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Handcrafted trainee sawing wood in a workshop

Asylum-seekers
& Refugees

We work with unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people to support them to transition to adult life in the UK, feeling fully supported, equipped, and confident of their independent and sustainable capability to flourish.

We foster a supportive community of friends across nationalities through weekly gathered activities, such as football, cricket, and dinners. These regular events create a positive shared space for socialising, getting active, and having fun! During the week, we also support UASCs with cultural and religious access to halal shops, churches, and mosques. At times of celebration, we all come together to join in the festivities, often with lots of food!

Housing is a key element of our support for UASCs. We welcome each person into a place they can call home, encouraging them to decorate their rooms to their own tastes and explore their local area. These houses, shared with a few other UASCs, offer comfort and stability throughout what can be a challenging period of asylum claims and settling into the UK. This housing and support mitigates against isolation and empowers young people to take steps towards living independently.

We help each young person to develop their confidence and competence in English. This can involve helping them to enrol in an English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) course and encouraging consistent positive engagement with college. We also offer additional ESOL gathered classes for those who are not in college or desire extra support, providing an alternative learning environment that is consciously trauma-informed. For those with Leave to Remain, we promote appropriate employment opportunities and further studies, led by each young person’s own aspirations.

Outings to the beach, bowling, climbing, go-karting, and more are a highlight of our work supporting UASCs. Opportunities for fun, build up beneficial childhood experiences, allowing each UASC to find hobbies they love, grow in their skills, and simply enjoy themselves!

To find out more get in touch by emailing engagehub@handcrafted.org.uk.

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Testimonials

There are countless challenges and barriers between our Fairchance service users and a healthy, productive and satisfying life.

We often use the term ‘chaotic lifestyle’ to describe the multitude of issues they face, and we contrast this lifestyle with an ideal that is secure, positive, stable and fulfilling. Often people looking in on the lifestyles of our service users find them intimidating, disorientating and full of risk – it should be no surprise that the same is true the other way around. For our service users who are looking into employment, education and stable accommodation, what they often see is a very unfamiliar culture and environment that they are unable to navigate.

Handcrafted helps to bridge this gap. It’s a middle ground between work and leisure where our service users are building confidence, self-esteem, working relationships, responsibilities, a sense of achievement. As a natural consequence of this and armed with the skills necessary to make this transition our service users are developing goals and ambitions and making plans for the futures that they are beginning to see as a reality for themselves.

Joe K, Fair Chance Project, Oasis Aquila Housing