Scores of readers have got in touch wanting to help after the Guardian launched its new arrivals project. Here’s what you can do

How you can help refugees and asylum seekers in Britain

This week the Guardian launched a new project along with three European newspapers to investigate the ups and downs of refugees’ lives after they arrive in Europe.

Scores of readers have been in touch asking how they can help, either through donations, volunteering or applying their skills.

Donate

Refugee Action helps those who have made it to the UK build better lives. You can donate through their website and help by paying for emergency care parcels or a safe room where someone can stay.



The British Red Cross funds work with refugees and asylum seekers in the UK and across Europe. The money is spent on vital lifelines including food and clothes and casework advice. The charity also helps reunite families who have been separated. Donations can be made here.



The Refugee Council meanwhile works directly with refugees and asylum seekers across a range of financial, legal, health and training issues.

We asked readers to recommend projects and initiatives that are working well. Among their suggestions, which we have not vetted, were Retasleeds; Crossings in Newcastle; ASHA in north Staffordshire; the Belfast Friendship Club; RAPAR; St Anne’s community services in Yorkshire and the northeast; and the Hope Projects and St Chad’s Sanctuary, both in Birmingham.

Also, we’ve had a number of people want to donate directly to the asylum seekers we’re following for this series - Said and Wali Khan Norzai. It’s tricky to give money directly to asylum seekers as it can affect the financial support they receive from the government. Instead we recommend donating to Upbeat Communities, a charity in Derby that has been supporting the Norzais since their arrival there, or to Side by Side Refugees, another charity supporting the family.

How to volunteer

The Red Cross has suggestions of organisations to help you get involved. Dave Smith of Boaz Trust has offered to direct those who are unable to find local groups.

Skills in teaching, languages and medicine are highly valuable in volunteers. Doctors of the World UK holds clinics run by volunteers with and without medical experience. The clinics in London and Brighton provide medical care, information and practical support. Find out how you can get involved here.

A spokesman, Nick Harvey, said: “Many people living in the UK find it impossible to access health services, despite being fully entitled to them, due to fear, not knowing the system, having to pay charges or being wrongly turned away by frontline healthcare staff. This can lead to pregnant women not getting antenatal care, parents not taking their children to the doctor and people with serious illnesses suffering needlessly.”

One facilitator of a local group in Devon wrote to us: “All around the country there are now volunteer groups doing what the government should be doing. Most of them are called something like ‘welcoming refugees to xyz’. These groups are mainly not full of fuzzy enthusiasm but of hard bitten realists who know just how damn hard and how damn necessary this job is.”



Offering living space to a refugee

When asylum seekers are given refugee status they generally have to vacate their accommodation within four weeks, making it almost impossible to complete the bureaucracy necessary to qualify for housing benefits and find somewhere new to live. Homelessness has almost become the default.

Meanwhile, those who have been refused asylum but are unable to return to their home country for fear of persecution are often left with nowhere to live.



There are charities working with volunteers to provide accommodation for those unable to rely on the authorities. Some hosting is only temporary, for up to a few months while the person is granted asylum and given a national insurance number. Long-term housing support is needed for those struggling to prove their case for asylum.



Assist in Sheffield, the Boaz Trust in Manchester and Housing Justice in London rely on volunteers and are always looking for more people willing to give up space in their home.

Abigail Housing in Leeds and Open Doors in Hull provide accommodation in empty vicarages and church buildings as well as houses lent by owners.

Lobbying

Citizens UK encouraged many local communities across the country to lobby their councils following the government’s promise to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020.

Safe Passage UK fights for refugee rights through campaigning and calling on councils to sign up to resettlement. The charity has been successful in persuading councils to sign up despite the government’s claim that the number could not be increased because there was nowhere to resettle refugees.

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