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Hospitality
Trust
4 min read

The toy blocks building trust, love and understanding

There’s a beautiful kind of hospitality, and this is it.
A baby plays with wooden toys on a carpert.
Photo by Troy T on Unsplash.

The leftovers were being gathered up, chairs being put back in their place, and happy looking people were dispersing. The last child there, his mum helping to wrap things up in the kitchen, was clinging onto a toy that I, in my imagination, like to think he makes a B-line for every time he spots it. It was an ordinary scene, but there was something undeniably extraordinary underpinning it.  

Although it’s hard to articulate with words (which is admittedly not ideal when the objective of the visit was to write about it), it was immediately clear to me, I had walked right into the aftermath of something truly special. I sat down with Joey and Sarah, two of the Growbaby team, to figure out what it was.   

Growbaby is an international children’s supply charity, providing clothing, equipment and everyday essentials for children up to five years old. Launched in 2003 and rooted in a local Vineyard church in Kingston Upon Thames, there are now multiple Growbaby hubs, one of which just happens to be at the end of my road in Cardiff. What started as a cupboard crammed with donated supplies is now a source of wholistic support for over one hundred families.  

As requests flow into Growbaby HQ, packages are lovingly compiled and then freely given. These packages are put together on a case-by-case basis and can include anything from nappies to pushchairs, clothes to cots, formula to toys. Such support doesn’t tend to be offered from a distance, on the contrary, every Friday morning families (mothers and little ones, primarily) are welcomed to ‘stay and play’, and to subsequently receive the kind of support that can’t be handed over via a package. The aftermath of one of these events was the context for my short but ever so sweet visit.  

The ways in which Joey and Sarah find themselves serving these families is constantly bursting the banks of their expectations. 

The depth of relationship that has naturally built through their time together, with every Friday morning acting as a building block of trust, has meant that the ways in which Joey and Sarah find themselves serving these families is constantly bursting the banks of their expectations. The team have assisted in getting families set up with child credits and social services support, frequently acted as translators, ferried families to A&E, thrown baby showers, booked GP appointments, been birth partners, and even sought out affordable kitchen flooring on Facebook Marketplace.  

Working for the well-being of these families has also involved appealing to the Red Cross to try and re-unite a Sudanese mother with her twelve-year-old son who has been unable to get out of the war-torn country. With families from Syria, Sudan, Iran, Iraq and Somalia (to name but a few), many of whom have found themselves in Cardiff as refugees, Growbaby is far more than a resource centre, it is a beautifully diverse community, the most understanding of support networks, a means of building a home away from home.   

When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, the Growbaby team’s minds immediately went to the Russian women within their community, those who had brought their families to the UK in search of political asylum. These women had built a home for themselves and their children here, and yet, the news of the Russian offensive was likely to make them feel as vulnerable as the day they arrived. So, the team gave each of these women a card; a small but mighty gesture that let these women know that they were seen, safe, understood and loved in the place that they now called home.   

The team here are also hosting these families’ trauma and their fears, they’re holding space for their joys and their victories. 

I was struck by the fact that whole lives have been enhanced in this room; friendships have been forged, babies have been celebrated, all kinds of needs have been provided for, and women who came to Growbaby for help are now the volunteers who offer it. And these stories are a mere scratching of a powerful surface, the beaming smiles on both Joey and Sarah’s faces tell a thousand more. The impact that these women have had could never be adequately squeezed into an article (again, not ideal when an article is the objective).  

Stepping foot into the room that Friday morning was stepping foot into the most tangible sense hospitality one could imagine. Of course, there are the obvious, and utterly essential ways, that these families are being hosted – through resources, supplies and practical support. But the team here are also hosting these families’ trauma and their fears, they’re holding space for their joys and their victories. Each person that walks through the door of Cardiff’s Growbaby are finding a community who will welcome and host the whole of them, who will weep with them when they’re weeping, and celebrate with them when they’re celebrating.  

It’s a beautiful thing.  

We could be forgiven for thinking that this kind of no-strings-attached hospitality is a myth. If it ever did exist, it’s bygone, and therefore dwells only in the realms of nostalgia. So, counter-cultural is it, that we’d be suspicious if ever we were to stumble upon rumours of it.  

