Settlement services are key to Canada's success in welcoming and integrating immigrants. Offered mainly in person prior to COVID-19 by non-governmental agencies reliant on and regulated by government funders, services were forced online and delivered by staff working remotely. The authors document this transition between September 2020 and September 2021 in Ontario, Canada and the conditions that influenced it.

Surveys completed by workers and managers at member agencies of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants reveal how agencies provided services and stabilized organizational resources and capacities. Their success is evident in staff satisfaction with management's responses to the pandemic.

While findings underscore the resilience of the agencies and their workforce, they also challenge many tenets of New Public Management. The survey and discussions with managers suggest that sustained and flexible funding, rapid and respectful communication between agencies and funders and collaborations with other agencies were key to overcoming pandemic challenges.

What is this research about?

This research examines how Newcomer-serving organizations (which the authors refer to as immigrant-serving agencies (ISAs)) in Ontario, Canada adapted to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic between September 2020 and September 2021. It investigates the conditions that influenced the successful transition of these agencies to online service delivery and remote work while maintaining organizational stability and worker well-being.It also documents the positive relationship that developed between the largest sector funder, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) during the pandemic.

What do you need to know?

• ISAs in Canada are funded by the government but operate under the principles of New Public Management (NPM), which emphasizes competition, efficiency, and strict accountability: "It imposes a rigid accountability system restricting how funding can be used and does not pay the ongoing costs of operating an agency. By failing to pay the operating costs of the agency, NPM rarely pays the full cost to organizations of the programmes that they deliver. These funding practices have created organizations and workforces that are tightly controlled by the funder."
• The pandemic forced ISAs to quickly move services online and have staff work remotely, threatening their ability to fulfill funding agreements and requiring them to use limited resources to adapt.
• The research identifies the benefits of suspending NPM principles during the pandemic, such as maintaining funding levels, relaxing service targets, and encouraging collaboration among ISAs and other public sector organizations.

What did the researchers do?

• Conducted surveys of managers and staff from member agencies of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI) between November and December 2021. Researchers received 183 worker surveys and 49 from managers.
• Held four focus groups with Executive Directors of ISAs and representatives from Local Immigration Partnerships in five Ontario municipalities.
• Analyzed survey responses and focus group transcripts to identify trends and themes related to ISAs' pandemic experiences and the conditions affecting their resilience.

What did the researchers find?

• ISAs successfully transitioned to online service delivery and remote work while maintaining staff-management relations and increasing the total volume of services delivered.
• Stable government funding, suspension of service targets, and relaxed funding rules enabled ISAs to invest in technology and training for hybrid service delivery.
• Enhanced communication and collaboration among ISAs, government funders, and other public sector organizations facilitated information sharing, innovation, and rapid response to emerging needs in migrant communities.

How can you use this research?

• Advocate for moving beyond NPM approaches and adopting practices that promote true collaboration, flexibility, and organizational capacity building in the immigrant-serving sector
• Emphasize the need for sustained, flexible funding that covers the full operational costs of ISAs and allows for innovation and adaptation to changing circumstances. Foster responsive communication and equitable partnerships among ISAs, government funders, and other public sector organizations to enable effective service delivery and support for immigrant communities

Previous related research can be found here:

Pandemic Response Survey Results - OCASI Agency Management (2022)
The survey provides insights into the experience and reflections of managers in Ontario settlement agencies beyond the first wave of the pandemic.

Pandemic Response Survey Results - OCASI Agency Frontline Workers (2022)
The survey provides insights into the experiences and reflections of frontline settlement workers in Ontario beyond the first wave of the pandemic that are critical to the sector itself and policymakers from all levels of government who are concerned with the integration of migrants.

The Future of Immigrant-Serving Agencies in Ontario: Meeting the Challenges of Hybrid Service Delivery - Policy Preview (2022)
This report discusses the rapid shift to online delivery of settlement services as COVID-19 took hold, outlining some of the major challenges during the first eighteen months of this transition in the Immigrant and Refugee-serving sector.

This study was commissioned by Ontario 211 to identify possibilities, challenges and next steps for using information collected by 211 organizations to support and enhance human services planning and management in Ontario.

