Arriving Afghans Survey & Legal Service Focus Group

Virtual Focus Group Protocol for:

State Refugee Coordinators and ORR Preferred Communities Grantees

OMB Control No.: 0970-0401

Expiration Date: 06/30/2024

THE PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT OF 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) The purpose of this information collection is to better understand the capacity building needs of child welfare jurisdictions so that the Capacity Building Center for States, a Children’s Bureau initiative can tailor and improve its services. Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 60 minutes per respondent, including the time for reviewing instructions, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and reviewing the collection of information. This is a voluntary collection of information. A Federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and no individual or entity is required to respond to, nor shall an individual or entity be subject to a penalty or failure to comply with a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, unless that collection of information displays a currently valid OMB control number. If you have any comments on this collection of information, please contact Malia Kim, Capacity Building Director, ICF, by email at Malia.Kim@icf.com.

Facilitator Instructions: Read verbatim bold text and paraphrase other text.

Thank you for joining us today. My name is [insert facilitator name] and I am part of the Immigration Legal Services for Afghan Arrivals (ILSAA) Team. We have asked you to join us to support ILSAA, a new project on behalf of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). ILSAA provides immigration legal services to Eligible Arriving Afghans (EAAs) across the country and helps build the capacity of immigration legal service providers.

The information you provide will help us understand the current strengths, challenges, and supports needed to provide legal services to EAAs. A summary of our findings will also be shared with the ORR. Your participation today is completely voluntary. You can decline to answer any questions you don’t want to answer, and you can stop and leave the group at any time without consequences. No compensation is being provided to you for your participation today. There are no risks to you expected as a result of this session. Your answers are private, that is, we will not associate your name with individual answers. We will take detailed notes today; the session will be recorded for later reference but we will not capture names with individual answers. Only ISLAA evaluation staff have access to notes with identifying information, such as general location or agency, and this information is kept in a secure space. Your name and individual comments will not be shared with the ORR, or with others in your organization. We also ask that you keep this private by not disclosing what is discussed today once we leave the session. However, we cannot guarantee that participants will not discuss today’s conversation. Our results will be aggregated and summary findings will be reported to the ORR. We ask that we take turns and allow everyone a chance to speak, and that we respect one another’s input in the discussion. We may call on you to invite you to speak but you can always “pass” if there is a question you don’t want to answer. 

Do you have any questions?

Do we have your agreement to participate today?  (Facilitator: Ask them to provide their verbal consent to participate in the session; allow for those who wish to discontinue participation to do so).

Ask permission to record.

Will you allow us to record this session?

The facilitator asks the notetaker to start the recording.

Thank you, the recording has started.

We’d like to start by asking everyone to introduce yourselves, and briefly tell us what state/location you’re in, what agency you are with if you want to share, and how long you’ve been working in the field. (Names not to be captured in notes).

1. In your experience what about the current system of connecting EAAs to legal services is working?

2. Tell us about some of the specific challenges you are having with connecting Eligible Arriving Afghans with appropriate legal service providers.

3. What do you think are some of the underlying reasons these challenges exist?

4. If you could wave your magic wand and fix one issue related to connecting EAAs to appropriate legal services, what would it be?

5. In your experience, what types of coordination and collaboration are needed to better serve this population? (At the federal, state, local levels)

6. Is there anything else you would like to tell us?

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