In
2001, RAPAR’s founders were approached for help by community health,
cohesion and social work practitioners who were confronted with a new
population when refugees, forcibly dispersed to these practitioners' localities in
North West England conurbations for the first time, became their
‘clients’.
Drawing
on our skills and networks as clinicians, epidemiologists and social
scientists, our personal identities as refugees and second or third
generation migrants to the UK, and our professional relationships with
community development practitioners, RAPAR gradually became live.
The
organisation originally comprised researchers, policy formulators
and front line practitioners within key statutory services, and small
pockets of displaced people. At its inception, it aspired to the
continuous development and delivery of action-orientated research,
community development and individual casework about and with - as
opposed to on and for - displaced people and their surrounding
communities. This aspiration continues.