This page features all the units and their associated delivery resources developed under a West Midland Refugee and Migrant Partnership funded project. Much of the design work was carried out during 2019-2020, but with some consolidation of approach and fine tuning of resources themselves in April 2021. Our intention was to create a set of resources suitable for delivering a qualification at Entry 3 for Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC).
The prioritised unit topics were derived largely from discussion with the young people and support staff. In developing everything, we wanted to add value overall by not just focusing on UASC, but also considering care leavers, ex-homeless, and so on in our design. The structure is there for you to evolve resources to suit.
The compulsory and elective units can be delivered as an Entry Level 3 qualification in Developing Independent Living Skills under Open College Network West Midlands (OCNWM) approval and guidance. Information on becoming an OCNWM Recognised Centre can be found here click.
If you don’t want to, or are not able to, offer the qualification, then you can make your own selection of units and deliver a programme as stand alone, i.e. as a non-qualification. With minimal re-working, the units can be delivered online, in a classroom setting or one to one. Note, due to Covid-19 we had to change our whole approach to design and piloting of units. What was originally a classroom based course was redesigned for delivery online. Despite the huge challenges we encountered, this now makes for a very flexible package.
Our experience piloting with UASC is that translation/interpretation is essential and so we advise making financial provision, as needed. This adds to costs unfortunately, unless you have access to relevant volunteers or staff. But even then, volunteers are unlikely to be cost free. Similarly, group sessions will likely be much more economical to facilitate. There is probably a ‘sweet spot’ here between economy and support for learning. We would suggest groups of 6, with translation/interpretation. Volunteer learning assistants in the class may well help, but we were not able to test this out formally.
See here for background and additional resources available for use with UASC across the West Midlands click.
There are also a number of organisations providing support to unaccompanied children. A good list is kept by WMSMP and can be found here click.
Note: refer any corrections to WMSMP materials directly to them: click.
Presentation of units
All unit resources are presented in a simple, uniform style. This allows you significant flexibility in how you choose to brand different items, or to re-format/adjust unit materials based on your own needs. We decided that simplicity is better, while keeping inside the boundaries of the awarding organisation requirements. Each Zipped folder should contain 6 documents, sometimes 7 if there are any optional handouts:
- PowerPoint presentation
- Assignment booklet
- Answers booklet
- Self-evaluation form
- Unit specs
- Tutor/Support Worker notes
- Handout/s (for some units only, may not be relevant or require replacement for your own programme/locality)
The Tutor/Support Worker notes should be self-explanatory and provide everything that whoever is delivering the units will require. As the units are sometimes going to be delivered one-to-one there is plenty of scope for whoever is delivering the units to tailor the resources or provide relevant extra materials according to learner needs, and their knowledge of the learner.
Simply click each topic link and the Zip file can be saved/downloaded.
All the units
Important read: Notes and Instructions OCNWM Life Skills Units MASTER AB 010421
The following is a full list of Refugee/Asylum Seeker Pathway documents. You can to download unit by unit as a Zip file.
Mandatory Group A. All 3 required.
N Self-Care and Accessing Medical Care
Mandatory Group B – Refugee/Asylum Seeker Pathway. All 3 required.
M Understanding Risk Exploitation
Q Individual Rights and Responsibilities
Optional Group E – Refugee/Asylum Seeker Pathway. Select any 3 from group below.
C Drugs, Solvents, Alcohol & Tobacco
D Healthy & Safe Realtionships
F Job Websites & Job Applications
K Sexually Transmitted Infections
Note that this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is not for commercial use.
