A group tasked with improving Utah's refugee services envisions a state-funded Office of Refugee Services that would coordinate and improve assistance to the state's growing refugee population.

A draft recommendation from the Refugee Working Group envisions a visible state office with "the flexibility and status to raise private, state and corporate resources in order to supplement inadequate federal monies."

The group is also calling for a committee that would hold agencies serving refugees accountable and a task force to seek private and state funding for refugee services.

"We've been advocating for this for a long time," said Aden Batar, resettlement director for Catholic Community Services, one of two Utah agencies that resettles refugees.

More than 15,000 refugees arrived in Utah from 1983 to 2005, according to the working group. The U.S. State Department assists refugees for the first month, and resettlement agencies work with refugees for six months. At that point, other groups step in. But more resources are needed, Batar said.

Batar said better coordination and funding through a central office would help refugees, who often struggle to find affordable housing, to learn English and to access vocational training beyond initial resettlement.

"They need more skills so they can learn better ways to support their family," Batar said. "We want to give them some skills so they can move up."

Currently, there is a state refugee coordinating office with two full-time staff members charged mainly with managing federal money.

Part of the vision for the expanded state role would be to help refugees become self-reliant through community-based programs such as training in job skills or English language, said Palmer DePaulis, executive director of the Utah Department of Community and Culture.

"You have to have the capacity in the community to carry these programs on," DePaulis said. "People are not going to learn English cold in a number of months."

The recommendations are now open for comment at www.jobs.utah.gov/refugeeworkinggroup and will be presented to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, who jointly created the group.

DePaulis said the group is hoping Huntsman and Corroon will move on the recommendations in time for a refugee office and some state funding to be included in the 2008 Legislature's budget recommendations. In the meantime, bolstered funding could be discussed for future sessions.

---

E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com