Windermere Outreach – a year on
By Donika Celina Begaj, Advocacy and Community Relations Officer
February 2008
The Windermere drop-in centre was launched on 19 February 2007, becoming the fourth outreach centre of the Multi-Cultural Service. It is a weekly surgery open on Mondays at the Windermere Library. The centre offers advocacy support as well as information, advice and guidance to people from all minority ethnic backgrounds living and working in the area; it aims to strengthen partnerships between migrant workers and the local community and also to support newcomers in understanding the UK lifestyle and using the mainstream services.
The centre works in close partnership with Cumbria Police and in conjunction with the Rural Citizens Advice Bureau. During the past year contacts have been made with local employers, schools, agencies such as Age Concern, Churches Together, the Health Centres and GP surgeries, Adult Education, Connexions, Kendal College, Barnardos etc. to promote the services offered and for networking, signposting and referrals.
In partnership with Connexions, the Multi-Cultural Service is advising a local school with developing plans for multicultural awareness of their pupils. A Migrants’ Panel is also being organised to take place in Windermere where foreign workers will talk to a group of 30-40 local people related to their experiences of change and how they find life in the new community, answering questions local residents might have. We will look at possibilities of providing meeting places for drop-in cafes with the support of Churches Together.
During the first year forty six outreach sessions were provided, clients were from ten different nationalities, with about 58% having come from the Eastern Europe and others from Kenya, Thailand, Zambia, France and Spain. Enquiries dealt with included employment regulations, maternity leave and pay, national minimum wage, tax returns; tax credits and child benefit, worker registration scheme and residency for EU nationals, domestic abuse, education and housing. A third of clients have used the service twice, another third have returned to use the service three times and more, with different enquiries or have had longer-term support.
Welcome to Cumbria books have been distributed to all clients, their friends and colleagues; individual employees, health services and schools. These were also made available at Windermere library to library users with the help of the Windermere library staff. Community Support officers for Windermere, Grasmere, Ambleside and Rural areas are involved with further distribution of the ‘Welcome to Cumbria’ books and the Windermere outreach leaflets.