London Community Reponse Fund Wave 2 - with MUSAWA BME Consortium

This project is funded by City Bridge Trust's London Community Response Fund in respoinse to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Project Aim:

A multilingual phone service offering regular remote contact to our most at risk clients linking them up to mainstream services for food, benefits, and other mainstream support arrangement for Covid-19. Also to provide emotional support to reduce feelings of isolation and help them to handle anxiety and grief

Background:

The combination of practical challenges and pre-existing emotional problems, together with raised levels of grief and suffering from Covid-19, make the impact of the current situation (of Covid-19 pandemic) particularly pronounced for our clients.

Issues people are contending with are:

• Lack of income and basic necessities, such as food, and struggling to secure them;
• At high risk of developing the virus due to raised levels of underlying health problems such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease;
• Living with severe overcrowding and in multi-generational family units;
• Considered very hard to reach by statutory support services and already have poor access to health care;
• Vulnerability due to traumas of the past (e.g. forced migration, the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire);
• Without extended support networks provided by family and friends;
• Digitally excluded and unable to access or engage with online support in ways that other members of UK society can.

We know that British black African communities are hard hit, with a COVID19 death rate 3.7 times that of white British people, and other black communities with similarly high levels (Platt and Warwick, 1.5.20, Institute of Fiscal Studies). Our clients are from communities that were experiencing inequality before the start of this crisis, and we are already seeing these inequalities increase.

Organisations delivering this project are:

• FAWA (French African Welfare Association)
• IA (Iranian Association)
• QPBA (Queen's Park Bangladeshi Association)