Digital Love: WE Values

(originally published on the Cities of Migration website)

Immigrant and refugee-serving agencies provide important services, they also coordinate with and refer to other human service providers. Coordinating complex services can be challenging. In Windsor, Ontario, community agencies are tackling complex system navigation with the goal of creating more effective and client-centred services.

The WE Value Partnership appears to be a technology and data project. And it is. The YMCA of Southwestern Ontario, along with Workforce Windsor-Essex and its community partners, is creating a customized Client Management System that will allow settlement workers and, eventually, other service providers to streamline newcomer client intake, assessment and referral. WE Value wants more accurate, timely referrals for newcomer clients into the community, leading to better client outcomes.

Better systems can have an impact on a newcomer’s integration. But the goal is broader, to have an impact on the entire community. As a digital transformation AND community engagement project WE Value is leading a community cultural shift in how the city looks at settlement of newcomers. By increasing service accessibility, they hope the entire community will be improved.

Clients are seen as asset-based, rather than needs-based. Project partners recognize the skills, experience and energy newcomers bring. and their potential to be long-term contributors to local community health, wealth and well-being. It’s an important shift in how immigrants, whatever their initial status, are seen: as assets to and within the community rather than people with needs or vulnerabilities to be fixed.

Creating seamless community service access

WE Value seeks to break down service silos, coordinating service provision to help newcomers at the right time. The simple act of bringing community stakeholders together in the project’s first year has already led to more responsive and effective service coordination.

They’re bringing together organizations that act as key system navigators for other human services in the city and region. A newcomer-specific health clinic has connected more deeply with a mainstream health-care coordinating organization that maintains a database of doctors who only work with them to manage wait-lists and referrals. Moving
from a gatekeeper to a system partner and navigator, newcomers can be referred to the mainstream health-care provider to better navigate the system and find a permanent doctor or family health team.

Relationship and trust building are key to creating these system navigators. Connecting the right people to each other in the community requires taking the time to build trust, collaboration and partnership. Partners want Windsor to move to a two-way approach to newcomer integration focused not only on newcomers adapting, but making sure that the community adapts and is welcoming as well. The goal is not only to better outcomes for newcomers, but for the community to fully understand that it’s success and growth is tied to newcomers genuinely being able to meet their full potential.

Local organizations understand the benefits of streamlining services and the two-way approach, but there are concerns. There are real fears about how policy or regime change might affect their services, programming, organizations and funding. Acknowledging these concerns has sparked conversations that are building trust and new relationships that are moving the community to a truly reciprocal relationship with newcomers - and will serve them well in the future.

Using data to drive innovation and relationships

As the digital transformation in case management moves forward more reliable local data based on the actual information and needs of newcomers entering the region will emerge: “The only thing more exciting than all the data and the research that could be created from this project, is the creation of personalized, community-wide, referral plans for newcomers so that they can be referred to the right service, at the right time and at the right location. This silo-busting approach to service will best serve newcomers and their families, leaving these new Canadians in the strongest position to contribute to their country and community. With better service referrals and better outcomes, I think our newcomer-serving organizations will not only experience increased service volume, but also stronger community recognition of their work.”

The new case management system will give WE Value partners the data they need to measure service impacts and
outcomes with newcomers. This will allow them to pivot where needed, change, modify or create needed services, as well as help community partners know the impact of their system navigation.

By creating more robust intake and assessment processes with newcomers, they can be more accurately referred to the systems and services needed to speed up their integration process. Settlement professionals can also focus on the work they do best and trust that their community partners are meeting other newcomer needs.

Success

In building a better and more client-centred system, WE Value partners have already started to build a more connected
community. For immigrant and refugee-serving organizations, referring clients into the community is an essential part of how they help. As WE Value brings organizations that provide important services to the table, the community is already seeing more streamlined referral processes and more awareness of each other.

Valuing newcomers in the community means being open to system change. WE Value is building on the premise that
newcomers are valuable for the community. Investing in a better welcoming and settlement experience will ensure that their value is felt across the city. To do that, all city actors need to work together to remove complex barriers, work better together and seek to make what is complex simple for all newcomers and, inevitably, for employers and more.

Watch the WE Value Partnership Final Forum (webinar recordings) for more information.