Red Cross Blogs

My special days of the week – Part 3

By Miana Badd
August 5, 2009 at 12:42 pm

Thursdays

When asylum seekers and refugees first arrive in Glasgow, they are given temporary accommodation at the YMCA. The British Red Cross Refugee Unit runs an outreach surgery at the YMCA. This is part of my role.

Every Thursday from 1pm – 3pm, I go to YMCA, at 33 Petershill Drive, on 28th floor for the surgery drop-in. I always look forward to going there. I usually take two volunteers with me who speak different languages: Somali, Arabic, Bajuni, Swahili, Kurdish- sorani etc. Some volunteers are blessed to be able to speak two or more languages, which is very helpful.

The Scottish Induction Service, which is situated in the same building on the 29th floor, refers newly arrived asylum seekers and refugees to our drop-in surgery. This allows us to help people as soon as they arrive in Glasgow.

The Scottish Induction Service always gives information about Red Cross services to people. However, people receive a lot of information when they arrive and it can be confusing. They can be very upset about their situation and may receive a Red Cross leaflet amongst many other things and forget about it. Or it may be that they can’t read.

Some asylum seekers have never gone to school and they cannot read or write. Some of them just manage to use a pen to make a line to sign forms. Some people want to sign with their fingerprints. That is why it is important that we are there to make sure they access our service.

Every 2 weeks, I do door-to-door outreach at the YMCA with another volunteer. We have to let YMCA staff know in advance that we will be going door to door for health and safety reasons (YMCA is a huge building) and also, so that they can reassure people who ask: “who are these people knocking at my door!”. We always carry Red Cross identification.

We knock on people’s doors, introduce ourselves and explain in details about the Red Cross. We also ask them if we can help them in any way.

Most of them are very traumatised, do not trust any one and are scared of getting out and about. They stay hidden in their homes. With door to door, we do reach the most vulnerable. We talk to them and ask some questions, and from there we know if they also want to use The International Tracing and Messaging Service. Some people don’t have mobile phones so we give them an appointment either at the office for assessment or offer to pick them up from reception YMCA if they don’t know yet how to take the bus on their own to the city centre. Otherwise we give people a leaflet with a map to our office and tell them to wait for our call for an appointment.

When I am back at the office, I start matching them with volunteers to start the support.
Image © Nico Hogg

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Tags: asylum seekers, refugees, Volunteering, volunteers

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Health and social care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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