Asylum Welcome Core Services
Asylum Welcome Core Services
- Advice & Support Service for adults and families: Staffed by trained volunteers, this service is devoted to offering advice and support to clients at any stage of the asylum process on issues such as housing, access to asylum support or benefits, and the progress of their asylum claims
- Youth Service: Our specialist work with young people who arrived without parents or guardians is centred on our weekly youth club Venda - an informal atmosphere to meet, eat, and enjoy games together. Venda hosts an average of 25 young people each week and provides the opportunity for them to raise their concerns with our Youth Coordinator Helena and volunteer helpers, which can then be taken up during the week. Helena supports them primarily through the bewildering processes of asylum and welfare provision; our volunteers help with homework, CVs, looking for jobs, managing benefits
- Detainees Support Service: Our volunteers visit detainees in Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre, just outside Oxford. Our visitors offer detainees support and assistance, but also friendship and human contact. With his office-based volunteers, our Service Coordinator Navid also provides a casework service on the telephone for the detainees. Support provided includes: facilitating communication with families and the outside world; providing primary immigration advice; contacting lawyers; giving advice on welfare and health (including assistance with the Centre’s health service) in cooperation with organisations such as Medical Justice and Freedom From Torture; paying for transportation of documents, clothing, luggage; mobile phones top-ups
- Food Bank and Lunch Club: We have a food cupboard in the office, stocked by a regular supermarket order, regular donations from local food banks, churches and well-wishers. Bags of food and essential toiletries are given out every week to people living in extreme poverty or destitution. This service is used primarily as short term support while our advice services try to resolve the underlying crisis whenever possible. Our weekly lunch club, a hot meal cooked by volunteers, is both a social and nutritious occasion, especially for our destitute clients, and also attended by staff and volunteers. We are also now providing breakfast three days a week
- Education Service: Trained volunteers give advice to asylum seekers and refugees regarding further education opportunities: to learn new skills, to learn English, to improve their employability, or convert existing qualifications. A number of volunteers with ESOL qualifications give English lessons, for example to isolated women arriving with little or no English. We can help clients with the cost of travel to classes and with learning materials
- Advocacy and Public Education: We respond to local and national developments, advocate for more supportive policies, attitudes and practice towards asylum seekers. We raise awareness of the issues faced by asylum seekers and refugees, and have a good relationship with local press and media, who, on the whole, report on asylum and refugee issues in a well-balanced, thoughtful fashion
In addition to our services, we offer asylum seekers and refugees a place where they know they will receive a warm welcome. Asylum Welcome runs bright, welcoming offices, which are open three days a week, in East Oxford, close to the areas of the city where the majority of asylum seekers and refugees live. The office offers private rooms to consult clients and a comfortable reception area. Clients can make a cup of coffee, chat with volunteers and staff, and use the computers in our reception area. It is possible to Skype from these computers, with the assistance of a volunteer with IT skills if needed, so clients can make contact with family in their home country
- Vulnerable Persons Relocation Programme: In September 2015 the Prime Minister announced that arrangements would be made to settle in the UK 20,000 Syrian refugees direct from camps in countries neighbouring Syria, of whom 1,000 were to arrive before Christmas 2015. Local authorities were requested to elect to take refugees under this programme and make their own arrangements for their care and integration. Various authorities within Oxfordshire were motivated to help but had no prior experience of the very particular needs of resettlement refugees. Asylum Welcome is delighted to have been recognised as the organisation with the necessary expertise and to take a lead role in advising the local authorities, making preparations for arrivals and, for Oxford City Council, to undertake a contract to deliver an intensive 10-day induction programme on arrival: to meet Syrian families at the airport, furnish and stock their houses, provide them with a package of information and support, intensive English lessons and ensure that they are registered with health services, schools etc. In order to carry out this work, we have employed a new member of staff, paid for by the City Council.
Updated February 2016