Supporting people who are refugees or seeking asylum and safety
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This Refugee Week, our head of social action, Craig, tells more about ways we support people seeking safety in Greater Manchester and Lancashire, and why it’s so important to be there for them.
What’s your role at Caritas and how does our charity support refugees and people seeking asylum?
As the head of social action, my role sits within the senior leadership team with responsibility for several projects and teams which are community focused. I have the privilege of supporting a passionate team of people with skills and qualifications geared towards a wide variety of needs and issues.
At Caritas’ day centres, advice centres and community allotment, people of all backgrounds are welcome and using trauma-informed, strength-based approaches we aim to improve the circumstances in which people find themselves.
We want people to experience a positive increase in their physical and mental health, too. ’Forced displacement’ (having to leave your home or your country through fear of armed conflict, human rights abuses, disasters, or persecution) is a form of mass – and individual – trauma which we must consider when supporting people as it has such detrimental impact on overall health.
Our specific projects for people seeking asylum or with refugee status include:
Aspire: Courses of seven different levels of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) which supports English language skills helping integration, future employment opportunities or further education. The purpose is to equip people with vital skills to regain independence.
Community sponsorship: A resettlement programme for families with refugee status to relocate to a safe environment supported by Caritas volunteers. This is focused on positive inclusion and integration into a local area beyond simply being given a visa.
It’s important to remember that no matter your nationality or visa status, we can all struggle at times so our advice, guidance and information services are also open to people with visas.
Caritas is also registered as a Third Party Hate Crime reporting centre which means if a person has been the victim of crime which is connected to their race, including their colour, nationality or ethnic origins, we can support them to report this to Greater Manchester Police.
(Please note we cannot offer legal advice or support and encourage anyone with visa, status or immigration questions to seek professional advice from a solicitor or OISC registered organisation.)
Who comes to Caritas for support?
When we hear stories of people’s backgrounds and how they have found themselves in the UK, we realise that when people reach out for support, having refugee status is an additional factor, not a defining one.
People in our classes and our centres are those who have been threatened in their home countries but are teachers, farmers, doctors or professors who need some learning to be able to support themselves and their families again.
Those settled through community sponsorship are families with young children keen for them to be in school and learning to be children again. We repeatedly see the strong desire to be self-supporting and independent families able to contribute to the community they are now in.
War, disaster and forced displacement are not new but the invasion in Ukraine, civil war of Sudan and continued conflicts in Syria, Lebanon among others, shows us that whole communities are uprooted. None of those people expected to find themselves in war which shows how simply and quickly the need to flee and find safety can happen to anyone, without warning.
Why is it important we are there for people from a migrant background?
Contrary to the misinformation spread, many people don’t choose to be here. International process and legal frameworks often keep people in refugee camps in other countries, sometimes for years, before they are granted permission to come to the UK. But they could easily be told that they are moving to any other ‘safe’ country. The person and their family have no choice and may even be separated from brothers and sisters. Other routes will find themselves separated from children and loved ones, put at risk, perhaps trafficked or smuggled, and risking dangerous travel.
This is mentally and physically traumatic for people and the benefit of ‘safety’ can often be found with experiences of further exclusion, racism, threat or mistreatment in the UK. Often the systems and processes in the UK will be complex and difficult to comprehend – they will certainly be unfamiliar and also conducted in a language not always understood by the person. We must support people in these situations to navigate the place that they now find themselves.
Compassion and empathy are what we would hope to show as a community but at the very least, should we find ourselves in a position of fear, confusion, loss, and destitution, we would want people to be kind.
Do you find public opinion has changed recently with news and politics often citing refugees and asylum seekers in their rhetoric?
Immigration remains one of the top issues of politics and is regularly debated, often using derogatory and dehumanising language. Media coverage is also dominated by talks of refugees and people seeking asylum – rarely positively. Sadly, the amount of misinformation, sometimes deliberate, seriously damages the discussions. Even the understanding of what the statuses of refugee, asylum seeker, visa-holder, etc shows how misunderstood the whole discussion can be. People are reduced to statistics and numbers which can be used to represent specific interests. Unfortunately, some of this is reflected in the stories we are told by people using our services where they have experienced negative attitudes, violence or abuse.
How can people help support our work in this area?
There are lots of ways you can support, including:
- Help us create welcoming spaces by giving the dignity you would like to receive
- If you feel safe and comfortable to do so, call out misinformation and look deeper into information that you might see that has no sources
- Donate to our projects
- Volunteer with us. There are some opportunities specifically for our refugee projects but all our services need enthusiastic, empathetic people who can connect with people of all backgrounds
- Remember that you don’t know a person’s life story, so be kind.
To find out more about our work with people locally and how you can help support refugees and people seeking safety in your community, visit: www.caritassalford.org.uk/refugees
To find out more about our policy and advocacy work and ways you can get involved, visit www.caritassalford.org.uk/about/policy-and-advocacy/