This study targeted those responsible for implementing Ontario 211 systems, including current or planned province-wide and local 211 initiatives. It also is intended to be helpful to the broader human services public, non-profit and private sector, all of which have a deep stake in ensuring that 211 data is effectively utilized to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery and enhance the lives of all Ontarians.

Human services organizations – whether government, non-profit or private – are increasingly expected to demonstrate accountability to their constituencies regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of their services.

In the course of their normal operations, 211 organizations collect voluminous1, varied and unique data which could help human service managers and planners to increase their effectiveness and efficiency. Over the past few years there has been some discussion of these matters in the broader 211 community.2 Examples of using 211 data for broader human services planning are emerging in Toronto and elsewhere. However, these initiatives have only scratched the surface of what is possible. The anticipated growth of 211 users and services will make available even further such information in the future.

The report provides a vision for how 211 can support human services planning and management, key benefits and target groups, proposes guiding principles, sets out key elements of an implementation strategy, identifies future challenges and opportunities, and sets out recommended next steps.

Technology is becoming a bigger part of how countries and organizations manage migration. This paper offers an early review of academic and gray literature on the use of advanced digital technologies (ADTs) in migration management processes. The primary focus of this review is literature that discusses migration management technologies - ADTs used by institutional actors (governments, NGOs, transnational institutions).

It breaks down the information into four main topics:

1. the research methods used
2. the types of technologies
3. the purposes these technologies serve, and
4. how they affect migrants.

The report highlights key trends and suggests areas that need more study. It also introduces a tool called the Migration Tech Tracker. This tool helps people see how technology is currently used in managing migration, what’s being most talked about, and which technologies are not getting much attention yet. The overall goal is to better understand how technology is shaping the way we handle migration issues.

The paper leverages the information from the Tracker to both indicate where and how emerging technologies are being used to govern migrants and simultaneously to identify ADTs that are being analyzed, reported on and researched and those that remain underexplored.

In this report authors document the evidence on digital leisure in the forced displacement context, highlighting issues unique to it. They outline the main uses and potential benefits of digital leisure in refugee contexts. It brings together evidence from research and industry reports at the global level with an emphasis on Brazil as a region of interest for the first phases of this project.

This is part 1 of a 2-part series. The second report is based on field research.

"The report starts by conceptualizing the digital leisure divide as an important aspect of
existing digital gaps among forcibly displaced communities. It covers the main infrastructural,
cultural, and political limitations that exist for refugees’ connectivity. We emphasize the vast
variation in connectivity and specific contextual limitations and opportunities in different
locations. Considering this, the proposed digital leisure perspective is presented with a focus
on communities and their actual preferences and uses of technologies which overwhelmingly
include leisure activities such as:

• one-to-one and group messaging;
• sharing of photos, videos and music;
• accessing social media;
• online gaming;
• consumption of audiovisual content;
• romancing;
• shopping.

It is also important to note their preference for mainstream platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube, as opposed to approaches to connectivity and digital inclusion that promote the creation of apps especially designed for refugee services and uses. Thus, a typology of digital leisure activities is suggested, including entertainment, gaming, sex/sexuality/intimacy, content creation, social capital, community voice and contemporary livelihoods. It incorporates current UNHCR policies, including its Age, Gender and Diversity Policy as well as Community-led guidelines that take a bottom-up approach to refugee connectivity and digital inclusion.

The intersectional perspective on digital connectivity, access and literacies that underlies this report provides an overview of the unique challenges that can be bridged by a digital leisure approach to digital inclusion, by emphasizing the activities and devices that forcibly displaced communities favor and access. Among the various limitations these populations face, three main intersectional aspects emerge as relevant determinants of refugee digital gaps in access and use: gender (including male/female and LGBTQI+), age (children, youth and older refugees) and disability (physical/sensory/cognitive). The report highlights the importance of considering a participatory, community-based approach to understand forcibly displaced communities within digital inclusion research and technological solutions, in line with various UNHCR policies.

