New lives in a strange land
Charity helps refugees during Covid crisis
For many across the region, the effect of coronavirus and related months of restrictive measures have been among the most challenging periods of their lives.
But for those arriving in Stirling after fleeing persecution and violence, it is an added hurdle in the road in their efforts for a fresh start.
One local charity which has been supporting refugee families coming into the area is Forth Valley Welcome, who support around 150 people across the wider Forth Valley area, including 12 households based in Stirling.
Most of their traditional work in helping refugees settling into their new community has been put on hold by the restrictions of the pandemic, but they have still been helping out as much as possible within the new guidelines.
Volunteer Rebecca Wadge is the charity’s project co-ordinator and said the previous experiences of those they support have offered them a strength unavailable to many of their Scottish peers.
She told the Observer: “We had to stop most of what we do, including all of the events and real face-to-face contact.
“We’ve been busy keeping in touch with general health checks and finding out what they needed doing - whether that’s dropping off a prescription for a shielding family member or organising food drops because halal meat is difficult to source.
“One of the biggest issues has been digital isolation because most of the council’s English lessons have moved online and most of the people we support generally have quite low IT literacy so we’ve had volunteers helping with that but there will be quite a few people who will be behind on those lessons.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, we were expecting to see a lot more requests, but we realised that these people are very resilient and it started to occur to me that it was horribly familiar to them because they are used to hunkering down due to their own experiences with war and conflict.
“We’ve had families who have been here for five years who have their own networks and then we have a family who arrived just before lockdown and I can’t imagine what it’s like to arrive in a country where you don’t know anybody and everything is locked down.
“A lot of them find the restrictions on meeting people indoors very different because they are used to big gatherings so it’s very counter-cultural for them and we do have concerns about their mental health the longer it goes on.”
The refugees supported by the charity and Stirling Council are brought into the area via the Vulnerable Children Resettlement Programme or the Vulnerable Syrian Resettlement