Effective refugee resettlement strategies for state and local governments

Make creative use of federal and state funding

States receive funding to assist in resettlement efforts. But these resources can arrive with little notice. The community infrastructure might not necessarily be ready for unexpected surges of refugees. States’ ready capacity for handling influxes of people often lags behind the arrival announcements—as one SRC told us, “A lot of dollars in resettlement follow refugees.”

States can tap into a range of resources—if they can locate them. It begins with the ORR, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services tasked with overseeing a distributed resettlement system. With a small staff and FY23 annual budget of roughly US$1.8 billion,¹³ the ORR works mainly through partnerships and collaborations, disbursing funds to federal agencies, states, and nonprofits to provide cash assistance, medical, and social services.¹⁴

For just-arrived refugees, resettlement programs receive federal funding for immediate services such as airport pickup, housing, training, cultural orientation, and school enrollment.¹⁵ But this funding covers only the first three months, a point at which many refugees haven’t yet achieved self-sufficiency. To help with the next few months, the ORR’s Matching Grant program encourages community donations of goods and services.¹⁶ The program is a public/private partnership enabling communities to become directly involved in supporting refugees through donations, volunteer support, and mentorship. Grant recipients agree to match ORR direct client assistance funding with cash and in-kind contributions of goods and services from the community at a rate of US$1 for every US$2 in federal funding.¹⁷ Some states have bolstered resettlement programs with alternative, diversified funding streams less reliant on federal sources tied to refugee numbers.

For example, Utah’s Refugee Services Office tapped federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to help create a robust case management system that serves its refugee population. Many refugees with children are eligible for TANF benefits, and Utah was able to use some of these funds to build a system enabling it to do more analysis and identify more service gaps than is typical in other states. The ORR provides additional funding needed to cover the system’s costs.¹⁸

States and local communities may be able to use other federal funding sources to enhance refugee resettlement, including American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 funding, the CDC’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness Program, and a range of grant-making federal agencies, particularly those aimed at funding emergency preparedness efforts. During the resettlement of Afghans as part of 2021’s Operation Allies Welcome, Oregon’s legislature approved US$18 million in resettlement support from the state’s Office of Resilience and Emergency Management.¹⁹

The key to making it work: creativity and information-sharing. Knowing the types of strategies that contemporaries across state lines are pursuing can expand horizons for funding sources.

Review models and partnerships as agility becomes more important

It is likely that the State Department will ask states and resettlement agencies to resettle more refugees in the coming months and years, necessitating rapid mobilization of support resources. Given the unpredictable nature of the events that create refugees, states are required to be ready to support an unexpected influx of individuals with as little as a few days’ notice. This means that state agencies need to be agile.²⁰

Across a host of applications, flexible and cross-functional teams have proven essential to allow organizations to quickly adapt to urgent challenges.²¹ States can look to incorporate these teams in helping people get housing, social services, or urgent health care.

Planning and preparedness for unexpected surges are key, and state and local entities can tap a range of federal resources, including the National Incident Management System²² and the National Response Framework.²³

State and local governments have the freedom to experiment with different strategies. But when it comes to administering refugee programs—funding, partnerships, and more— there are three predominant models that states may choose from,²⁴ a decision with real implications for how the state operationalizes its resettlement mission:

• Traditional state-administered program. Most states use a state-administered model, with federal funds disbursed to a single state agency that focuses on integrating refugees into the labor market and communities.
• Public-private partnerships. A few states opt to use public-private partnerships, in which a state agency partners with one of the nine national nonprofit resettlement agencies to administer assistance while maintaining responsibility for policy and administrative supervision.
• Replacement designee model. A handful of states use a replacement designee model, in which a state withdraws from administering all or part of the ORR funded Refugee Resettlement Program and ORR steps in to designate a separate entity other than the state government to provide refugee services within the state.²⁵

Each of these approaches has advantages and disadvantages; there’s no one-size-fits-all model. Whatever a state’s current model, it makes sense for officials to evaluate alternatives, carefully considering which model allows for the most adaptive and successful resettlement.

Working within a traditional agency structure, as most states do, is centralized and comparatively easy for both federal and state entities to understand. Since employees have connections to other state offices, they can often effectively connect refugees to available state benefits and resources. For instance, Utah created the Utah Refugee Services Office in 2008 to coordinate and consolidate services, enabling it to directly access resources that are a part of the state’s Department of Workforce Services, including clinical social workers and the state’s employment system.²⁶

On the other hand, as one SRC claimed, working within the bureaucracy that comes with acting as a state agency can sometimes compromise agility by adding layers of decision-making and slowing action when quick response is essential.

By contrast, the replacement designee model separates the resettlement function and the state bureaucracy. This doesn’t necessarily mean less engagement—though the division can create gaps in service. As one SRC noted, “I’m not in a state structure, so I don’t have quick connections to talk to the TANF office or Medicaid, because I’m not housed in the proximity of those departments.” Another SRC reported difficulties in refugee access to benefits such as foster care and tuition assistance.

The advantage: public-private partnerships and replacement designee structures can be leaner and more flexible—as long as leaders emphasize and facilitate connectivity. For instance, Kentucky refugee staffers actively foster relationships with state agencies, working closely with policymakers and agencies to collaborate on integrated service provision. And the Kentucky Office for Refugees—an ORR-designated department of Catholic Charities of Louisville—can make program changes within a few months, compared to six months or more for some state-run programs, due to a streamlined approval process with fewer layers of oversight and management.²⁷ In FY 2020 and 2021, Kentucky resettled a total of 1,122 refugees, more per capita than any other state.²⁸

Enhance decision-making through better case management and data-sharing

For state officials, agreeing to resettle refugees is only the first step. Effective resettlement—safely integrating people into local communities and helping them achieve self-sufficiency—involves robust case management. Agencies and case managers need rich, up-to-date data, and making that happen requires strong technology and data infrastructure. So that’s where states need to begin: assessing their existing infrastructure and shoring up weak spots.

