Supporting refugees, asylum seekers and their mental health
Mental health
5 December 2023
By Louisa
Open Forum Events hosted the Supporting Refugees and Asylum Seekers national conference in Manchester. Mayden attended the event as exhibitors, where delegates received updates on the current challenges facing refugees and asylum seekers and the UK migration system.
The agenda featured a line up of expert speakers, to provide updates on the current situation, share professional best practice on supporting asylum seekers with their mental health and depict lived experience.
“Refugees and asylum seekers can have complex health needs. These may be influenced by experiences prior to leaving their home country, during transit or after arrival in the UK. Holistic and person-centred care is essential to support resilience and help them adapt to life in the UK” – Dr Fiona Watson, GP, Hawthorn Medical Centre
Useful resources from the event:
- Jon Featonby, Chief Policy Analyst at Refugee Council, talked about their recommendations for a National Refugee Strategy that they published in the summer.
- Dr Fiona Watson talked about the health risks for refugees and asylum seekers and how GPs are going out to hotels and accommodation to provide care in Manchester.
- Meta Randles of Barnardos presented on the support they provide for displaced children. Findings from the ‘A Warm Welcome’ report, published this summer, is a blueprint for displaced children seeking protection in the UK. Meta explained that the title is taken from Paddington’s story of arriving in London from Peru and that he had received ‘a warm welcome’ and they wanted to see how true that is for children today.
- NCFE, an education and training charity, presented a toolkit called ‘Settling in Britain’ which is a resource aimed at practitioners and professionals working with children and families who are settling in Britain, with input from Save the Children. It includes a section on mental health and wellbeing which covers building resilience, education opportunities and adapting the curriculum.
Asylum seekers and mental health
A survey by the Refugee Council in England found that 61% of asylum seekers experience serious mental illness and they are five times more likely to have mental health needs than the general UK population.
We are proud that iaptus, Mayden’s digital care record for psychological therapy services, is currently supporting the Family Refugee Support Project (FRSP) in Liverpool, across three of their four services.
FRSP has been providing psychotherapy to refugees and people seeking asylum in the North West for twenty years. Therapy is provided in a holistic way, alongside support in the form of signposting, information sessions and individual coaching to help integration into UK life. FRSP staff have extensive experience and specialist training in working with people from other cultures and those who have experienced trauma.
iaptus supports FRSP’s Wigan-based services, Seeds of Recovery and Spinning World, both funded by Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (ICB). Seeds of Recovery is a first intervention service, offering urgent short-term therapy to newly arrived people seeking asylum and mental health support. Spinning World offers long term counselling for adults as part of NHS Talking Therapies, for anxiety and depression programme.
FRSP works with both individual adults and families. They also use iaptus to manage their original service, Grow Your Own Future, which supports asylum seekers who have at least one child under the age of 18. Clients receive 1-2-1 counselling and during their time with the core project they are given a piece of land to cultivate and tend. FRSP provides this service in their therapy garden and allotment sites, providing safe and calm places to enable the healing process.
“iaptus is helping us to manage referrals and support with data collection ensuring we are NHS digital compliant across our NHS commissioned projects. iaptus also supports our therapists and staff with uniformed working across multiple locations and services.” - Luke Stevenson, Psychological Therapist and Data Manager, FRSP
Would you like to learn more?
Let our expert team guide you through how iaptus can be tailored to your specific service workflows.