Refugee Transitions Outcomes Fund (RTOF) Project
The Refugee Transitions Outcomes Fund (RTOF) was a £13.99m initiative that sought to improve employment, housing, and wider integration outcomes for newly recognised refugees.
The RTOF enabled service providers to provide holistic and intensive support to refugees to help them tackle the barriers and challenges they face to self-sufficiency. The Home Office – with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) as co-sponsors – has awarded the funding to deliver the RTOF programme.
RTOF had a strong focus on helping people into work and all refugees who were on the programme received employment support in addition to housing or wider integration support.
Employment support focused on helping refugees into full-time employment, part-time employment or self-employment, or a combination (for example, part-time work and starting a business). Further support focused on helping refugees to access stable and secure housing, and to improve in the areas that are critical to their self-sufficiency and integration (such as English language, digital skills, well-being and building social bonds).
Coventry City Council was one of the Local Authorities in the West Midlands that the Home Office selected to deliver the RTOF Project. In the West Midlands consortium, we worked together with Birmingham City Council, City of Wolverhampton Council and Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council.
Coventry City Council also worked in partnership with Ashley Housing, Spring Housing and St Francis Employability to deliver the service and reach the outcomes by offering tailored support across employment, housing, and integration for newly recognised refugees in Coventry. Both Ashley Housing and Spring Housing focused on all three areas of support. St Francis Employability provided the opportunity for the participants to get meaningful experience in working in the UK and support the clients with the completion of at least 10 days volunteering.
Besides Coventry City Council overseeing and co-ordinating the performance management, monitoring, data capture and outcomes evidence across the delivery partnership, it will also be delivering outcomes for the fund and host the lead Integration Officer and administrative support for the programme to enable the project’s outcomes to be met. This will include ensuring that eligible clients are referred to the programme. Coventry City Council also coordinated provision across the delivery partnership to ensure the progress of participants.
The key aims of the RTOF programme were to:
- Enable innovative and place-based approaches to supporting newly recognised refugees in the selected local areas
- Improve employment, housing, and wider integration outcomes for newly recognised refugees in the selected local areas and to increase refugee self-sufficiency
- Generate evidence about what works, to be able to evaluate the impact of funded projects on refugee integration and self-sufficiency
- Generate cross-Government savings
- Provide evidence to inform future policy, programming, and mainstream service delivery