Open College Network has this month given our training provided to refugee communities an accreditation at entry level 3. This training is provided by ROTA’s Active Lives, Healthy Minds Project to our refugee community partners. The main objective of the project is to prevent admission to acute mental health services by providing community based mental health and well being support services to members of refugee communities. To this end the training provides basic counselling skills to volunteers providing, mental health outreach workers working in their respective communities. 

The course comprised of 12 sessions that build the skills of participants and capacity of their organisation, titles include:

• Developing a Personal and Professional Development Plan
• Dimensions and core conditions of the helping relationship
• Collaborative working relationships
• The helping process
• Understanding the Internal Frame of Reference
• Starting and structuring a Session
• Facilitating problem solving
• Enhancing mind skills
• Conducting mid sessions
• Terminating help
• Understanding trauma
• Ethical Issues and Dilemmas

The training is free to partner organisations working with refugees. If your Centre is interested in getting volunteers trained please email Selam Kidane at selam@rota.org.uk and we will send you full details on the training and other support services that might be available as part of the project.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank, our partner organisations for all their help in developing this training. In particular we thank Evelyn Oldfield Unit for partnering with us on accrediting the course.

Race on the Agenda (ROTA) and HEAR Network in partnership with London-wide BAMER organisations are calling for an end to unequal provision and access to Mental Health services for Black, Asian and Minority, Ethnic and Refugee (BAMER) communities. The Mental Health Equality Campaign asks newly elected councillors to commit to six points co-authored by Experts by Experience, user-led VCS and BAMER NGOs, to improve the design, commissioning and delivery of mental health services for BAMER communities and, therefore, reduce mental health inequality.

The campaign team emailed the letter to all newly elected councillors in 32 borough councils and the City of London. Several councillors have pledged their commitment to Mental Health Equality and we will be following up with them. We also tweeted the letter to London-wide local parties, cc-ing Clinical Commissioning Groups as well as the Mayor of London. Within days, over 75 BAMER organisations and individuals co-signed the letter. 

If you have not already, we ask you to support our campaign by:

• Signing up to the open letter electronically
• Emailing or mailing the open letter to newly elected councillors in your borough
• Using Social Media to hold local parties, local candidates, local authorities, CCG’s and other mental health stakeholders to account, using the following hash tags: #MHEquality #MentalHealth4All #HardlyHardToReach
• Sharing the open letter with your network

The Windrush scandal continues to grow amidst revelations that over 60 British citizens were deported and an ever widening cohort of people have been caught up in the Government’s dreadful “hostile environment”.  ROTA along with numerous other groups went on record in 2014 with the prediction that the hostile environment that Theresa  May was then introducing through Parliament would lead to exactly these shocking outcomes.

Amongst other things we said that it would

• impact not only undocumented and short-term migrants, but wider migrant and BME communities; reduce access to healthcare for those directly; targeted by the NHS proposal and also people from wider BME communities 
• be, in effect, a charter for racial and other forms of harassment and abuse where people encounter rogue decision-makers (e.g. rogue landlords);
• make a range of service providers and individuals into unpaid (and untrained) immigration officials;
• encourage a climate that will make it more difficult for the most vulnerable, including victims of trafficking, to seek and get help;
• encourage the demand for identity papers on a previously unforeseen scale as individuals are asked to prove their entitlement to public services; these checks will disproportionately impact on migrants and wider BME communities;

It is appalling that the Government now claims that they had no idea that their approach would have these effects.  We told them that these results would be bound to occur – and they took no notice.

The anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire is on June 14th and comes with the news that well over half of those affected are still in temporary or emergency accommodation.

The official inquiry started its work at the end of May and  we have serious doubts about its ability to look at the many serious issues around race and class discrimination that the tragic fire has brought to the surface.

ROTA (like many other groups such as the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and the local MP) was turned down as a core participant in the inquiry so we are bringing together a number of key organisations to try to inform the debate from outside.

ROTA has also been commissioned by the EHRC to carry out a number of interviews with bereaved and other survivors of the fire to find out their experiences of public services since the fire itself.

We will be reporting the results of the survey to the EHRC early in June in time for the anniversary.

We are deeply saddened by the loss of our former Board Member and Chairperson, Kamila Zahno. She joined the ROTA board in February 2005 - April 2010.

