Trusts and major donors

Throughout the UK many refugees are so close to the edge because they are being forced, by government policy, to live in the most desperate and degrading circumstances. We also rely on donations to deliver direct services through our Therapeutic Casework Unit, and our Children’s Section, to vulnerable groups whose complex needs are not met by mainstream health and social services.

Gifts from individual major donors and grant-making trusts make all this important work possible. Here are a few examples of how your contributions will help:

• Therapeutic Casework Unit: Our experienced therapeutic staff help people come to terms with trauma and turn their lives around. Currently this service is only available in London and there is huge demand for it. To expand the service in London and establish therapeutic work in Yorkshire and the Midlands (where many refugees are dispersed) we need to raise at least £250,000 in 2011/12.
• Day Centre services: We are seeing an increasing number of people whose asylum claims have been refused but who are unable to return home, as well as people whose claims have not been resolved, who are forced to endure destitution, poverty and homelessness. Our Day Centre in Brixton provides a welcoming environment and hot food for up to 150 men, women and children every day. In 2009-10 a total of 2,093 refugees used our Day Centre. Of these approximately 80% had no access to any form of support. We need to raise £200,000 to continue providing a warm welcome, emergency support, and a hot meal for destitute refugees.
• Campaigning and Influencing: We campaign against detention, against destitution and for better decision-making in the UK asylum process. A fair, humane, and effective asylum system is in everyone’s interest. But even once a person gets refugee status they still face significant barriers to participation in society and a hostile media. We work to encourage community cohesion and integration in areas where refugees settle, both through our work with the media and through initiatives such as our Talks Team, which brings together refugees with local community groups to highlight refugee experiences. This year we need to raise £250,000 to ensure that we are able to challenge the harmful effects of the UK asylum process on refugees, to promote integration and to give refugees a voice.
• Age disputed children: We know from experience that vulnerable unaccompanied children as young as 14 have been assessed as being adults, often based on a quick visual assessment by untrained officials, resulting in them being detained or placed in adult accommodation with strangers. In almost 50% of the initial age assessments which we help to challenge, these young people are later assessed to be children and receive the support they so desperately need. We need to raise £50,000 each year to ensure that we can continue to intervene on behalf of young people who are being detained as adults.
• SCORES ‘Supporting Community Organisations – Refugees Engage in Sport’: aims to help refugees integrate into local communities through sport by building the capacity of local Refugee Community Organisations in London and the West Midlands to develop their own sporting programmes. We have been awarded a grant of £132,000 from the Football Foundation, however we need to raise match funding of £30,000 to release the grant.

Full proposals and detailed budgets are available from Ben Latham on 020 7346 1207 or ben.latham@refugeecouncil.org.uk or Claire Tomkins on 020 7346 1201 or claire.tomkins@refugeecouncil.org.uk