Community Consultation

The Welcome Project, a partnership between Coventry City Council and Coventry Refugee Centre, commissioned ICAR to conduct a consultation with local residents on community relations and integration issues. The research explored attitudes and relations amongst and between the host population, asylum seekers and refugees and other new migrants. The findings aim to inform integration strategies at the neighbourhood and city levels.

The Welcome project

The Welcome Project is a partnership between Coventry City Council and Coventry Refugee Centre. The aim of the project was to facilitate the integration of newcomers into the neighbourhoods of Coventry and to learn lessons that can be applied in other parts of the country.

There are four areas of work:

• direct action to improve the city's priority neighbourhoods through targeted initiatives;
• a small-scale community consultation with local asylum seekers, refugees and 'host communities' to identify their needs, perspectives and experiences;
• the development of a training programme on refugee and asylum seeker issues;
• the dissemination of lessons learnt from the project throughout Coventry and the UK.