For anyone who knew Kamila, there will be a memorial event on Sunday 1st July, from 2pm to 5pm at Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9AG in the Battlebridge Room.

The event, planned by Kamila herself and hosted by Kirsten Hearn, will comprise music, poems, and oral tributes.  There will be an afternoon tea, and plenty of time to mingle and chat.  It should be a wonderful occasion to remember her.

There will be a display of messages, condolences, and photos.  If you would like to contribute some words of tribute and/or have a good photo in your collection, please send these to Kate Bainbridge at katebn16@yahoo.co.uk.  Feel free to do this whether or not you can be present.

Mark Volunteer Week by taking part in Hammersmith and Fulham Volunteer Centre's Volunteering Fair and booking a free stand to promote your organisation's volunteering opportunities.

They will be promoting the fair through flyers, placed in key locations such as Job Centres, Libraries, The Advice Hub, Macbeth Centre, Town Hall, together with flyering in Hammersmith in the days before the event and through social media.

Book a free stand to promote your organisation's volunteering opportunities at Hammersmith and Fulham Volunteer Centre's Volunteer Fair.

Places are available on a first come basis. Set up will be from 11.30am for 12pm start.

Let Us Pray
By Professor Gus John

The British has a quaint way of marking anniversaries. With or without pomp and ceremony, the state invites the nation to join it in prayer, often for those whose anniversary it is marking, but far too seldom for itself, especially when it has so much to repent and make reparations for.

So, with the Windrush.

An ecumenical service is planned to take place in Westminster Abbey in June to mark the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush. Ironically, it would be hugely surprising if those gathered in that place were not to celebrate the contribution of those who arrived on the Windrush, others who were to follow them and the descendants of all of them to the rebuilding of post-war Britain and the shaping of modern Britain.

The one thing upon which we clearly have had no influence whatsoever is the British state’s conflation of immigration and race and the British nation’s stubborn belief that Britishness must and can only equate with whiteness. So, four generations after the Windrush, the descendants of those who arrived then and in the decades that followed are still labelled ‘ethnic minorities’ and potentially illegal immigrants.

The Hub for London is a new infrastructure support organisation for the region’s civil society.

This new organisation will offer a range of support for charities, social action groups and community organisations among others. The hub aims to offer three key functions: information (data and intelligence on civil society across London), networking (supporting civil society engagement and collaboration) as well as a voice and influence (increasing the influence and representation of civil society in policy and regional planning).

As part of this, GLV are recruiting five new posts for the organisation.

The roles will be part of an exciting and high-profile organisation that builds on a wider programme of work in place across London called The Way Ahead.

The roles will have close ties with local and regional infrastructure groups, local authorities, London Councils, the GLA, London Funders and others and it aims to champion the role of civil society as part of the vital infrastructure for the region. These roles will ensure that the hub delivers its strategic plan, supercharging civil society across London.

Thinking of holding an event at Resource for London? Come and visit before you book and get 20% Discount on your first booking with us (*offer applies only for new clients or new bookings).

You will have a chance to see the Centre's facilities and to sample the delicious menu provided by our on-site caterers.

To book your place on the day (10am to 2pm), click here quoting the time and names of those attending.

Resource for London is in a great location, less than a 5 minute walk from Holloway Station -  just two stops from Kings Cross on the Underground.

Available seven days a week between 9.00 am - 9.30 pm, rooms can be booked for full days, half days or evenings.

For more information email bookings@resourceforlondon.org or call us on 020 7697 4005.

Owned by Trust for London and managed by the Ethical Property Company, all proceeds stay within the voluntary sector and are used to support groups tackling inequality in London while the Centre is managed to high environmental standards.

Wildflame Productions is making an exciting new TV series for the BBC

The BBC are looking for families to step back in time to 1906, to form a traditional fishing community on the rugged Welsh coastline.

For a month you'll live and work as our fishing forebears did. Making your home in a simple fisherman's cottage, earning your living from the coast and enduring the worst and best the wild Irish sea can throw at you. Life will be tough but exhilarating, it will be a unique experience.

If you and your family have what it takes to survive and thrive in a historical community like this, we'd love to hear from you. We're especially interested in hearing from families with links and/or ancestral ties to the sea and coast.