Portsmouth Refugee Hub

Aim

We run weekly assistance Drop Ins in Portsmouth for refugees, asylum seekers and the vulnerable

Portsmouth City of Sanctuary assists asylum seekers, refugees and vulnerable people in the Portsmouth area. We run a weekly city-centre Refugee Hub in Portsmouth, providing orientation casework and English classes, but the need is expanding rapidly and we need extra funding to run it at the level of demand. The Hub is multi-agency, and includes – Citizens Advice; Moving on Project, Medaille Trust; Baby Basics; VISTA which helps women exploited in the city’s sex industry, and Community Connectors offering support to reduce social isolation. We also host art and craft sessions, have a free kitchen/cafeteria proviso food and drink, and offer other free services such as hair cutting, all run by volunteers.

We have 15 trained volunteer caseworkers and during an average session we casework 25-30 clients with legal aid, accommodation, dental/medical, mental health, school registration, transport, financial, volunteering and employment queries. We also run a separate referral only Drop In for female survivors of modern slavery or gender abuse. The demand for both these is growing.

Also, our caseworkers now support 100 or so asylum seekers accommodated by the Home Office in the Royal Beach Hotel Southsea, (the first in Portsmouth used for this purpose) and we have added a newly Home Office commissioned apartment block, which will house up to 60 asylum seekers. We have facilitated COVID pop-up clinics and  weekly English classes. We also support Ukrainian, recent Afghan and Hong Kong arrivals in the Portsmouth area.

We run gardening, beach-cleaning and other community projects, an excellent bicycle training and gifting programme, as well as dance and football sessions, the latter with strong support from Portsmouth FC. We give welcome boxes, containing basic items to all new refugee arrivals. We also initiated the Spaces of Sanctuary (SoS) project in partnership with other organisations in the city, including Hampshire Constabulary. This provides a network of public and private venues that will respond to the needs of anyone seeking safety and support.

This project successfully funded on 16th February 2023