Well, no suspicion necessary here. It truly does exist; you can take my word for it. And I can’t imagine people more in need of it than parents, the guardians and nurturers of little lives.  

If you are in need of the kind of support that Growbaby can offer, you can see if there’s a Grow Baby near you by using its directory. 

Essay
Change
Christmas survival
7 min read

An Acton nativity and a new crisis at Christmas time

Inspired by a Christmas visit of Jose and Maria, West London churches aiding asylum seekers now expect a wave of evictions, Robert Wright discovers.

Robert is a journalist at the Financial Times.

 

clients of a charity queue beside a table of suppliers in a church
Ease clients select groceries.

It was the arrival of a single, memorable couple that prompted churches in East Acton, West London, to recognise their responsibility to care for the growing numbers of asylum seekers being housed in the area, according to Jon Westall. The husband of the pair, who had fled persecution in El Salvador, in central America, was named José (Joseph), according to Westall, a Church of England vicar in the area.  José was accompanied by his wife María (Mary), who was, Westall recalls, “heavily pregnant”.  The couple arrived at one of the area’s churches for their Christmas services in 2021. 

When they came to the church, Westall says, José and María were among 400 people living in a local hostel turned into housing for people awaiting decisions on their requests for refugee status. The status, which allows recipients permanent leave to remain in the UK, is awarded to those that prove they have fled danger or persecution. The couple’s arrival struck local Christians thanks to its clear symbolism, Westall recalls. But it also left them initially unsure what best to do. 

Nearly two years on, the church that José and María visited hosts a weekly drop-in for asylum seekers organised by East Acton Support Enterprise, a new charity set up with the backing of a local support group for would-be refugees. Westall, who is a trustee, says that Ease’s volunteers are a “right old mixture” of people of different faiths and none. The group seeks to support the hundreds of people in the Acton and Ealing areas housed in hostels and hotels while awaiting rulings on their asylum applications. Since the summer, it has also been grappling with the effects of new Home Office policies that mean people who succeed in their asylum claims often find themselves evicted from their temporary accommodation with as little as seven days’ notice. 

“It’s the whole community. These people are very passionate, very enthusiastic. They listen. They talk.” 

The effort in Acton is one of scores across the UK helping refugees that is hosted in a local church and that draws heavily on church volunteers. Westall says that, from church people’s point of view, they became involved in the nascent project because it touched them “quite deeply really” to meet José and María at Christmas. Ease prefers not to publicise the location of its drop-in, to avoid attracting attention from demonstrators against migration. 

“Jesus is a refugee,” Westall says. “There were just resonances really.” 

One of his clearest recent memories is of being called to help a man from Syria who had just been evicted from accommodation in the nearby west London neighbourhood of Hillingdon, with only five days’ notice. 

“He was standing on the street corner in Hillingdon with all his bags, absolutely paralysed with fear, this guy in his mid to late fifties,” Westall recalls. 

Sara Nathan, another trustee of Ease, says the drop-in opened at a critical time. She approached the church about using its facilities in January 2022, shortly after José and María’s first visit, after being asked by West London Welcome, another support group, to set up a drop-in in Acton. A new facility was needed to relieve strain West London Welcome’s facility in Hammersmith. Nathan, an active member of West London Synagogue, says the first Ease drop-in session, in February 2022, took place just in time for a surge in demand to help refugees. 

“We set up to start and the day we started was the day Putin invaded Ukraine,” she says. 

The group has been “running to stand still” ever since, under Lissa Pelham, the group’s co-ordinator, Nathan adds. 

“It has been growing considerably,” she says, adding that the group became a stand-alone charity, separate from West London Welcome, in September this year. 

One regular attender at the drop-in, Sobhan, an engineer from Afghanistan, says he values the mix of practical help and emotional support on offer. Sobhan – not his real name - was studying in the UK for a master’s degree when Kabul fell to the Taliban. Because his family was closely involved in the previous Afghan government, his life would be in danger if he returned, he says. 

He adds that it is “very nice” of Ease to organise the drop-in centre, which offers people staying in local hotels and other refugee accommodation free food, sanitary products and other help. The support supplements the £45 a week living allowance that those awaiting decisions receive from the Home Office. 

However, the drop-in is “more than just the help”, Sobhan says. 

“It’s the whole community,” he says. “These people are very passionate, very enthusiastic. They listen. They talk.” 

