending the reach of settlement agencies to (some) temporary workers and citizens.

The findings and recommendations contained in the report are the subject of ongoing discussions between the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance and federal and provincial agencies responsible for settlement policies and programs. Access the report here: http://p2pcanada.ca/library/report/reconfiguring-settlement-and-integration-a-service-provider-strategy-for-innovation-and-results/