Shifting Power – The Importance of Policies and Procedures
Policies and procedures are important to underpin organisational change. In this blog we share our learnings from a recent review of our policies to enable lived experience leadership and participation in our organisation and network.
Last year, we finalised our five-year strategic framework. One of our five priorities is to shift power to people who have lived experience of immigration detention. Whilst this is a distinct goal - to ensure that it remains a priority for our work - our aim is to achieve transformational change whereby lived experience leadership is integrated with our overall way of working.
We have been a long-standing and committed advocate for lived experience participation and leadership in our own organisation. We have diversified our recruitment practices to increase representation and as a result, of our team of four, half our team have lived experience of detention including our Co-Director for Policy and Influencing. We have also been engaging with a wider community of advocates who have lived experience of detention, providing more spaces to bring people together and to shape our activities.
To support these changes, we have been reviewing our policies and procedures to set a clear organisational framework to underpin this change.
Earlier this year, we signed up to PILnet who partnered us with a lawyer with experience in immigration and employment matters to provide pro bono advice on our policies. We were looking for support to develop our Lived Experience Involvement and Remuneration Policy – which was written with the support of others in the sector who generously shared their policies – and our Recruitment Policy.
Lived Experience Involvement and Remuneration Policy
Our Lived Experience Involvement and Remuneration Policy sets out the principles and procedures for the way we work with people with lived experience who are not staff members at AVID and are invited to consult or support AVID initiatives on a non-permanent basis. It is an important document to establish the reasons for this work and principles that guide it. In our work with the pro-bono law firm, we were particularly interested in how we can ensure that people’s time is valued and compensated where they do not have the right to work and are involved as volunteers. Through the process, we clarified boundaries needed to ensure that employment relationships are not created with volunteers.
There is of course an additional layer to these discussions. Our work takes place within a hostile immigration system and so – involving people with direct experience of that system presents unique barriers for organisations in the sector who want to challenge that system yet must work within it. People with lived experience involved as volunteers will often be people without the right to work and stuck in limbo (as has been articulated by our colleagues at the Lift The Ban campaign). Whilst we urge the system to change, we must work within the law and guidance and in away that protects the welfare of those involved. This also pushes us to make sure that the time and efforts of people with lived experience are valued in other ways – through communities and relationships of care and by creating reciprocal and mutually beneficial spaces.
Recruitment Policy
Our recruitment policy sets out the steps we are taking to tackle employment disadvantages for people who have lived experience of immigration detention and forced migration. We were supported through pro-bono legal advice to understand the relevant laws on discrimination when pursuing this goal on targeted recruitment practices.
Representation is only one part of the change that needs to happen. Our recruitment policy sits alongside our mental health and wellbeing policy which aims to support a culture of belonging through supportive working practices, individual and group supervision.
You can read the policies discussed in this blog post here:
Final Thoughts
On a final note – it is a lot easier to write down our commitments than to live them. This requires constant work, reminders and open communication – as well as getting things wrong and learning from our mistakes along the way. We are sharing our policies with the invitation for others to do the same and to support one another on this journey– it will take us all working together to create new systems and real transformation.