The ways in which forcibly displaced people navigate and negotiate digital spaces offer important insights to understand how they adopt and use new technologies and the possibilities of digital leisure for sustainable livelihoods and enhanced wellbeing in forced migration contexts. According to the literature reviewed, some of the main functions of social media content creation and consumption for refugees shed light onto some of the benefits of leisure in forcibly displaced people’s lives:

• Express aspirations;
• Escape from harsh realities;
• Pass the time while waiting;
• Convey desires and goals;
• Maintain memories and connections to their past;
• Connect with their family and support networks;
• Preserve and express their various identities;
• Negotiate platform guidelines and privacy;
• Enter public discourse about themselves;
• Counter existing misconceptions

The report provides some insights to academics, industry, humanitarian organizations and the public sector on the main findings, approaches and possibilities of digital leisure as a pathway towards more fulfilling lives and expanded opportunities for people going through forced migration situations around the world, with a focus on Brazil as the specific context where the pilot research project will be deployed."

The PDF below is designed in a two-page width/column format making it a bit difficult to read embedded here. You can download it below.

In this report authors document the evidence on digital leisure in the forced displacement context, highlighting issues unique to that context. This report is a continuation of the desk review, and provides evidence from fieldwork carried out in two refugee shelters in the city of Boa Vista, Brazil – Rondon III and September 13 – at the end of 2021. The report focuses on the main uses and potential benefits of digital leisure in refugee contexts. It brings together evidence from Venezuelan forcibly displaced people with an emphasis on Brazil due to that country’s relevance in the human mobility context within the Latin American region.

"The report aims to inform actors in the government, private, non-profit, and aid agency sectors who are interested in digital inclusion and rights-based solutions for forcibly displaced people. It provides insights about issues of access, privacy, and trust experienced by forcibly displaced persons while using devices and navigating connectivity in their everyday lives. It also explores the opportunities for community-building and local citizenship through content creation and connection with family, friends, and society at large. We reveal how digital leisure fosters unique opportunities for self-realization and shapes specific worldviews through their information practices in digital spaces. The possible livelihoods enabled by digital leisure and the aspirational digital lives of participating Venezuelan refugees and migrants are also explored.

This research project considers the digital leisure divide to be an important aspect of existing digital gaps experienced by forcibly displaced communities. It covers the main infrastructural, cultural, economic, legal, and political limitations that stymie the connectivity of forcibly displaced people...

In terms of digital media use, our fieldwork supports refugees and migrants’ preference for mainstream platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube in this context. This report proposes a typology of digital leisure activities including entertainment, gaming, sex/sexuality/intimacy, content creation, social capital, community voice, and contemporary livelihoods. It incorporates current UNHCR policies, including the agency’s Age, Gender and Diversity Policy as well as community-led guidelines that take a bottom-up approach to refugee connectivity and digital inclusion...

The report offers concrete recommendations to academics, industry, humanitarian organizations, and the public sector on how to leverage on digital leisure as a critical and creative value and resource in the lives of forcibly displaced populations. Through this novel approach, we suggest pathways towards more fulfilling lives and expanded opportunities for people going through forced migration around the world, with a focus on Brazil as a relevant case study."

The PDF below is designed in a two-page width/column format making it a bit difficult to read embedded here. You can download it below.

Standards for Technology in Social Work Practice was issued to address the intersections of professional social work practice and technology. While a U.S. document, it is very applicable to the Canadian context, including the work Immigrant and Refugee-serving organizations do.

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW), along with the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB), and the Clinical Social Work Association (CSWA) cosigned the Standards, developed by a committee of primarily social work practitioners.

Overview:

"Social workers’ use of technology is proliferating. Technology has transformed the nature of social work practice and greatly expanded social workers’ ability to assist people in need. Contemporary social workers can provide services to individual clients by using online counseling, telephone counseling, video conferencing, self-guided Web-based interventions, electronic social networks, mobile apps, automated tutorials, e-mail, text messages, and a host of other services. Social workers’ use of technology has created new ways to interact and communicate with clients, raising fundamentally new questions about the meaning of the social worker–client relationship.

In addition, social workers use various forms of technology to access, gather, and otherwise manage information about clients. Social workers maintain encrypted electronic records, store sensitive information on their smartphones and in the “cloud,” and have the capacity to search for information about clients using
Internet search engines. Social workers use technology in creative ways to address compelling social justice issues, organize communities, administer organizations, and develop social policy. Social workers also explore and develop new technologies for practice and disseminate them with colleagues.

Technology has also influenced social work education and broadened its reach. Today’s students may take courses online, view prerecorded lectures posted on Internet-based course sites, participate in online social work practice simulations, interact with fellow students enrolled in a course from multiple locations
around the world, and listen to podcasts. Social workers have expanded options to satisfy their continuing education requirements by enrolling in live online webinars and attending lectures delivered from remote locations that are transmitted electronically. They may provide and obtain training, supervision, and
consultation from distant locations using videoconferencing technology.

