Revive - This family are thriving in their new community

Revive helps people establish safe new lives in Manchester after the trauma of fleeing their homelands. They offer immigration, housing, benefits and social care casework and an enrichment programme to reduce social isolation and support language skills. Their service users are disproportionately affected by the cost of living crisis - often having no recourse to public funds and being prevented from working. Those who can work tend to be in low paid employment because their qualifications and experience aren’t transferrable.  

The cost of living grant helps keep peoples’ heads above water and maintain some dignity in their poverty. For example, they have supported J, who arrived in the UK from a refugee camp in Kenya, where he had been separated from his four children, four step children and their mother. He was isolated and depressed, having exhausted the support of other agencies who found his case too complex. Revive helped him obtain exhaustive proof of his relationship with his pre-flight family and advocated on his behalf with the Home Office – resulting in the family obtaining indefinite leave to remain in this country. 

They supported the family to access airline tickets from the International Organisation for Migration and the British Red Cross. On their arrival, Revive helped with: interpretation, biometric residence permits, accessing education and health services, claiming benefits, applying for housing and setting up bank accounts. Once they moved to family accommodation, they helped them set up utility accounts and payment arrangements. 

This family are thriving in their new community after eight years together in a refugee camp and four years of separation. The cost of living grant helped cover travel expenses, culturally appropriate food parcels and hardship payments until they were able to stand on their own feet.