As a consequence of the major influx of immigrants in 2015, Norway’s municipalities were encouraged to implement extra efforts to welcome and settle those who were granted residence. Fjell municipality had previously settled 20 immigrants per year and accepted the challenge. In total, the municipality has welcomed and settled around 280 immigrants over the past few years. This has required reinforcements and improvements to the municipality’s service organisation, in addition to improved competencies and cooperative culture throughout the organisation. Developments in recent years imply that every member of the organisation, from top management to individual employees, shall experience the importance of contributing to the process of inclusion. The entire organisation is responsible for the work with the immigrants, and all departments shall contribute to the process. To achieve these goals, strong political and administrative support has been established for the efforts to find housing for and include the immigrants. The municipalityÕs Chief Executive has been clear, enthusiastic and supportive in working toward these goals by including the work on inclusion and integration on the agenda.
The Kraftsenter for inkludering (centre focusing on inclusion) was established in April 2016. This centre comprises a doctor for speakers of minority languages, a psychologist for immigrants, community nurses and programme consultants in addition to persons assigned the task of helping new immigrants to settle and employees who are involved in several development projects, all working in the same building. The centre collaborates with all services and units in the municipality, associations and clubs and others who may represent a resource. Immigrants are made to feel welcome and taken care of at the centre.
Coordination of assignments saves time and resources for both the employees and those making use of their services. The collaboration has also given birth to several innovation and development projects within the field of inclusion. In recent years, Fjell municipality has worked systematically and innovatively to be able to provide quality services to the immigrants we have settled in the area. The ultimate goal is to successfully find work or education for the immigrants. At the same time, it is extremely important to encourage those who have just arrived in the municipality to take part and be included in the Fjell community. Experience gained after setting up the Kraftsenter centre for inclusion has shown that the municipality, along with the voluntary sector and the individual immigrant, are able to achieve a successful process for inclusion.
As the application will detail, the municipality has worked to establish differentiated offers for those settled in the area. This was introduced after we experienced that the former two-year introduction programme for immigrants was only successful for some of the immigrants, but not all. Persons arriving in Norway as immigrants are all different, and we need to provide different routes for including them into Norwegian society. Fjell municipality experienced the established system as excessively rigid and decided to seek out new solutions.
By means of innovation and development work driven by the employees, a method development project was initiated where ten recently arrived immigrants were sent straight to work for the municipality.
The method utilised in the project has been further developed and subsequently included in a national trial for permanent adapted work for persons with a disability pension. Fjell is one of six trial municipalities in Norway. The permanent adapted work trial has ten participants who are working for the municipality. The trial will be evaluated by Telemarksforsking.