Evaluation of the Migrant Access Project Plus

The Migrant Access Project Plus (MAPP) is an evolution of Leeds City Council’s Migrant Access Project, which was itself evaluated in 2015. This project builds on an existing collaboration with Leeds City Council in the area of migration and inclusion of new arrivals in Leeds. It involves councillors, NGOs, services and migrant residents, promoting an agenda focused on access to services and the opportunities that migration and diversity create for the City.  

The MAPP evaluation involves conversations with project staff, partners and stakeholders, based on the recommendations made from the previous evaluation (with a focus on health and housing services). The contract with the Leeds City Council has been renewed this year based on our previous interim report and new funding opportunities to extend the MAPP to new disadvantaged areas in Leeds. 

In the 2015 evaluation, three main methods were applied. Given the success of this approach the team uses two of these methods for the evaluation of MAPP: 

1. Case studies as a mechanism to highlight the perceptions and testimonials of the impact of the MAPP on individuals within specific communities; 
2. Qualitative interviewing of providers’ and other stakeholders’ experiences, which will serve as a mechanism to provide opportunities for reflections and learning. 

We are also conducting successful focus groups with the Migrant Community Networkers involved in MAPP, which help to include the first hand experiences of project workers and especially the voices of the newly arrived and their communities. 

Overview

Data will be collected via a number of Listening Laboratories where migrant networkers and their communities map out the needs, issues and horizons of the dozens of members from the different national, ethnic or language backgrounds. 

The specific objectives of the evaluation are to provide qualitative insight into the impact of MAPP project streams on: 

• Perceptions of ‘low level tensions’ in communities  
• Perceptions of integration 
• The effectiveness of support from the project in the key areas of: 
  • The impact of the MAPP project upon alleviating pressures on the settled community 
  • The impact of the MAPP project upon the migrant community’s access to services, with a particular focus on the provision of primary care and housing. 

Leeds City Council

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• The MAPP evaluation project builds upon recent research collaborations with Leeds City Council, funded through the University of Leeds Social Science Institute’s Impact Acceleration Fund: Migration, Equality and Social Cohesion: Promoting Inter-Community Dialogue in Times of Change (Jan 2017-18) (led by Gabriella Alberti, LUBS). 

• Leeds Migration Research Network (LeedsMRN) - an interdisciplinary research network of academics and practitioners in the area of migration research based out of the University of Leeds.

Key findings

Key recommendations from this project include:  

• Employability: the importance of providing access to employment opportunities, such as shadowing, as more effective training while keeping in mind the risk of self-exploitation and unpaid labour  
• Entrepreneurship: Promote migrant entrepreneurship and alternative forms of community “integration” and recognition (highlights experiments as part of the MAP (Migration Access Project) have been the Syrian Kitchen and the Roma Café, as well as the Proverb 31 Women centre community centre in Harehills)  
• Education and training: demand for developing training on how to become self-employed and establishing ‘community investment initiatives’ to contrast precariousness and welfare-to-work sanctions. 
• Training on Universal Credit and social/educational entitlements for those on specific visa: this emerged from the focus groups with the MCNs as one critical area of future training and meeting with the service providers as many encounter visa-related barriers.  

• Migration, equality and social cohesion: promoting inter-community dialogue in times of change, in LSSI’s 2019 Impact Acceleration Account brochure (page 10) 
• Migrant voices of Leeds: A day of information, engagement and action, Leeds Migration Research Network blog post