Help refugees to rebuild their lives in Glasgow

The numbers of refugees needing our support has doubled!

Help us raise money to support refugees and asylum seekers through Crisis Support, Befriending, Refugee Hosting, Casework and Advocacy. 

Positive Action in Housing is a Scottish registered charity based in Glasgow. We have been around for 25 years now. 

When survivors of torture and persecution, trafficking victims and unaccompanied asylum seeking children contact our team or caseworkers from refugee and homelessness organisations we do our best to ensure they have a place to call home and are focussed on securing their claim to asylum . People are often feel isolated and lost, don't know the system and often their first language is not English. 

Glasgow has seen its share of tragedies as a result of various asylum contracts since 2001 and a tortuous asylum policy that reduces people to poverty. The city also has the biggest asylum population in the UK so this is no small matter. We try to give people from refugee communities the help and advice that we would all want to receive if we were forced to leave our loved ones, everything we know and our country of origin. 

Our aim is to support those in greatest need and to help people lead happy and productive lives within our communities and to put everything we can in place to help people to resettle. 

We work in three main ways. 

Our destitution  and refugee resettlement services take new referrals through our helpline service which is open Monday to Friday between 10 am to 1pm & 2pm to 4pm. We also take enquiries from people at pre asylum stage, single men and women who have ongoing asylum claims in dispersal and hotel accommodation and refugees across Scotland. 

We do have room!

We provide refugee hosting through our Room for Refugees programme which operates UK wide and especially Glasgow and London. Check out this Guardian photo essay on our work!! This enables individuals at risk of destitution and without recourse to public funds or housing to overcome a crisis situation, resolve their legal situation and in long term build productive, stable lives. The goal is safe, rewarding hosting experiences that transform lives and build lifelong bonds. The premise of the programme is that by creating opportunities for human interaction, we break down the walls of prejudices and long held stereotypes. Delivered UK wide and developing in the US. 

Emergency Relief Fund

Through our Emergency Relief Fund we provide crisis grants to asylum seekers without money to support their daily living needs such as food, toiletries, mobile phone top ups and bus travel. Through our Volunteer network we are able to mobilise humanitarian support for asylum seekers in Glasgow and people help on a one to one basis with things like GP registrations, Opticians appointments, joining schools and enrolling at college. 

Refugees are being denied safe passage

Last month, we found ourselves in the eye of a media storm after the Park Inn tragedy in Glasgow. Sadly, yesterday too we were deeply saddened - but not surprised - to hear of a 16 year refugee child drowning in the English Channel in a bid to find sanctuary in the UK. More of this is going to happen as long as the UK government denies safe passage and europe prevents people from resettling. This affects our work. Kent Council says it doesn't have homes for child refugees - we would refute that because we have hundreds of refugee hosts in Kent and across the UK who are desperate to provide loving homes to child refugees. 

Help us make the world a better place

We want to use this attention to raise money to support our casework, humanitarian and resettlement with people from refugee communities. Donations help us plan out our support and respond to those in greatest need. As a small charity we have the advantage of being able to respond quickly as we did during the 2015 refugee crisis and more recently last month in response to the Park Inn tragedy when we mobilised resources and volunteers.This money will help us expand our provision and ensure that we can work with as many people as possible to make the world a better place.