A new research report has named Logan City the 7th largest settlement city in Australia, calling for more refugee support as numbers grow.
Based on in-depth conversations with new refugees, refugee community leaders and local service providers, the 12-month Settlement Cities study from the Australian Catholic University and Edmund Rice Centre showed that Logan City – like many settlement cities in Australia – lacked enough community services, housing, bi-cultural job opportunities and tailored support systems for the number of refugees coming in.
Access engagement and community development senior manager Kenny Duke said unlike other government areas in Australia, Logan’s humanitarian intake is incredibly diverse.
“Logan has been a major settlement city since the 1960s, and since that time the demographic and its humanitarian intake has shifted frequently,” she said.
“As we have seen from the past year with the sudden arrival of large numbers of refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine, the demographic of individuals in need of support can change quickly.
“When the evacuation of Afghanistan occurred, Access quickly mobilised to support this newly arrived group who are from many different Afghan ethnicities. The Thriving Afghan Women Program, aimed at empowering and building independence and connection for Afghan women based on their needs and input, was one such activity created to support this change.”
Ms Duke said community services and associations play a key role in the settlement journeys of these newly arrived refugees.
“Research has shown the most important indicator of newly arrived people from refugee backgrounds successfully settling into their new homes, is this sense of belonging and connections to the existing Australian community,” she said.
“It is important that programs work with communities to ensure services meet the unique needs of refugees who have different experiences, and cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
“It is also vital that these services are agile and capable of adapting to support individuals from any cultural background.”
According to the study, refugees are extremely vulnerable in the housing market due to their reliance on social security payments, a limited supply of housing appropriate to large families, their lack of rental history, limited ability to navigate the housing system and often the discrimination they face from real estate agents and landlords.
They also struggle to find employment due to language difficulties, age and complications with leveraging pre-existing qualifications to secure employment in Australia.
“Housing is definitely a major need for newly-arrived refugees, unfortunately this can be challenging in the current housing market, even with the benefit of commonwealth rent assistance, so another top priority is gaining employment so they can afford rent and be competitive in applying for housing,” Ms Duke said.
Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education senior researcher Dr Altin Gavranovic said place-based investment is needed to help local governments meet the requirements of refugee communities.
“While many services within settlement cities work hard at being inclusive and accessible to refugees, the experience of refugees trying to access services is still quite uneven. More work needs to be done in making service-provision more consistently accessible to new refugee arrivals,” he said.
Ms Duke said Logan City organisations and the community have done well to create a welcoming environment for newly-arrived refugees.
“There will always be a benefit in gaining more funding to enable the delivery of more services, but when supporting newly arrived refuges, our goal is to empower and support them to utilise the skills they already have and develop the new skills they will need to live a fulfilled independent life in Australia,” she said.
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