These dramatic developments require practice standards in technology. The following standards are divided into four main sections and address social workers’ use of electronic technology to (1) provide information to the public; (2) design and deliver services; (3) gather, manage, store, and access information about clients; and (4) educate and supervise social workers. These standards are designed to guide social workers’ use of technology; enhance social workers’ awareness of their ethical responsibilities when using technology; and inform social workers, employers, and the public about practice standards pertaining to social workers’ use of technology. Social workers should consider these standards in conjunction with the NASW Code of Ethics, other social work standards and relevant statutes, and regulations. As new forms of technology continue to emerge, the standards provided here should be adapted as needed.

Each practice standard provides social workers with general guidance on how to use technology in an ethical manner; the “interpretation” sections offer suggestions for implementing these standards in a wide range of circumstances and social work settings. The interpretations provide examples of factors that social workers may consider when making decisions about the appropriate use of technology. The standards and their interpretations are intended to set a minimum core of excellence for professional practice when social workers use technology and to provide a framework to address possible benefits, challenges, and risks that arise when using technology. These guidelines are not intended to suggest that the use of technology is inherently riskier or more problematic than other forms of social work."

Abstract:

"Citizens’ acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI) in public service delivery is important for its legitimate and effective use by government. Human involvement in AI systems has been suggested as a way to boost citizens’ acceptance and perceptions of these systems’ fairness. However, there is little empirical evidence to assess these claims. To address this gap, we conducted a pre-registered conjoint experiment in the UK regarding acceptance of AI in processing public permits: for immigration visas and parking permits. We hypothesise that greater human involvement boosts acceptance of AI in decision-making and associated perceptions of its fairness. We further hypothesise that greater human involvement mitigates the negative impact of certain AI features, such as inaccuracy, high cost, or data sharing. From our study, we find that more human involvement tends to increase acceptance, and that perceptions of fairness were less influenced. Yet, when substantial human discretion was introduced in parking permit scenarios, respondents preferred more limited human input.

We found little evidence that human involvement moderates the impact of AI’s unfavourable attributes. System-level factors such as high accuracy, the presence of an appeals system, increased transparency, reduced cost, non-sharing of data, and the absence of private company involvement all boost both acceptance and perceived procedural fairness. We find limited evidence that individual characteristics affect these results. The findings show how the design of AI systems can increase its acceptability to citizens for use in public services."

Conclusions

"The findings of this study contribute to existing debates in three main ways:

1) how human versus AI involvement in public service provision shapes its acceptance by citizens - in most scenarios, respondents did prefer processes with more human involvement, although these effects were relatively small compared to accuracy and cost considerations. Yet in specific contexts, such as local government parking permits based on demonstrable need, respondents showed a tendency to cap human involvement, favouring the algorithm. The nuances of public trust in different sectors of administration, from benefits allocation to parental support, may be key determinants here.

2) how technology can shape the relationship between citizens and states - results suggest resistance to the accumulation and sharing of citizens’ data—but we also show, in the context of other system-level characteristics, that accuracy seems to be more influential than data privacy.

3) the key mechanisms, both in terms of the experiences of individuals and features of AI, that underpin its acceptance - By testing empirically vital mechanisms and examining the intricate relationships between individual characteristics, including literacy about AI, and features of the AI systems, we have highlighted new variables in this domain. However, we only tested two mechanisms against a controlled set of AI choices, which might not capture the full range of possible reactions."

"Our study’s focus on the government’s role in granting permits limits its applicability to public service contexts beyond this domain. In cases such as education, social care, or police interventions, the balance between humans and machine involvement might be different. Nevertheless, many routine interactions with the government involve permit applications similar to the kinds we examined such that the findings are of broad relevance. We also note that our experimental setup allow us to produce findings using “complete” information about the AI systems in a tabulated format. In real-world scenarios, citizens may neither have access to such comprehensive information nor actively seek it out. In particular, we suggest that further studies should investigate not only citizens’ perceptions but also the effects of varying official communications about AI systems to citizens."

