National Refugee Week is an annual event that celebrates the contributions and resilience of refugees in the UK, and provides the opportunity to showcase the challenges faced by refugees and asylum seekers, and to showcase the positive impact they have on their communities. As a Senior Housing Support Worker for Saif Social & Health Care Homes Ltd, I have been working with refugee tenants for four years. I have professional experience in Law and a Master of Law degree from the UK. As a result, I am familiar with the challenges and lack of legal support that immigrants and refugees who need support face. I am committed to utilizing my legal expertise to support and advocate for refugee tenants and address any legal barriers they may encounter. I
strive to handle their cases with care and diligence, ensuring that they receive the appropriate support.
I am very proficient in supporting individuals and families as clients with successful results, working with collaboratively with relevant public services and organisations. During my professional career history, I have always been drawn to working with refugee tenants, especially those who have fled their home country due to life-threatening circumstances, because they have lost everything they have built in their country and must start over in a new place, like a new-born baby. I find these individuals to be incredibly courageous for fighting for their lives and what they believe in. I believe that these people deserve the necessary support to achieve the life they desire. As human beings, it is our responsibility to assist each other in making our dreams a reality, especially when we have the ability to do so.
At our Birmingham based supported accommodation property, on behalf of our housing employers, my colleagues and I stride to ensure that we provide a safe and welcoming space for refugees who are seeking a fresh start in life. We believe that everyone deserves a chance to rebuild their lives after experiencing trauma and persecution in their home country. Our goal is to provide our refugee tenants with the support and advice they need to feel empowered and confident in their new surroundings. We offer a range of services, including English language support, employment opportunities, mental health counselling, and access to community resources. Our team of dedicated staff works closely with each tenant to develop a personalized support plan that meets their unique
needs and goals. We also currently providing support to a significant number of our refugees who are also victims of domestic abuse, mainly women with young children.
The referrals normally occur on a monthly basis via our established liaison activities with Birmingham Women’s Aid and West Midlands Police. We tend to find that the migrant women who are referred to us also have other challenges, relating to mental health issues, emotional and physical stress, substance misuse, unemployment, learning difficulties, limited and conditional immigration statue, limited personal belongings, alongside the social and financial trauma as a result of DA, including the emotional impacts these issues upon their young children. We often support the tenants to access appropriate counselling services and known domestic violence and abuse services, to help them to deal with the psychological and emotional impact of their experiences. Additionally, we assist them to access medical care via local National Health Services, by registering them with the local GP surgeries to receive physical health care. We help our tenants with their parenting activities and childcare needs, and access to local family related DA support services.
One of the most challenging we are experiencing is providing the necessary assistance to our refugee tenants who are domestic violence victims and has been given a limited permit to enter or remain in the UK under the visa status of their abusive partner, including their ‘No Recourse to Public
Funds’ status. When necessary, via accessing free legal aid, we also connect the tenants with family solicitors to apply for non-molestation order’s injunction against their abuser, and continue to provide the solicitors with other required documents to support the tenants with their family cases at their court hearings. We have been highly successful in helping with a considerable number of our migrant DV tenants in obtaining social housing properties, as part of our ‘moving-on’ strategy. We ensure that our ex-tenants are still accessing domestic abuse related supportive services and other identified professional agencies, including family support services.
