Community Hub for Ukrainian refugees in Salisbury expanding
It's billed as a 'one-stop shop' to help people settle in here
A few weeks after setting up a community hub in Salisbury supporting Ukrainian refugees and their host families, it's proving really successful.
Sessions run every Friday morning at the city's Methodist Church, bringing lots of voluntary groups together to give advice to people settling here.
Jane Ebel is behind it, and says in addition to coffee and cake, it's really helping people:
"We're trying to pool all the available information from the host families, that are finding out the hard way how to resolve things; from the Council; from the voluntary community; and from the Ukrainians themselves. So we're trying to bring that information together and hand it back to people."
The group's getting support from Wessex Community Action (WCA) too, to bring together lots of local organisations to help refugees and their host families through their new situation.
The Wiltshire Community Foundation, Alabare, Spurgeons, Citizens Advice, Barnardo’s, Wiltshire Victim Support, Rethink and Wiltshire Sport are among those involved.
Amber Skyring from WCA said:
“We are getting responses ready and believe by working together we are stronger and able to co-ordinate our services more effectively in light of the numbers of refugees coming in.
“We are seeing the enormous good will and energy emerging from the community hubs via the churches, rotary clubs and other many other community organisations working together on the ground. We want to bring them together to network in such a way that we can also start to recognise and understand what needs and issues might be emerging from the work they are doing.”
The next focus for the Salisbury Community Hub is to set up English language support for refugees.
They're finding that many families have just one, or sometimes no, English speakers, and are struggling with things like visa paperwork, setting up mobile phones or getting a National Insurance number.
Jane Ebel says they are also seeing offshoot groups starting up already:
"A lot of the villages around Salisbury have become little hub chicks! That's really great because you've got communities out in the villages and quite a few families in that location, so (the hub's) an evolving thing. It's very interesting to see how it's developing."