This report aims to build an evidence base of how mobile technology and mobile network operators (MNOs) have an important role to play in the delivery of dignified aid to refugees. The report provides humanitarian organisations and MNOs with unique insights and direction on how to work together to digitise humanitarian assistance and ensure the benefits of mobile technology are shared equally by all.

The two main objectives of the research are to:

1. Provide data and insights for humanitarian organisations seeking to design digital interventions that better serve refugee populations and ensure the most vulnerable are not left behind.
2. Generate robust evidence to inform the private sector, particularly MNOs, of the market opportunity of serving refugees and host communities.

Key findings

The analysis begins with an overview of mobile technology access, use and barriers (section 3) in each context. This digital snapshot of refugees provides a foundation for subsequent chapters on five thematic areas.

1. Over two-thirds of refugees in all three research locations are active mobile phone users, 2 with the highest proportion in Jordan.
2. Refugees access mobile services in creative ways depending on their context: sharing or borrowing handsets and owning multiple SIMs. For those who do not own handsets, borrowing is an important way of getting connected.
3. The most commonly used mobile services among active users in all three research locations are making calls and using SMS services. Mobile money is one of the top three mobile use cases in Kiziba and Bidi Bidi, where 59 per cent and 44 per cent of refugees use mobile money, respectively.
4. Awareness of mobile internet is high, but only about a third of respondents in Bidi Bidi and Kiziba have used it. The findings also indicate that refugees would like to use mobile internet more than they are currently able to.
5. Affordability, literacy and digital skills, and charging are the main barriers to mobile phone ownership and mobile internet use in all contexts.

Abstract:

"Technological innovation has long been seen as a hallmark of progress in the modern world. While these advances may facilitate advantages to individual and social well-being, they have the potential for creating new areas of risk and for exacerbating those that already exist. In addition, a global pandemic has reshaped how we interact with one another, as more people connect online. Social work’s ongoing relationship with technology necessitates that we evaluate and re-envision how tech ethics create, shape, and transform social work practice...

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore if a tool such as the Ethical OS (Operating System) that can be a steppingstone to increased imagination, understanding and fluency in some of the ethical issues that are likely to appear in the social work practice landscape, and/or if social workers themselves seek to develop or amplify use of technology in a specific way. A further aim of this paper is to map out a conceptual, as well as practical, “tour” of the tool which would be an unlikely part of contemporary social work ethics discourse as evidenced by our very preliminary social work tech ethics “frame” at this moment in history. This tour is guided by and built upon social work values and ethics – and the authors approach the effort with curiosity...

This paper has three goals.

1. First, we argue that technologies have long been a hidden driver of social work practice and provide an initial mapping of their current influence.
2. Second, we introduce the Ethical OS as a tool for conceptualizing ethical issues that may arise in social work practice, education, and policy. We ask if this tool could promote seeing around corners regarding how developing technologies might be advantageous or disadvantageous for reference or consumer groups. For example, how do they reify historical injustices such as structural racism and how do they offer remediation?
3. Third, we discuss the importance of building coherent, social work tech habits of mind, in practice now and for the future.

We provide recommendations for how social workers and clients alike can be adequately informed and empowered in an ever-evolving technological world."

Conclusion

"Collectively, the authors find the Ethical OS potentially useful with additional study and exploration in the intersectionality of the field of social work and technology. That said, the authors recognize that there are emerging additional frames and models that also merit attention and consideration for the social work profession (Gasser et al., 2020) – and that each of these frames and models have potential to enrich and strengthen ethical tech practices across the profession if used in a way that is guided by ethical social work or informed by the code of ethics (NASW, 2021). This exploration is preliminary and offers an orientation, not an endorsement, of the Ethical OS tool.

Accountability at all levels of practice is essential to social workers and their clients’ lives. As technology rapidly advances and expands its presence in social workers’ lives, the profession, and their practices, social workers need to be aware of how the technology was developed and the ethical considerations when using technology (Belluomini, 2013; Reamer, 2021; Young et al., 2018). Social workers can learn to exercise old but newly applied ethical muscles in this territory to avoid being co-opted into tech industry standards and/or committing ethics washing (Bietti, 2020). As technology is further integrated into our services, accountability to clients through transparent processes at micro, mezzo and macro levels is one step toward maintaining current ethical standards (NASW, 2021), all while considering the ways in which our profession can reimagine ways to remain as a guiding standard."