The Home Office’s Indicators of Integration framework was developed in collaboration with academics, migrant organisations, the voluntary sector, local and national governments, and migrants themselves in order to provide a common language for ‘understanding, planning, monitoring and measuring integration’.
The latest version published in 2019, identifies 14 domains of integration with which to design, implement and measure the success of interventions. The framework suggests outcome indicators for each domain, for example the percentage of people in paid work and other ‘hard’ outcome measures. These measures are valuable but do not assess distance travelled towards the outcomes at an individual or cohort level.
The Refugee Council recognised the need for a version of the Outcomes Star, a keywork and outcomes measurement tool, that was aligned with the Indicators of Integration framework, gathering relevant distance-travelled outcomes data and also supporting engagement and good practice in services. In 2019, they approached Triangle, which led to the co-creation of the Integration Star for use with refugees needing support to integrate into and build a life in their new country. The co-creation included Refugee Council services and workers, Community Refugee Organisations, and refugees.
The domains identified in the Indicators of Integration framework were used as a basis for a literature review informing the first workshop in the development of the Integration Star. Later in the development process, the domains were mapped against the Integration Star outcome areas. The aim was to create a good fit between the framework and the Star, while at the same time as creating a user-friendly and empowering tool with accessible language and a manageable number of outcome areas to support conversations between workers and refugees. This pragmatic approach means that there is not an exact one-to-one mapping between framework domains and Star outcome areas, as shown in the table below:
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To find out more, get in touch on info@triangleconsulting.co.uk or +44(0) 207 272 8765. The above is also available as a pdf download.
