Castlemily Community Church Furniture Project (360G-SCVO-a0g3z00000HpN08AAF)

Our Furniture Project provides help entirely freely to individuals and families in particular need of help to set up a first tenancy. These may be people newly granted refugee status, young mothers fleeing violence, someone with a history of of addiction. All our service users face the effects of poverty. We are invited to help at a positive time in a a person's life when they have taken the steps to get a tenancy and come to us for help to settle. This means that we are made aware of other help needed for someone planning for a better future. This has led us as a group of staff and volunteers to develop other supports when our skills and funds allow. Thus we run English classes for parents with young children with very little English and provide child care support for this. Volunteers and service users cook an international meal most weeks allowing people to share their skills and providing a popular drop in for some local socially isolated single men. Many of our English class students have worked with our Community Work student for the last 3 months to identify what they see as the key areas they need to address to improve integration into Scottish society , reduce isolation and prepare for employment. This work has been facilitated by a couple of group members who have better English and by Scottish "peer educators" sharing about cultural issues. The group identified the following 7 priorities: Some of these can be met by our existing services, some will be met within the new mini-courses proposed: others need extra funding' (1) The opportunity to learn English. We already provide ESOL classes and our qualified volunteer will continue to teach. (2)Raising children in a society with different values and expectations. (3)Addressing barriers to cultural integration. (4)Cross cultural learning, (5) Increasing self confidence Much of this will be done by sharing in the new groups. For some of these issues we will use external visitors, such as a social worker who is available to explain Scottish child care laws and expectations. Similarly after 19 years of working with asylum seekers and refugees we have volunteers and friends who are happy to share their journeys with the group. (6) Navigating welfare rights issues, school dinners, Universal credit etc. (7) Accessing employment and CV writing. The group's work identifying need and our general experience of shows a clear need for welfare rights input. We wish to employ a 5 hour a week welfare rights assistant. We also wish to offer two workshops with "Radiant and Brighter" to help prepare CVs and look at realistic routes to employment The group work we have done has been funded out of reserves and one small grant for a workshop with Radiant and Brighter, a pre-employment service for BME people. So we are now applying for funding for two strands of the work we wish to do Firstly we propose to run 3 eight week mini-courses between late February 2020 to mid October 2020. Each "course" would run once a week for the eight weeks, facilitated by our Community Work Assistant. The course will address the priorities identified above and aim for the group to find ways to change. Much of this will be done by sharing in the group. Other issues will use external visitors, such as a social worker who is available to explain Scottish child care laws and expectations. Similarly after 19 years of working with asylum seekers and refugees we have volunteers and friends who are happy to share their journeys with the group. Secondly the groups' work identifying need and our general experience shows a clear need for welfare rights input. We wish to employ a 5 hour a week welfare rights assistant. We already have funding in place for a 5 hour a week "extra support worker" to work alongside families in crisis We would appoint one person to cover these two related remits.. . (Last year we found we had helped 30 families or individuals in need of major support to prevent eviction, deal with family breakdown basically in addition to our administrator's already busy schedule.)