Promoting better outcomes for migrant victim-survivors through community-based systems interactions and levers of change

Domestic abuse victim-survivors with insecure immigration status in the UK are subject to multiple, intersecting forms of disadvantage. To access safety, support, and justice, they are expected to navigate complex—and in some respects intentionally hostile—bureaucratic systems and provide compelling evidence of their need and vulnerability to organisational ‘gatekeepers’. This chapter draws on the authors’ three-year evaluation of an innovative community-based programme for migrant victim-survivors with ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ (NRPF) in the East of England, to (1) explore the potential of a systems thinking approach in signifying and enhancing community-based systems change; and (2) to identify the multi-level system blockages encountered (namely funding continuity issues and a bureaucratic tender process) that hinders systems change efforts. This analysis concludes by proposing recommendations for systems change that will promote a more equitable, coordinated, and efficacious response to migrant victim-survivors.