Since 2015, Arizona has used a data system to meticulously track refugee funding from the ORR and other sources; analytics have helped with long-term program planning and forecasting future resettlement capacity. The system, communicating regularly with the ORR, has been able to quickly spot resource discrepancies and shortfalls between federal funding and local agency needs.

State and local governments can boost their odds of successful resettlement by investing in technology platforms that host community information exchanges. These online, publicly accessible platforms aim to pull together the various refugee resources within a given geographic region—with material on housing, health care services, legal representation, and more—and keep the information current for referrals.²⁹ Case managers no longer need to rely on personal connections to continually, manually update their resource lists, and the common resource can free up their time to give more attention to individual cases.

In 2015, the Toronto social service agency WoodGreen Community Services created an online platform called HOME—the Housing Opportunities and Marketplace Exchange—with constantly updated information on housing, goods, and services for those in need. Originally targeted specifically toward refugees, the platform has expanded to support other underserved groups such as veterans and people experiencing homelessness, improving outcomes for both clients and the government agencies serving them.³⁰

Unfortunately, information is often siloed among different state entities and local resettlement agencies, as well as the federal agencies that begin the process of bringing refugees into the country. With providers acting autonomously and building their own networks, case managers often struggle to maintain up-to-date resource guides for their clients. Staff cuts and turnover in recent years, with resettlement agencies losing institutional knowledge, exacerbate the problem.

Utah—the only state that mandates two full years of case management support for vulnerable refugees³¹—built a system that enables case managers to do more analysis and identify gaps in service. The Refugee Services Office’s system tracks employment, housing, community support services, English fluency, and life skills outcomes from arrival through the first few years of resettlement. It also connects refugees to resources and services that have demonstrated success in improving integration outcomes.³² In 2019, the program administered an outcomes-based assessment for refugees who had received two years of case management services and found that “92% of assessed refugees, 18 years or older, show[ed] improvement in employment outcomes and 100% live in safe and affordable housing.”³³

Utah’s resettlement methods deserve plaudits, but other states—with unique populations, constraints, demands, and methods of implementation—may or may not find its structure and execution applicable. As one SRC told us, “Each state would probably have a slightly different story to tell you about their resettlement program.” The important point for state officials and providers is to be aware of and willing to consider adapting other states’ leading practices.

Benchmarking and fresh thinking can foster new solutions and generate better outcomes for state governments, local communities, and most critically, for refugees themselves, whom agencies can look to move beyond mere self-sufficiency to sustainable livelihoods, strong community ties, and participation in civil society. Sharing data, comparing experiences, and identifying best practices is key to improving refugee resettlement across all 50 states.

One big challenge for states is easily accessing data that can help benchmark performance. Because states have the flexibility to shape their resettlement efforts, the defined success measures can be amorphous. After all, every newly relocated family’s situation is different. As a result, state agencies and local organizations may well end up with a patchwork of information ill-suited to identifying and comparing effective strategies. The data difficulties highlight the importance of communication between agencies.³⁴

Improve the resettlement experience by integrating human service delivery with local communities

At the end of the day, refugees will plant roots and begin new lives in local communities. And no state, or agency, can make successful integration a reality on its own. To set new arrivals on the path toward safe, financially independent lives in an unfamiliar country, leaders need to leverage the power of collective impact: “The commitment of a group of important actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem.”³⁵ To the extent possible, citizens, service providers, and local governments should work toward the same goal.

With refugee resettlement, the collective impact process looks to expand agency capabilities by creating partnerships with community members and service providers, engaging experts, and helping educate the community. Processes should aim to include a broad range of stakeholders, addressing people’s immediate needs (landlords, employers and employment services, ESL services, offices handling school registration and social security), short-term needs (transportation, immigration and legal services, adult education, child care), and long-term needs (college readiness programs, librarians, mental health providers, local farmer’s markets accepting SNAP).³⁶ Agencies can tap the expertise of faith-based groups, business leaders, schools and universities, and other actors outside the nonprofit space.

Building trust through strong communication is key. One SRC emphasized that their agency’s collective impact process focuses on breaking down local barriers, getting people to recognize that new refugees will eventually be fully participatory community members. Community relations—establishing, sustaining, and deepening relationships and lines of communication with local stakeholders—can be critical in building broad acceptance for refugees.

State and local governments can coordinate collective impact processes in collaboration with nonprofits, allowing government actors an important opportunity to lead resettlement efforts. In Aurora, Colorado, the city’s Office of International and Immigrant Affairs engaged relevant city departments to align policy while consulting community leaders on social, faith-based, and housing topics. The office surveyed community sentiment and held meetings and focus groups to create an open dialogue. The process resulted in community support around activities such as creating organizations to develop immigrant and refugee leaders, expanding ESL and adult education programs, involving immigrant and refugee populations in community policing, and developing trainings on cultural awareness and startup businesses.³⁷

Learning from each other and looking ahead

As states prepare to meet new resettlement expectations, officials and service providers may wish to replicate best practices where applicable and when possible. Agencies should look to experiment and adjust methods, bringing together coalitions, to meet the needs of both refugees and their new communities.

Successes can range from small wins such as finding new funding pools to larger wins such as refashioning a resettlement program structure to be flexible and nimble in times of crisis. Understanding the issues, and the metrics, is key. As one SRC told us, “To really help refugees, we need to have a better diagnosis of what the need is—and what is successful resettlement.” The bottom line: Assessing practices from other states can permeate good ideas and foster new solutions, leading to better outcomes for refugees, state governments, and local communities.