WHAT REGIONAL REFUGEE FORUM CAN DO FOR YOU.

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT with members:

Access - Empowerment – Advocacy Update

The RRF’s Training & Development Project has started supporting members from the Region`s RCOs.
We are supporting participants to improve community access to the most appropriate support for
training, employment and career goals, physical and mental health, and to promote greater safety
and security in the areas in which they live.
The project is also empowering participants to be effective advocates and community
representatives on unmet needs, barriers, disadvantages, inequalities and discrimination that they
and others face in progressing these areas of life. We are supporting them to gather evidence and
use it effectively through engaging in local policy and planning processes, and contributing to the
RRF’s sub-groups to present the Collective Voice at the regional level.
In addition we have started to support the development of greater awareness, understanding and
skills within key service delivery agencies so that they can develop better and sustained relations
with the refugee and asylum seeker community, and deliver a more accessible, appropriate and
effective support to them.
Please contact us to hear more about the support we can give to you
Herbert Dirahu, Project Manager herbert.dirahu@refugeevoices.org.uk or phone 01642 232446 in
Middlesbrough and 0191423 6255 in Gateshead.
Or just pop in to our offices at the Newport Neighbourhood Centre in Middlesbrough or to Design
Works in Felling, Gateshead. Monday to Friday (9:00am – 5pm)                                  
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RRF supports regional campaign against UKBA change of contract for asylum
seeker accommodation in the region
On behalf of all members, the RRF Committee have sent a letter to the Immigration Minister,
Damian Green MP to demand the Home Office reconsider its new contracting arrangements for
accommodation of asylum seekers in the North East. Other agencies and organisations across the
region are also sending letters. Many of you will already have received letters from the UKBA
informing you of their decision to end its contract with NECCAS (the consortium of local authorities
in the North East). From April all accommodation will be contracted with the private sector company
Jomast. This will affect very many of your community members.
The RRF Committee has also supported the campaign to save Newcastle’s Asylum Seeker Unit by
sending a letter to Newcastle Central MP, Chi Onwurah, to ask her to make representations in
Parliament about the UKBA’s ending of its housing contract with Your Homes Newcastle. The RRF
can support RCOs in other towns to request the same action of their MPs. Please contact our staff
for more information.