Thanks to a year’s funding through the national Government Asylum Dispersal Grant scheme, our successful partnership with West Sussex Mind will not only be able to re-start, but the scope of the project is set to expand. We have secured significantly increased time from a West Sussex Mind-employed Mental Health Support and Outreach Worker who will be recruited especially for the position supporting asylum seekers, and this will run in tandem with the contract Mind holds from WSCC to provide mental health support to resettled families (i.e. those who arrived in the UK with refugee status). The project will also include training and mental health support for our volunteers and staff, who support beneficiaries dealing with trauma, and who beneficiaries often disclose their harrowing stories to.

The funding was made possible due to the results of our previous collaboration – between October 2023 and July 2024 through our partnership with Sanctuary in Chichester, West Sussex Mind supported 50 refugees and asylum seekers and provided:

• 44 weekly drop-ins with our refugee support worker
• 122 1-2-1 sessions for refugees and asylum seekers
• Support to people from 23 different nationalities

The new grant will pay for 30 hours a week of a Mental Health Support and Outreach Worker to provide specialist mental health and wellbeing support to Sanctuary’s beneficiaries on a one-to-one basis, with interpretation services available when needed. The aims of the project are to:

• Link to clinical services and step up beneficiaries into these services where needed
• Support provided within Sanctuary’s service venues in Chichester but also outreach support for the families who are housed in the community
• Ready longer-term beneficiaries to receive group support and, where appropriately identified, assist into West Sussex Mind’s peer volunteer programme.
• Support asylum seekers to prepare for GP health check on arrival to reduce the stigma and cultural barriers to disclosing mental health problems
• Raise awareness amongst primary care staff of trauma and mental health problems experienced by asylum seekers, and support available.
• Provide monthly wellbeing check-in sessions for volunteers of Sanctuary to ensure their ongoing resilience and ability to support the beneficiaries
• Set up a men’s group for peer support (we already have a women’s group).
• Provide four mental health and wellbeing training sessions for Sanctuary’s staff and volunteers so they can better support beneficiaries’ and their own wellbeing.
• Produce two recorded webinars which Sanctuary can use for ongoing training of new volunteers around mental health and wellbeing
• Produce a video case study which can be used for Sanctuary and West Sussex Mind to support reduce stigma for asylum seekers with reaching out for support in the future as well as helping to promote the work of our partnership.

Annie Foot, Head of Community Mental Health and Development at West Sussex Mind said about the collaboration, “We’re really proud of the work that West Sussex Mind and Sanctuary in Chichester have already delivered through our existing partnership to support asylum seekers and refugees in the Chichester area. It’s fantastic to be able to expand this work thanks to increased funding and I’m delighted that our values as an organisation align so well with those of Sanctuary in Chichester to deliver such vital support to an incredibly vulnerable group. We can confidently say that the experience of asylum seekers in our community will be improved through the work we deliver together.”

Tony Toynton, Chair of Sanctuary in Chichester added, “We are really pleased to have secured this partnership with West Sussex Mind, to continue the great work we did jointly last year. Supporting the mental health of refugees and asylum seekers and our volunteers who work closely with them is so important.”

Annie and Tony are pictured above.