Involvement in Ease has made her more aware of the real nature of the problems facing people awaiting asylum decisions and more anxious to do something about them.

The complexity of the challenges facing Ease is clear at a drop-in session when Pelham holds her weekly briefing for the 20 volunteers present to help around 100 clients. Pelham starts by asking volunteers to ensure anyone new attending the drop-in is resident in Ealing. The checks are necessary because supplies are limited and there is a risk that asylum seekers travelling from other boroughs will take what is on offer and leave none for the people most dependent on Ease. 

Pelham goes on to impress on volunteers the rules about evictions from asylum accommodation. The warning is necessary because a Home Office drive to clear the hotels housing many of the tens of thousands of people awaiting asylum rulings has prompted a cut in the notice given to successful applicants – those granted leave to settle in the UK - to leave the place they have been housed. 

Successful applicants used to have 28 days from the issuing of their residence permit to leave the accommodation – already a demanding timeline given the need to secure a bank account, deposit for rent and means of paying the rent. Since August this year, however, they have been given only seven days from the issuing of the decision. Because the decision is issued by letter to people living in often crowded and chaotic hotels, if applicants receive their letters late or not at all, as with the Syrian man that Westall helped, the notice period can be shorter or non-existent. 

The change of policy is likely to affect many of the drop-in centre’s clients because as many as 68 per cent of initial decisions on asylum claims in 2022 decided that the person had a genuine claim to asylum. A substantial further proportion are likely to win the status on appeal – around half of completed appeals were successful in some recent years. 

Pelham reminds the volunteers that at times of freezing weather landlords are obliged to give tenants an extra three days’ notice of eviction. She also reminds volunteers that there should be no evictions over the Christmas period, between December 23 and January 2. 

However, there is a resigned recognition that some landlords will ignore the rules. Nathan has brought to the drop-in session a compact tent to hand out to anyone with no better option. A group of 10 Eritrean refugees have been sleeping under a nearby road flyover, she says. She has also been working to house evicted refugees through Refugees at Home, a charity that places refugees in volunteers’ homes. Nathan herself helped to establish Refugees at Home in 2016 and says new volunteers have come forward as a result of the surge in evictions. 

Pelham asks volunteers to ensure the details of any clients reduced to sleeping on the streets are recorded. 

“It keeps getting worse,” Pelham tells them. “It really feels that way.” 

The difficult circumstances and challenging policy background do not noticeably damp the atmosphere at the drop-in, however. In front of a side altar in the church, one would-be refugee uses a borrowed guitar to serenade those present with a string of classic songs such as Elvis Presley’s Baby, 'Let’s Play House'. Some attendees attend an art therapy session, while others work at their English. 

One Christian volunteer, Charlotte Aldridge, says involvement in Ease has made her more aware of the real nature of the problems facing people awaiting asylum decisions and more anxious to do something about them. 

“I suppose from a Christian point of view, I feel it puts the gospel into practice,” Aldridge says. “It’s nice to be part of a positive project that’s doing something practical to help people in the area.” 

“They’re in the UK now. If a British person is nice to them then understands them, that’s a very relieving thing mentally.”

Westall acknowledges that asylum-seekers’ problems are a matter of acute political controversy. There are people among the attendees at the drop-in who made clandestine crossings to the UK by means such as small boats to lodge their asylum claims. 

The vicar insists the asylum-seekers he meets have not come to the UK just in search of a better life but have genuinely fled trauma and situations that would prompt anyone to flee. He reports few complaints from local people about the church’s work. 

“There aren’t many people who stop me and say they shouldn’t be here,” Westall says, adding that the congregation of the church that hosts the drop-in has been “very supportive”. 

Sobhan, who has just received refugee status and is looking for work, says it is a “great thing” that Ease offers companionship to refugees living in the area. 

“They’re in the UK now,” he says of the refugees. “If a British person is nice to them then understands them, that’s a very relieving thing mentally.” 

Westall, meanwhile, along with his wife, is a godparent to José and María’s baby. The family are now living elsewhere in the UK. 

The vicar says, however, that the meeting with the couple provided a window for local Christians onto a world they had not known at all. 

“I’ve learned a huge amount from the people I’ve met and the people I’m getting to know,” he says.