Always on
This project successfully funded on 9th October 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
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This project successfully funded on 9th October 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
We aim to raise funding to be able to continue the essential work that we do for asylum seekers and refugees living within Southwark.
Each week we help over 200 people relieve their destitution, access entitlements, and start to build a successful life in this country. We are a community service with strong support from local people, over 100 of whom volunteer to help deliver services while many other individuals and businesses contribute in-kind.
We are currently facing an unprecedented demand for our services while we also face one of the most challenging financial times. Many funding bodies are pausing, changing focus, or closing grant programmes which means there is severely reduced funding available for our sector and costs have risen, while at the same time several multi-year funding streams came to an end which represent nearly half of our annual income in 2026.
This financial year, SDCAS faces a deficit of just over £100,000 and we will have completely run out of funds before the end of 2026 if we do not find new major funders to support our work to meet our overall requirement moving forward of £220,000.
Without a successful crowdfunding campaign and new major funding, we may face the difficult decision of winding down SDCAS in an orderly manner by March 2026.
We are therefore focussing wholeheartedly on raising the funds to enable us to continue to deliver our services in the best possible way to the most vulnerable in our communities and support our local community in doing so.
Like many clients, Wahiba came to the centre for a very specific problem to solve with the advice team, which gradually unfolded into a broad relationship of service.
Wahiba had been let down by her solicitors who’s inadequate provision had resulted in urgent and very troubling legal concerns, which had caused profound challenges to her mental health and ability to cope. Wahiba’s worrying prospects left her feeling hopeless.
However, the Day Centre not only assisted Wahiba in finding a new solicitor who helped ease her legal circumstances, but opened a host of opportunities for her and her son to live with possibility and dignity.
After making contact, Wahiba started to attend the centre regularly, enjoying the delicious hot lunches, and using the vibrant space to relax whilst her son played in the creche. The free shop in the centre has provided her family with clothes, toys and shoes, and was also able to provide a mobile phone when hers was broken. SDCAS sits within a network of local organisations, so helped signpost her to various charities, including a foodbank, and mental health support charity. She attended a trip to the seaside with her son that she is expressly grateful for.
During Wahiba’s engagement, she was unexpectedly given notice of a transfer from Home Office accommodation in London to Northumberland. Given her family’s specific vulnerabilities, this could have been a disaster. The support she was receiving from SDCAS and mental health services locally formed a cradle network that were beginning to ease her difficult feelings of hopelessness. However SDCAS managed to prevent this potentially critical move.
Wahiba and her son continued to attend the day centre, growing in confidence, positivity, and colour. Staff describe her as looking radiant and feeling playful, and her son is doing very well. She now volunteers at the centre on beauty days, giving treatments to other women.
Wahiba said “I felt lost before I came to SDCAS. You don’t know if someone who’s new is going to necessarily understand you or your problems- they might even make it worse. But SDCAS supported me in many, many ways. They have done so many things that a solicitor couldn’t do for me, writing letters of support whenever I need it. Now, any problem at all that I have, I come straight to the centre. I can’t say thank you enough for everything they gave to me, they’re all like superheroes. All thanks to SDCAS, I’m feeling good now.”
Please help us to continue to support clients just like Wahiba.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made