Voices from the Front Line: Social Work with Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Australia and the UK

Returning 'Home': Experiences of Reintegration for Asylum Seekers and Refugees

“…Practitioners need to strive to maintain their focus on the best interests of individuals to have successful lives, beyond the limitations of eligibility criteria and border controls. This challenge is at a time when social workers are often bound by bureaucracy (Robinson, 2013). This review explored harrowing accounts of particularly vulnerable adults struggling to thrive back in their country of origin; older people without financial resources and family support in Bosnia (Huttunen, 2010) and adults with mental health problems, still suffering trauma, in Sierra Leone.…”

‘We make them feel special’: The experiences of voluntary sector workers supporting asylum seeking and refugee women during pregnancy and early motherhood

“…Workers from these organisations are considered to provide a vital safety net for refugees and asylum seekers in terms of mediating between their position of social exclusion and mainstream services (MIND, 2009;Flanagan and Hancock, 2010;Waugh, 2010). Despite the importance of the work done by these frontline workers in a range of settings including legal support, access to healthcare and help with housing and social support, there has been relatively little research undertaken to explore their experiences of working with childbearing refugee and asylum seeking women (Guhan and Liebling-Kalifani, 2011;Robinson, 2014). This paper explores the activities and experiences of workers from the voluntary and non-statutory sector who support asylum seeking and refugee women during their pregnancy and early parenthood.…”

The Normality and Materiality of the Dominant Discourse: Voluntary Work Inside a Dutch Asylum Seeker Center

“…However, too much focus on the consequences of possible role conflicts and the negative impact of this kind of highdemand work limits our perspective on its positive aspects. For example, Guhan and Liebling-Kalifani (2011) report on the compassion satisfaction and vicarious resilience of frontline staff working with asylum seekers and refugees (see also Robinson, 2014). Zanoni and Janssens (2007) elaborate on the ways that employees' engagement with discursive and material structures of their organizations enables them to generate positive outcomes in spite of the limitations they face.…”