The Role of Settlement Agencies in Promoting Refugee Resilience

Abstract

How do settlement service providers promote resilience amongst refugee clients? Connections are made with people, not organizations. However, the personality of individual workers is not the primary predictor of a client's success and resilience. Settlement workers exercise varying levels of flexibility in order to meet a client's unique needs, and the degree of flexibility is a product of the agency's culture, its policies and programming options, and the professional support available to its staff. This chapter examines how individual settlement workers can support the settlement and resilience of both individual refugees and the communities that they are a part of, and how individual staff are supported by the broader settlement service provision community, including within the workplace. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved). (chapter)