Language Support for Adult Refugees

A Council of Europe Toolkit

The Council of Europe has developed the toolkit presented on this website (available in seven languages) to support member states in their efforts to respond to the challenges posed by unprecedented migration flows. It has been produced as part of the project Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants (LIAM) of the Council of Europe’s major Programme on language policy.

The toolkit comprises the 57 tools and other resources contained in the various sections of this website. Tools can be downloaded and adapted to meet the needs of different contexts

The toolkit is designed to assist organisations, and especially volunteers, providing language support for adult refugees. Throughout the toolkit “refugee” is understood in a broad sense and includes asylum seekers as well as refugees.

Guidelines, overview of the sections and FAQs

Launch Conference

Webinar Training on the Council of Europe Toolkit 'Linguistic Support for Adult Refugees'

HEADLINES HEADLINES

The Council of Europe and the European Commission will celebrate the European Day of Languages on 26 September.

This year it has been important to help refugees from Ukraine settle as much as possible into their host countries, both neighbouring and far away. A central part of this help is assisting member states in their response to the challenges faced by those providing language support to both children and adults. The Council of Europe has developed a set of tools for this very purpose, which takes into consideration the refugees specific needs for adjusting to their new environment.

The tools are designed to help organisations, teachers, and volunteers assisting newly arrived people with no, or very little knowledge, of the language of the new country.

Particular attention is paid to the school environment for children. Nine tools have been translated into the languages of neighbouring countries with the largest numbers of refugees from the war in Ukraine: Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak/Czech, as well as French and Italian.

The Language support for adults arriving from Ukraine (twenty-three new tools) have been adapted from the Toolkit for adults which was developed as part of the Council of Europe’s Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants (LIAM) project.

Migrants

The integration of migrants and the impact on it of their acquisition of competence in the language(s) of the host country are a focus for political debate and policy initiatives in a growing number of Council of Europe member states.

The Council of Europe project "Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants" (LIAM) aims at offering support to policy deciders and practitioners to facilitate migrants’ integration in civil society.

LIAM project website