Home from home Hallam
Images courtesy of the Diocese of Hallam
Helping a refugee family – a Community Sponsorship programme.
In 2015, Pope Francis called for,
‘every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe’ to ‘host a refugee family…‘
We are a group of individuals from parishes within the Catholic Diocese of Hallam, who have responded to this call. The family we want to help will be the victims of war – just one of the many families that we see on our televisions and read about in the newspapers nearly every day.
The family will find themselves in Sheffield through no design of their own, and we want to help them as they try to establish a completely new life in our midst.
What is Community Sponsorship?
The Community Sponsorship programme is a Home Office initiative set up in 2016, offering extra funding (over and above what the government have already allocated) for community groups undertaking to support a refugee family for their first two years in the UK.
Approved by the UN’s Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the family will also be supported by our own government. However the criteria for an application to be successful are quite stringent.
What have we done so far?
We had our first meeting in May and are now researching how we are going to support the family in finding accommodation, getting access to employment and benefits, education, welfare services – all the things that can be quite bewildering when starting afresh in a new country.
Sheffield City Council have provisionally approved our application, and we hope to submit an application in principle to the Home Office in November.
You might want to set up your own group, to welcome another family. You have to raise a minimum of £9,000, and fill in an application to the Home Office. One of our group would be very happy to talk to you about it, and you can find out more details about it all here: https://resetuk.org
Alternatively, we plan to send out quarterly newsletters, so if you would like to know more about our project, please contact Project Co-Ordinator Eva Kaltenthaler: ekaltenthaler@hallam-diocese.com
