Description
Background
Refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants without status experience precarious living and working conditions that disproportionately exposed them to COVID-19. In the two most populous Canadian provinces (Quebec and Ontario), to reduce their vulnerability factors, the public and community sectors engaged in joint coordination efforts called intersectoral collaboration. This collaboration ensured care provisioning in times of crisis, for example inclusive of psychosocial support and assistance to address food security. Our study explored selected intersectoral initiatives’ responsiveness from the perspectives of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants without status.
Methods
We conducted a qualitative and participatory multiple case study, using data from interviews (n=4) and 21 focus groups (n=76) with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants without status in Toronto (Ontario), Montréal (Quebec) and Sherbrooke (Quebec). Thematic analysis was carried out using an adapted version of the framework on health systems’ responsiveness, with inputs from our research advisory committees (whose members included refugees, asylum seekers and service providers).
Results
Emerging themes were attention to non-COVID priorities, i.e., social needs (i.e., immigration documentation, housing needs), accessing care services (i.e., awareness of and to access services including accessibility to vaccination, and wellbeing support systems), and services continuity. Participants’ experiences shed light on how intersectoral initiatives can be improved to offer holistic responses to the needs of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants without status.
Conclusion
This study offers lessons to improve the responses to various needs of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants without status, in social and health service delivery. Raising awareness of and accessibility to planned resources may benefit newcomer migrants and foster inclusivity within the community. Our findings can also stimulate the development of intersectoral discussion forums to strengthen intersectoral responses on implementation and sustainability issues.
Our study also featured successful participatory methods, whereby representatives of service providers and service users (refugees and asylum seekers) sitting on our advisory committees, contributed to each step of the study, including in analysis and dissemination. For example, asylum seeker and refugee members co-presented preliminary findings along with students and researchers, to ethno-culturally diverse audiences. This project therefore also offers unique lessons learnt from our inclusive participatory methods in the field of migration and health.
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