Links and Documents

Immigrant Settlement Counselling: A Training Guide - Chapter 1: The Settlement Sector

(Adobe Acrobat PDF)

Before considering in detail the training needs of settlement counsellors, it is important to examine the settlement sector and the context of settlement work. What is settlement? How is it different from integration? What is the settlement sector? What are some of the principles and values guiding this sector?

Chapter 1 of the Training Guide seeks to answer these questions and provide additional context about settlement counselling, including:

• Defining Settlement
  Settlement is a long-term, dynamic, two-way process through which, ideally, immigrants would achieve full equality and freedom of participation in society, and society would gain access to the full human resource potential in its immigrant communities.

• Principles and Values for the Sector
  A strong foundation of principles and values is essential to guide the work of the agencies.

• Standards for the Sector
  Standards for service delivery are usually found in sectors of the human services that are mandated by government and/or delivered by accredited professionals, where the impetus has been quality control and concerns about accountability and liability issues.

• A conceptual framework for performance measurement
  The framework presented attempts to integrate a model of performance measurement with knowledge about settlement and principles of settlement service delivery.

• Federal government settlement programs
  The Canadian government became involved in settlement after World War II when levels of immigration to Canada increased and many European refugees arrived, with special needs that could not be met by the services generally available to Canadians.

• Ontario Government Settlement Programs
  The Newcomer Settlement Program (NSP) supports the early and effective settlement of newcomers to Ontario.

• Standards for Settlement Service Delivery
  The immigrant service sector is at a point in its development where it is able to put into writing the practice and knowledge base of settlement service provision.

• Anti-Racism/ Anti-Oppression Perspective
  Anti-racism is an active strategy to create genuine equity in society for people of colour and First Nations Peoples. Anti-racism organizational change is a strategy directed at moving an organization along the path to genuine equity: from uni-versity to poly-versity.

Language: English

Format: This document is available for download in Adobe Acrobat PDF format [492 KB, 28 pages].