A partnership of SIS and Together Co have been delivering services to support Ukrainian refugees living in the city, for over a year using a grant from BHCC. The service has been recommissioned for a further 15 months.
“We would struggle without help from SIS and TCo. Lots of refugees and their sponsors would not be able to reach a clear level of understanding of each other and the services on offer. Support from [named staff} is difficult to overpraise; all of the social prescribers were most supportive, thoughtful, tactful and courteous when helping us.” Iryna Olyanovska, Stand4Ukraine
The grant has enabled us to deliver;
Social Prescribing at 82 Drop-In support sessions hosted by Network for International Women, Stand 4 Ukraine, BHCC Community Hub, BHCC Housing, TDC. We gave information, advice and guidance for 230 people helping with 160 onward referrals to specialist services in particular regards ESOL, Childcare and Employment.
“I’m over the moon with the outcome [improved economic wellbeing]. If not for you I would never know about this and I would be sitting at home unable to do anything, relying on my grand-daughter and children to support me financially” Service User
514 hours of Interpreting support for BHCC departments and CVS organisations
“The interpreter has been fantastic. From the first session he quickly assessed the way we needed to work and mucked in. It has been amazing support and a true reflection of “Community Interpreting” being so much more than interpreting words, he has been calm a reassuring presence, remembers everyone and liked by everyone.” Fiona Sharpe of B&H Network for International Women
Over 20000 words translated into/from Ukrainian including key documents and service information, surveys and results assessing needs, certificates and promotional materials.
“The written translation service has been greatly appreciated, and the turnaround time for the translation requests has always really quick, which is so important when we are wanting to update welcome packs, posters and other resources. I’ve used other translation services in previous roles and the wait times could be really long.” Stacey Dickson, Operations Manager, BHCC Community Hub
Built a fully accessible web page for accessing language support and translated information https://sussexinterpreting.org.uk/ukrainian/ with over 50 translated documents uploaded to the resource library https://sussexinterpreting.org.uk/ukranian-useful-information/
This fund also provided opportunities to;
- build successful collaborations with other delivery organisations we’d not worked with before
- creating new infrastructure systems for refugee support
- pilot adaptions to our existing service delivery models
- gain valuable insights into the Ukrainian community and culture for more sensitive service delivery
We have been granted further 15 month funding to continue delivery of the Social Prescribing service.
