Introduction
Meeting the health and wellbeing needs of migrants in the UK is becoming increasingly important due to the multifaceted factors influencing the delivery of services e.g. UK migrant health policy, UK migration policy, conflict and human rights violations amongst others.
Over the last 10 years, the number of people coming from other countries for reasons including; to work, to study, to be with their family and because they are refugees to Wakefield district, has grown. Because of this, and national policy decisions, the need for services to support migrant communities has also grown. However, over time, these services may be offering different types of health and wellbeing support and care, and may not always meet the needs of our migrant communities. To make sure health and wellbeing services are the best they can be, the Migrant Health Needs Assessment Working Group are working with migrant communities, those who work with them and service providers, to carry out a Wakefield Migrant Health Needs Assessment.
The term migrants describes people with a wide range of circumstances. There are many different reasons why a migrant decides to move to the UK. There are also various categories of migrant based on their reason why they moved to the UK including:
- Refugee
- Asylum Seeker
- Refused Asylum Seeker
- Trafficked person
- Undocumented Migrant
- Working/Economic Migrant
- Family Migrant
- International Student
Phases of the Health Needs Assessment
The migrant health needs assessment is being broken down into a number of different pieces of work. These include,
- the views and experiences of people and organisations who work with and provide services for migrant communities,
- the voices of those with lived experiences of being a migrant,
- findings of a health and wellbeing services survey,
- and a report describing the demographic and health profile of migrant communities residing in Wakefield.
The work should be finished later in 2024, but reports and summaries from completed phases will be shared below as they become available.
Reports
- Summary Report Number 1: Organisational Stakeholder Engagement
- This report summarises the qualitative findings following a series of focus groups and in-depth interviews. 57 organisational stakeholders were represented from a wide range of sectors and organisations, including those who work at local government level, those who work in migrant services, NHS and healthcare professionals and those who work in the third sector.