St Sebastian’s Community and SERV (Salford Edmund Rice Volunteers)

SERV continues to be ultra-busy, with the brothers, Ger, Jim, and Tony, providing services through the week.  When the human dynamo Ger was recently forced off the pitch by a critical medical emergency his refugee fan club, (mostly female, veiled, and gifting goodies) broke all visitor count records at Salford Royal. He is now back in action, as irrepressible as ever!

Ger’s current English class brings together refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Sudan, and Hong Kong. Tony’s group includes South Americans, so his own facility in Spanish and Portuguese is a great help.

After five years initial leave refugees are eligible for indefinite leave (settlement) and one year after that, for citizenship, but application is complex, and solicitors charge high fees that refugees cannot afford. Jim has become the expert on making these applications, each one a long job, and has a packed diary of appointments through the week.

The Monday drop-in at the St Sebastian’s Community Centre is staged by the brothers, plus Wilf and Anne Hammond, May Bassanino, Richard Simpson and James Mwakitemba, with   Alaedinn Musa as our number-one interpreter.

Attempted problem-solving ranges across asylum support and housing problems, hostel applications, debt resolution, medical issues, schooling, employment, benefits, food banks, travel documents, accessing legal advice, fresh claim preparation, and tribunal appeals. The current predominant flow is refugees from Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, and Iran.

The UK has no integration programme to provide recognised refugees with follow-up support. As the Refugee Council puts it, ‘Bizarrely, at the very point refugees are granted asylum, the Government washes its hands of them, leaving often traumatised and disoriented people to survive on their own.’  The task falls on the voluntary sector, charities like SERV and REVIVE in Manchester.

Wilf Hammond