Refreshing our strategy as we approach the end of the first five years of the initiative

October 18, 2024

Since we launched our first strategy in 2020, we have seen an unprecedented series of changes to the context in which people on the move can live in the UK, and a series of challenges for the services set up to help them navigate life in the UK. We launched at the start of the pandemic, which alongside the following financial crisis significantly reduced the amount of funding available. The last two years have seen a series of laws which have severely restricted the right to seek asylum. The legal aid and legal advice provision for immigration has significantly worsened, with more legal aid firms closing.

Despite all these challenges, there have been some huge successes in access to justice. The proposal to move people seeking asylum to Rwanda has not been implemented, as a result of the co-ordinated effort of many of our grant partners including Public Law Project, Freedom From Torture, Asylum Aid and many more who pursued strategic litigation, direct action, local and national campaigning. And the recent change in government opens up opportunities for engagement around equality and justice issues.

Justice Together has achieved so much in the last four years. We have made 43 grants to a total of 124 grants partners, funding 52 legal advice posts of which 32 people have lived experience of the immigration system, and we are funding 21 influencing posts of which 20 have lived experience of the immigration system.  Nearly all our advice grants are funding regional partnerships, feedback so far has been positive about how organisations have been able to learn from each other, share resources and provide peer support. We have run a series of wellbeing support packages for the sector with a focus on supporting racialised people. We ran two successful face to face events for front line grant partners and campaigners as well as 29 events over the years bringing together 1200 people to network, share learning and strategize. For more information on our achievements and learnings, see our impact reports.

Seven key takeaways and learning from Justice Together so far:

1. Working together: our funded partnerships have fed back how important it is to work together as advice and support organisations in a holistic way, to support each other, share resources and knowledge and generally be more effective.
2. It’s tough out there: When we launched in 2020 wellbeing was a priority and supporting the sector to prevent burn out, over the past four years the political and world context has become even more hostile, and burnout has increased. The need for proper support is huge.
3. Connection is key: through our events and annual conference bringing partners together, we have seen how crucial it is for people working in the migration and advice sector to have opportunities to come together and share experiences and provide support and solidarity, to weather the various storms and be stronger together.
4. Advice is part of systemic change: In reality, our grant partners are nearly all doing a combination of both advice and influencing in some way either through who they partner with or how they deliver their service. Advice providers are increasingly connected and being part of systemic change – and this will only strengthen as we move on.
5. It’s not just about having a Racial Justice policy: our initial strategy said we were going to support organisations to be anti-racist. We’ve now learnt that organisations across the sector vary so widely, and are at such different places on the journey to being anti-racist, that this initial aim was super ambitious. In reality, not everyone understands what being anti-racist means or thinks it means the same thing, there is much careful work to be done to develop this.
6. Tokenism is a real risk: we invested a lot in ensuring organisations were able to recruit people who have lived experience of the immigration system, but the risk of tokenism is very high. A great deal of work needs to be done to ensure there are pathways for development and management and that organisational culture supports, values and nurtures staff.
7. The crisis is here to stay! The last four years have seen a succession of worsening legislation for migrants and world events that just keep on coming, one thing is for sure the sector is surviving through a perpetual crisis.

In light of our learnings so far, of which there have been many, we adapted and refined our current strategy. Given the rapidly shifting context, the strategy is intended as a live document, with the flexibility to change in response to given opportunities and needs.

In refining it our learning partner Terri encouraged us to really think about this question:

“If the crisis is here to stay, what kinds of capacities, resources, collaborations and legacy-planning around immigration support cannot easily be dismantled, defunded or undone by government legislation or policy?”

The key parts of the strategy we have enhanced and emphasised

In recognition of the immense harm that the immigration system in itself causes, we added to our overall vision that we wanted people to be able to access justice “without being harmed”.

Racial Justice: Previously the aim to create anti-racist organisations underpinned each of the strategic goals. This time we have brought it into one goal with a more realistic aim to support organisations to contribute to racial justice, with clear activities of how we will contribute to this goal, and much more investment in sharing resources, skills and training.

On Lived Experience (LEX), we have emphasised more about how we will support people with lived experience of the immigration system within their advice and influencing roles and how we will support them to lead the change they want to see. Activities will include looking more holistically at organisations structure, how management operates and supports people with LEX and how people with LEX can be supported with wellbeing.

On influencing we grappled with whether we should reduce the approaches to influencing that we fund. In consultation with community organisers, people with lived experience of the immigration system and organisations working in the sector we decided to continue funding across different influencing methods, but focus on ensuring that all our advice work links in some way to influencing and systemic change and the agenda for change is set by those directly affected.

We are very much looking forward to putting this strategy into practice over the next 5 years whilst also exploring what is next for Justice Together. We would like to thank everyone we have collaborated with and learned from over the years, especially our funder partners. None of this would be possible without the amazing resilience and power of the people and organisations fighting each day for access to justice, huge thanks and the utmost respect to all of you. We look forward to the future with curiosity and optimism.