FIAP Strategy
2025 – 2030

How we co-designed this strategy

We’ve been working with our partners, especially those with lived experience of migration (42%), to build on their expertise, enabling more people affected by the UK’s immigration system to resolve issues within their communities. 

In 2024, we carried out research into the impact of FIAP and recommendations for future development of the programme, with a particular focus on centring lived experience.  We held a series of 5 focus groups, interviews and an in-person away day with partners who have lived experience of migration.  

In March 2025 our external evaluators analysed and built on this data, holding 2 workshops with FIAP partners who have lived experience of migration. The resulting report and recommendations: ‘Rooting lived experience in the FIAP strategy’ are the foundation of the FIAP 2025 - 2030 strategy, ensuring that it is embedded in the voices of the practitioners that we collaborate with. Below are some quotes from the report:

“I took other courses and many are run by solicitors so they had a different approach, so it was challenging. The FIAP way is designed for people with English as an additional language - they are very encouraging. And the team are wonderful.”

“Having that back up [resources] that is free is a really big contribution to the confidence to give advice. I know where to go to learn more. Everything costs more [...]. The FIAP programme is an asset to people like us to get the help we need to help others.”

(Immigration advice caseworkers and managers with lived experience of migration)

Refugee Action’s Strategic Vision as our guide

Every refugee can thrive as part of a welcoming, anti-racist society.

FIAP’s vision: Every refugee is able to access the justice that they are entitled to, enabling people to live with safety and dignity.
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‍Our mission: To enhance the availability, accessibility, and connectivity of high-quality immigration advice and support, ensuring that those with lived experience are at the centre of our work.

Our goals

“Many funders only offer grants for Level 2 organisations or above, but Level 1 can be preventative…Local smaller organisations rely on FIAP to give comprehensive immigration advice (even Level 1). I recommend they sign up for FIAP.”

“Compassion can [be] offered because volunteers with lived experience have been in similar situations”.

“We are relied on in the city because we have bilingual advice staff. Attendance has gone up [...] as a result of increasing our IAA level.”

(Immigration advice caseworkers and managers with lived experience of migration)

Our activities

To meet our goals, our key activities from 2025 - 2028 will be:

1. Increase the availability and quality of immigration advice, working adaptively to address advice deserts and meet the needs of organisations in an ever changing external context.

• 300 partner organisations, from all regions of the UK, directly supported with their immigration advice goals, including 125 newly onboarded organisations.
• 72 FIAP courses delivered, with 1,500 unique attendees completing a total of 2,000 courses, or more. 
• Pilot new approaches to support our partners to continuously improve the quality and reach of their community immigration advice services, including testing out ways to better meet the needs of practitioners with lived experience.
  

2. Build lived experience-led immigration advice service and legal literacy capacity, removing barriers and enabling people to grow, learn and lead.

• 6-8 lived experience-led organisations benefit from our pilot intensive support model to help propel them on their journey towards their immigration advice goals.
• 750 practitioners with lived experience supported with their immigration advice goals through training and/or themed group support sessions open to all FIAP participants with lived experience.
• Create a quarterly Centring Lived Experience in FIAP Codesign Panel of representatives from the 6 - 8 core recruited organisations to share experiences and co-design solutions.
• Connect 50 lived experience-led organisations to capacity building resources and opportunities to strengthen their overall organisational resilience in their local refugee support ecosystem.
• Work together with funders to highlight the need for IAA supervision opportunities, especially a model in which smaller and larger organisations can partner.
  

3. Foster increased reciprocity across the immigration advice and support ecosystem.  Enable all organisations, including lived experience-led, to value and support each other, remove barriers to power, challenge racism and fight for the rights of people seeking safety.

• 150 practitioners join online and in-person opportunities for lived-experience led, grassroots and larger organisations from across the voluntary, legal and statutory sectors to share in peer exchange.  This will enable them to value each others’ strengths, support one another (e.g. around supervision) and to reduce isolation that is especially felt in small organisations.
• Connect our 300+ FIAP partner network with Refugee Action’s Campaigns, Asylum Services, Expert by Experience and Insight Hub teams, as well as regulators, such as the IAA and Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), to work more closely together, building our sector’s ability to combat the hostile environment. We’ll do this by holding space, engaging in research, advocacy/campaigns and reciprocal learning, so that we can collaborate in a shared journey towards removing barriers to power, anti-racism and fighting for the rights of people seeking safety.

We will co-design an outcomes framework with our partners that will enable us to test and learn from our responsive approach, capture our impact, and assess our progress towards our 2025 - 2030 goals.

Our values

As we work towards our goals, we will be guided by our values:

We are with refugees and people seeking asylum. Our work is shaped by the experiences and insights of refugees and people seeking asylum. We stand together to call for change and commit to removing the barriers they face in using their power, skills and experience. We commit to deep analysis of how power works within society, the sector, and Refugee Action.

We are collaborative. We believe that a well-connected, resilient and skilled refugee sector and movement is essential to achieving our vision and we understand that we have an important role to play in facilitating this and building effective collaborations. We are power-aware and commit to share our access, influence, and platforms.

We are courageous. We’re bold and creative in all that we do. We challenge, at an individual and systemic level, those who hold power over the lives of refugees. We understand the scale of the task to achieve our vision and so take calculated risks to make progress and have an impact.

We are anti-racist. We recognise that we are working in a system that racialises people, creating discriminatory policies and practices that have a traumatic impact on refugees. We recognise that this is also deep rooted within society and in our sector. We will work towards being an anti-racist charity and commit to learning from our mistakes. We commit to continual learning and believe that we cannot truly achieve our vision without constantly challenging ourselves as Refugee Action. With this in mind, we are working towards viewing all our work through an anti-racist lens.