Welcome to episode 19 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode, I chat with Victoria Esses. You’ll get her bio when she introduces herself. Among other things she has done a great deal of work understanding information practices of newcomers. In this conversation, we talk about that along with the work she is doing to highlight promising practices in the immigrant and refugee-serving sector, the resiliency of the sector, innovation, and the role that Local Immigration Partnerships can play in convening and driving collaboration across the country. Victoria Esses is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Centre for Research on Migration and Ethnic Relations at the University of Western Ontario. She is Co-Chair and Principal Investigator of the Pathways to Prosperity Partnership. Her research focuses on immigration policy and practice, including public attitudes toward immigration and cultural diversity; promising practices in settlement and integration; factors promoting the settlement and integration of immigrants; and the measurement of community welcome-ability and immigrant outcomes. She has extensive experience conducting academic research in this area, as well as work for federal, provincial, and municipal governments and for the settlement sector. In 2010 she was awarded the Harold Crabtree Foundation Award in Public Policy Research. Some themes from our conversation: * what a promising practice is and how they can help drive innovation in the sector* building capacity for outcome measurement across the country* sector professionalization – “professionalization involves some acknowledgement of the skills and the experience that settlement workers are able to bring with them to their positions, and that professional development means developing new skills and investing in the people who are doing this work, rather than just assuming that anybody can do it, which is not the case.”* the evolving and emerging role of Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs) and how they can help drive future sector innovation* information needs and practices of newcomers – “information needs can be divided into two big categories. And one is really information on what services and resources are available to them. And the other is just knowledge of the Canadian system and way of life and how to navigate that system. Newcomers don’t always want tons of information when they first arrived. They don’t necessarily want a lot of information in one place early on, but they need to know how to get that information. And I think that one of the things that we could do to improve information provision is having some central source or repository where information is available, and immigrants can go to that source when they want it. So one of the things we hear is that, you know, there’s the guide that immigrants get at the airport and some of them throw that guide away because at that time, they don’t need it. They’re overwhelmed with other issues, but then later, when they need that information, they don’t know where to find it. I think there’s also a big challenge in terms of navigation knowing the Canadian system.”* building the capacity of agencies to create information approaches and products (increasingly digital) to meet the information needs and preferences of newcomers to Canada Additional resources: * a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://p2pcanada.