A refugee aid group in Burnaby is launching a new program to turn regular citizens into settlement support workers to help one of the most vulnerable groups of refugees.
Journey Home Community Society will train church groups and community members to help people who apply for refugee status after they arrive in Canada. It’s the first attempt to coordinate help for this population, said James Grunau from Journey Home Community Association.
“I don’t know of anybody else that is actually training groups to sponsor refugee claimant families and to take on the full settlement picture for a newly arriving refugee claimant family,” said Grunau. “We’re not wanting to diminish the private sponsorship program. We’re just saying there’s a whole body of people already here who aren’t getting help or attention.”
Asylum seeking refugees arrive in Canada and then claim refugee status, unlike government-assisted refugees or privately sponsored refugees, who are preapproved before they come to Canada. Asylum seeking refugees can easily fall through the cracks because there’s less government aid available when they first arrive. That’s where Journey Home steps in, with help funding housing and applying for refugee status and income assistance.
There are roughly 1,000 refugee claimants arriving in the Lower Mainland each year. Journey Home, which only has five staff members, helps roughly 35 to 40 people a year, but Grunau sees this new program as a way to multiply the helpers. The training program will focus on three areas: housing, settlement support and relational care.
Journey Home is launching the program with a $10,000-grant from a Vancouver Rotary group. The program starts this weekend with Tenth Church in Vancouver.
For more information, contact Journey Home at [email protected].
Types of refugees:
Government-assisted refugees are preapproved overseas by the U.N. Refugee Agency and screened by Canadian agencies before they come to Canada. They are eligible for monthly assistance (at rates equivalent to welfare) for the first year they are here. They are also eligible for a host of settlement programs, and the costs are covered by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
Privately sponsored refugees are brought to Canada by groups of at least five people who must raise enough money to cover the costs of settlement and housing for the refugees’ first year here. Church groups or community organizations often band together to privately sponsor refugees.
Refugee claimants, or asylum seekers, are people who claim refugee status after they arrive in Canada. The asylum program is for those who fear torture and persecution in their home countries. In 2014, more than 13,500 people made an asylum claim. They are not eligible for many resettlement programs until they are approved as refugees. Roughly two-thirds are approved, but it usually takes three to six months. In the meantime, groups like Journey Home Community Association help them with housing and applications for status and income assistance.
