RETURNING TO WORK

RefuAid North West Refugee Nurses Programme and Equal Access Loan Scheme

In May, the BBC reported on a unique programme at Liverpool John Moores University that was fast-tracking the registration of qualified refugee nurses into the NHS, helping the UK meet the rising demands of the pandemic and more. The North West Refugee Nurses Programme was developed by Steven Colfar, Director of Nursing for the North West at NHS England and NHS Improvement, alongside the charity RefuAid.

Mr Colfar said, ‘We listened to the personal stories of the individual refugee nurses. As healthcare professionals, they find it extremely difficult to restart their careers. You land here, you have no support, often no money, no idea how to get registered, and you’re just trying to survive. ’

The four-week programme involves practical exercises in an NHS hospital simulation environment, work on how to communicate with patients and help with the English language. Nurses have their qualifications and previous employment checked, and are helped to register with the UK’s Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). The first pilot course ran in February with 14 refugees – four men and 10 women from Ethiopia, Sudan, Iran, Philippines, Gambia, Honduras and Myanmar. They were all referred by RefuAid.

Mona Hamid, from Sudan, was also on the pilot – she qualified as a nurse in 2017 but hadn’t yet been able to work in the UK. ‘When you come here not knowing anyone, it’s so difficult to find your way. When I found out about this programme from RefuAid, I cried,’ she said. ‘I felt homeless before. And on this course, they make you feel important and really supported. They fill in any gaps in your knowledge.’ The course costs £2,150 per person, and participants who then find a job are eligible for £1,000 in relocation support while they wait for their first pay packet.

Most asylum seekers are not allowed to work in the UK while their applications are considered – although they may have qualifications in their own countries. ‘People are going from a position of total helplessness to a position that they could lead a real new life,’ Mr Colfar said of the course. ‘If we did not do anything, they would be assigned to a life that would require social security support or a low-paid job. This is about making them realise the potential they already had. They will be able to be independent, so the return on this little investment is huge.’

But Kate Higgins, Director of Operations at RefuAid, says time is of the essence, as the longer healthcare professionals are out of work, the harder it is to re-qualify. ‘We’ve developed a support structure and set of resources that provides a template for how to integrate displaced talent into the NHS in the hopes of repeating it across the UK.’

The North West Refugee Nurses Programme (and its partners) was honoured this September with the Gold Award in Community Partnership from the Global Good Awards 2021.

Although this programme is funded by NHS England and Improvement, RefuAid is working to support refugees into qualified work in other areas as well, by providing access to language tuition, education, finance and employment opportunities. The charity’s Equal Access Loan scheme provides interest-free loans to cover the cost of requalification for people who have claimed asylum in the UK. Assessing individual applicants’ language needs and requalification potential to create a tailored learning plan, RefuAid may provide interest-free loans of up to £10,000 over four years, which recipients pay back in manageable instalments over time. The average salary of these candidates before they receive an Equal Access Loan is £7,494, whereas the average salary post requalification is £35,608 – representing a life-changing opportunity for those who have already suffered the trauma of forced migration and are trying to rebuild their lives here in the UK.

As of July, the charity had lent £1,117,000 in interest-free loans to support nearly 200 refugee professionals in returning to work – including doctors, lawyers and engineers. In 2021, The Clothworkers’ Foundation made a social investment of £200,000 to RefuAid to support this vital work, joining other social investors such as Barrow Cadbury Trust, Comic Relief and Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The BBC story was ‘Covid: Refugee Nurses are Being Fast-Tracked into the NHS’ by Catrin Nye (10 May 2021).