Building strengths in asylum-seeker communities in Australia

This chapter discusses how Red Cross, through its vast experience of casework with people seeking asylum, adapted and changed the service delivery model from individual casework to a community development approach. This approach recognises the essential role of community in resilience and well-being, and holds much potential. However, implementation is also fraught with ethical and practical tensions, largely arising from the external policy environment. Red Cross, as an impartial, humanitarian organisation mandated to provide assistance based on need, has had to consider the implications and develop responses when working as a contractor to government, where the scope of the service-provider role is clearly defined within government policy. We draw on insider and outsider expertise of Red Cross. Two of the authors have had many years of experience working in asylum-seeker programmes within Red Cross. The third is an academic with research expertise in the area of asylum seeking, who conducted an evaluation of the Red Cross Casework Model at the time when the organisation was transitioning toward community development. In order to provide context for the chapter, we first provide an overview of asylum seeking in Australia, then describe Red Cross work in this domain. We then turn to the entry of Red Cross into the community development field, probing the benefits and limitations.