Better than nothing

At the end of September the Refugee Welcome Trust finished the end of it's fifth 'official' year. With a fancy new name; 'Together Now', we're come a long way since we started in July 2010.

Since then we've brought over 53 people travelling on family reunion visas to be with their loved ones who are refugees living in the UK.

That includes 40 children who now have safer more secure futures with their parents. 

We now know that you can bring salted fish with you to the UK in certain conditions and limited amounts, that if you really need one you can find a Tamil speaking taxi driver at Heathrow and that when a family is on their last chance of being together they become capable of pretty much anything asked of them.

We're nowhere near making a dent on the massive need for these services in the UK. At an event this month someone said their service was 'better than nothing.' and I think that applies here. Even if we were only helping one person a year that's one less facing prolonged emotional trauma, or one less child with no secure home or education. One less person who can't sleep wondering if they'll ever see their child again.

When we set out we had some core principles that remain with us now:

• Treating family reunion as a right not a privilege 
• Making the process as simple as possible for the client

These might sound simple but are key to making sure our services remain client focussed and relevant. Our clients are very strong, independent people who are able to make decisions for themselves and their family. 

They can choose what flights they want, identify problems that might come up and manage the communications throughout the process. We're not here to baby anyone or take over, just provide what is needed along with a little more experience. 

Sometimes this means we don't ever even speak to the client. A case can be processed in a couple of emails at a minimum. Other times we might remain in almost constant contact for days or weeks to troubleshoot or provide reassurance. 

We somehow manage all this with the work of only a handful of amazing volunteers, contributing around their full time jobs. We've developed a model that's extremely lean and yet is able to expand quickly if cases arise. Our only current limiting factor is money. Quite simply if we had more money we could say 'yes' to more people. Bring more families back together.

A volunteer at a legal charity spoke recently of the rewards of her work; 'I couldn't believe the sunshine on that person's face. They are glowing because there family is here.'

Day to day we can sometimes forget the impact of what we do amidst the policies and procedures, admin, fundraising and sleepless nights. But when the text message comes or there' a phone call saying 'They're here' it's easy to see how we'll try and make it through the next five years. 

There's more information on what we do on our website here: www.togethernow.org.uk and you can make an online donation here.