The Welcome Project, funded by the London Borough of Lambeth, is helping to drive deep, wide-ranging transformative and systemic change across Lambeth in its support for asylum seeking families from local hotels. Piloted in 2021, the project offers warm, welcoming meeting spaces, language learning, family learning, the opportunity to cook and eat together, signposting to other services and progression opportunities (e.g. volunteering at local clothes bank, awareness-raising/public-speaking, CRF-accredited volunteer training).
Key project statistics
The Welcome Project has supported over 240 adults and children from asylum-seeking families to date, offering more than 1,700 learning opportunities.
We were delighted that the Welcome Project was the winner of the Health and Wellbeing category of Campaign for Learning’s 2023 Family Learning Awards, celebrating imaginative, innovative and inclusive ways of delivering learning opportunities to families.
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The Welcome Project supported London Borough of Lambeth’s successful application to become a Borough of Sanctuary and helped to trigger the appointment of a dedicated Better Start workers to target support for asylum-seeking families in local schools. Project staff, active in the Lambeth Sanctuary Forum, now provide school-based awareness-training commissioned by Sanctuary services and helped to drive the introduction of ‘International School’ status for two Lambeth Secondary Schools which now receive additional dedicated staffing and funding to better meet the needs of local migrant children including asylum seeking families and unaccompanied minors.
The Welcome Project in the press
The August 2023 edition of Nursery World featured an article by Annette Rawstone on the work of the Welcome Project
https://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/features/article/health-wellbeing-coming-together
In December 2023, Jessica Hill covered the project in ‘Family Learning: Where next for the ‘hidden jewel’ of adult education?’, written for FEWeek the premier news service for the further education and skills sector in England.
https://feweek.co.uk/family-learning-adult-education-programmes
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