Peer support and friendships

Refugee students may have had recent experiences where they felt anxious and threatened. Many of them will also have experienced significant disruption to their lives and the loss of their social and family networks. This can affect their confidence and self-esteem at a time when they are having to adapt to a new environment and perhaps learn a new language. Refugee students and their families can also experience racism .

Going to school or college should enable refugee young people to feel safe and secure, reassured by a warm welcome and effective support. Furthermore, the opportunity that studying at school or college gives refugee students for positive relationships and friendships with peers from their own and from the host community, supports integration.

Good practice

By supporting refugee young people to make positive friendships and relationships, schools and colleges can help refugee students settle and feel a sense of belonging.

Establish a warm and welcoming environment

Young people need to feel safe and included. The supporting access and enrolment area of this website gives guidance on this. Colourful posters, multi-lingual welcome signs and positive images of, and messages about, the learning community’s diversity all contribute to creating an environment where refugee young people can feel safe.

Develop students’ befriending and support skills

Develop peer support for refugee students to help with settling in, integration and learning. Help from peers can ensure new students settle quickly and become familiar with the routines. Many schools and colleges have established peer support schemes where students are consulted, trained, supervised and resourced to offer support, including mentoring, to their peers. Training can include awareness of the background experiences and needs of refugee students.

Peer support can offer refugee students the opportunity to discuss their work informally with someone who has already studied that aspect of the course. Peer support also benefits the volunteers themselves. They can review and restructure previous learning and develop their own interpersonal skills for one-to-one and small group work. Setting up a peer support scheme (.PDF), published by ChildLine, provides practitioners with a guide for setting up peer support schemes in schools, and can also be used as a guide for setting up schemes in other settings. The Peer Support Networker provides schools and colleges with information, guidance and networking opportunities to develop peer support schemes. This includes a directory of schools and colleges running peer support programmes.

Provide mentoring support

Some refugee young people may have special difficulty in settling and making friends and may find it helpful to have the guidance and support of a mentor. Schools, colleges and the voluntary sector can work together to set up mentoring schemes.

A guide to setting up mentoring schemes for young refugees can be downloaded from the Save the Children website.

Volunteers from further education settings are sometimes recruited by other organisations to work with younger people, including refugees.

Young People Now website provides information about how young mentors in Kent are teaching young asylum seekers literacy skills and gaining UCAS-recognised qualifications as they do it.

Time Bank, is a national project, Time Together supports adult volunteers into mentoring refugees.

The Stream The Youth Action Network project is a web-based, peer-mentoring project enabling the sharing of experiences, addressing of issues and support for creativity in local or global communities.

Mentoring + Befriending Foundation supports new mentoring programmes. It has also developed a range of support materials including a Peer Mentoring: a resource pack for schools in partnership with the DCSF. The pack includes guidance on developing a programme, training materials and links to further resources.

Develop peer support in the curriculum

The celebrating diversity area of this website gives guidance on raising awareness about refugees. There are opportunities in the curriculum, including ESOL and citizenship, for students to learn about the diverse communities in which they live and to develop the skills of respecting and including refugees. A range of learning materials and teaching programmes have been developed that can support curriculum development in this area.

Build partnerships with local Refugee Community Organisations

Schools and colleges can build partnerships with local Refugee Community Organisations (RCOs). RCOs frequently run educational and recreational activities to support young people’s development and progress. Schools and colleges can put refugee students in touch with these activities. This can enable new students to make friends with other young people in their own community. RCOs may have few resources and may therefore benefit from the opportunity of using school and college facilities. This can further promote good relations between refugees and their host community.Some RCOs also run befriending programmes and may be able to offer support and friendship to newly arrived young people and their families.

To obtain information about the work of RCOs in your area contact agencies and services that work with refugees. Refugee Forums in some cities have collated directory information. For example:

Manchester Refugee Support Network has produced a Manchester RCO directory.

Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees in the UK (ICAR) is developing a series of nationality-based navigation guides to refugee populations in the UK. The contacts section at the back of each guide has information on country-specific groups and projects.

In Yorkshire and Humberside and Liverpool regions, the directory section of the refugeeaccess website has some RCOs contact details.

Refugee Action and the Refugee Council have information about the work of RCOs in many areas. 

Praxis is developing an online map of RCO locations in the UK and the Evelyn Oldfield Unit keeps online information about RCO groups affiliated to them, and to their projects in London.

Case study

The Mentoring Project (.PDF)

Kent Refugee Action Network has developed a Mentoring Project to respond to the isolation experienced by many refugees, including young refugees, in the community in Kent. This case study explains how the project has developed, with information about the support given, the training and support mentors receive and how young refugees have benefited.

For more information about the current Mentoring Project, as funded by the Big Lottery Fund, please contact: E-mail: kran@actionnetwork.freeserve.co.uk