New Scots refugee integration strategy: delivery plan 2024 to 2026

Introduction

The New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy: Delivery Plan 2024-2026 follows the publication of the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy - 2024 and has been developed with partners and members of the New Scots Core Group using key findings from research, evaluation and the engagement with national and local third sector organisations, local authorities, community groups and New Scots.^[1] Between November 2023 and February 2024, over 2,000 people with direct experience of seeking protection and resettling in Scotland shared their views and their priorities for the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy and its Delivery Plan.^[2] This Delivery Plan also builds on many years of understanding of the issues and utilises practice and knowledge to address these issues gained through working with wider partners, networks and communities. The Plan outlines specific actions partners will take and when they will be undertaken. The Delivery Plan will be reviewed annually to reflect changing context, new actions required and progress. An annual review will be undertaken by summer 2025.

The actions are organised and aligned to the six outcomes of the Strategy:

1. New Scots live in safe, welcoming, inclusive communities, where everyone's dignity is respected and everyone is able to build diverse relationships and healthy intercultural bonds.

2. New Scots are able to access well-coordinated services, which recognise and meet their rights and needs.

3. New Scots understand their rights, responsibilities and entitlements in Scotland and are able to exercise these to pursue full and independent lives. New Scots can pursue their ambitions through education, employment, culture and leisure activities in diverse communities.

4. Communities in Scotland understand integration interculturally and respect the diversity and strengths that New Scots bring.

5. Policy, strategic planning, and legislation, that have an impact on New Scots, are shaped through their participation and informed by their rights, needs and aspirations.

6. The principles of the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy guide all future responses to crises that bring forced migrants to Scotland and seek to ensure all such migrants will be treated equitably.

Actions under one outcome may contribute to multiple outcomes but they are noted only once.

As part of the aim to improve governance and accountability for the Plan, it also sets out who the key lead is for each action along with short term outcomes. Not all partners that will support the achievement of the actions are named. The lead partner will be responsible for involving other organisations needed to deliver the action. It will also be important to understand intended timescales for completing each action and this will require discussion with partners. Timescales for delivery will be a focus within the governance for the Delivery Plan.

Reflecting the broad range of needs of New Scots, work to deliver the Strategy will involve cooperation and involvement from relevant policy areas within the Scottish Government to ensure that the needs of New Scots are considered in wider Scottish policy development and implementation.

In the New Scots Strategy and this Delivery Plan, the term 'New Scots' is used to refer to people living in Scotland who have been forcibly displaced or are making a claim that they have a well-founded fear of persecution. The term 'New Scots' includes people who have been granted refugee status or another form of humanitarian protection, and their dependents; people seeking asylum and people seeking protection as a result of displacement, exploitation or political persecution; as well as those whose application for asylum has been refused, but who remain in Scotland. It also includes people who are or may become stateless and in need of international protection. New Scots partners understand that there is not universal consensus around the term New Scots, but the community consultation has shown that there was agreement on the fact that it conveys a helpful message of inclusion to all who need safety in Scotland for as long as they need it.