Advocacy and support to aid asylum seekers
[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 1, No. 10
23 July - 6 August 2007 ] By Janine Sim-Jones
The University of Melbourne has thrown its support behind a project which aims to improve the quality of support and advocacy services for asylum seekers.
PhD candidates Erin Taylor and Anna Barrett have been appointed to coordinate a project which will link researchers with local asylum seekers and the people who work on their behalf in advocacy and support services.
Working with the group Researchers for Asylum Seekers, Ms Taylor and Ms Barrett will make expert research more easily accessible and raise community awareness of the trauma experienced by asylum seekers. They also hope to encourage more asylum seekers to become involved in academic research.
Their appointments are part of a wider move by the University to recognise the importance of knowledge transfer, a two-way flow of information between the University and the wider community.
Ms Taylor, who is completing a PhD on Burmese refugees, says asylum seekers are difficult to contact for research, due to the impermanence of their living situations in Australia.
“If we can encourage more asylum seekers to become involved in research, it can ultimately have great benefits for the kind of services that are provided for them,’ she says.
Ms Taylor is developing an easily accessible data base of the available research and user-friendly fact sheets for those working with asylum seekers. She is also compiling a database of advocacy and support services for asylum seekers in Australia.
Ms Barrett, who works in the counseling program at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the project could have a massive benefit for advocacy workers.
“The people who volunteer in the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre counseling program are all qualified psychologists and social workers but most counselors that qualify in Australia don’t get much training in dealing with war-related torture and trauma,” she says.
Ms Taylor’s and Ms Barrett’s appointments have been funded by the Vice-Chancellor’s Strategic Incentives and Allocations Fund.
The Researchers for Asylum Seekers website is at www.ras.unimelb.edu.au-
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