Abby David is the Manager of Employment Initiatives at the New Brunswick Multicultural Council (NBMC). Earlier this Summer I learned that NBMC had been doing some innovative coordinating work with member agencies after everyone pivoted to remote work. I was curious about their work with member agencies to develop policies and tools and share best practices on: * Communication (internal for settlement staff and external for clients, including support in different languages)* Technology and how we use it to provide services to our clients and maintain lines of communications* Case Management in remote mode, support to most vulnerable clients etc.* Remote services for youth In this conversation Abby shares how NBMC worked together as a provincial sector and what the fruits of that work have been. Among other things, we talked about * How prepared were agencies for the sudden move to remote work?Do you have policies in these areas that could be shared with other agencies?* How have different agencies in New Brunswick operationalized this work in their day-to-day?* What has newcomer service during COVID-19 looked like in New Brunswick?* Are there interesting stories, learning, a-ha moments?* What work still needs to be done? I think anyone working in the sector will find this conversation insightful and useful. Some themes from our conversation: * Not all members were not prepared, but they shifted quickly and successfully online: “it was a very interesting to see how some of our members decided just to move everything to an online mode. I think that we heard very inspiring some inspiring stories about how staff were able to provide training for the clients before they’re actually registered to these online services, and develop capacity for the clients explain everything, how it should work. And then everything from language class to information sessions, into employment services, everything just moved to be online, and it’s working smooth smoothly for them. I think that the clients are eager to continue to learn and stay connected. So that’s where we could, we could really see very high level of participation and turnout.”* They were quickly able to harness the expertise that did exist in their membership: “we have brilliant experts in within our members. They know how to develop online learning and how to create technology connections. And we needed to find the ways for us to communicate with the with the clients, and to support the staff who suddenly work from home, and how they can use the digital service delivery mode that they are required to do.”* Online safety and security were essential: “And we also wanted to make sure that it’s safe, because everyone knows how important it is to be safe using technology. So we wanted to make sure that both sides, their staff supporting the clients and the clients themselves, know how to work with that and have their well established protocols to be safe as well.”* There have been some increases in service accessibility: “right now you can open it for more people in the smaller and rural centers that usually are unable to travel to one of the big cities. And there’s many opportunities for New Brunswickers right now, because of the dynamics that usually most of the programs are in the big cities, and people from smaller centers get less access to to to the support and services and right now, we see a big opportunity for us to to engage with them as well.” Machine-Generated Transcript What follows is an AI-generated transcript using ...