Prior to the pandemic, the organisations interviewed in this project were like hubs where people could go and ask for help in person. This was particularly important if someone had received a message from school or a letter from the Home Office which they did not quite understand. They could bring the letter in to get help with understanding it. For obvious reasons, it is easier for people to help with explaining letters if they can read the letter first, so the lack of face-to-face contact made it difficult for people to get help with understanding letters.
As discussed earlier, the assumption that people would be able to access services online was a barrier to many asylum seekers and refugees for the reasons outlined in Barrier 1: Digital Access. A further barrier was created by the transition to phone contact as, very often, large organisations will have a pre-recorded message telling callers to press option 1 for x, option 2 for y, and this can be a challenge for people who do not speak English confidently yet. This issue is coupled with the ever- present anxiety that many asylum-seekers feel around doing or saying something ‘wrong’ that might jeopardise their asylum claim.
Finally, language was a barrier in accessing information as many asylum seekers and refugees are not yet confident speakers of English. This was exacerbated because people were not able to mix with others, so there were no opportunities for people to learn English socially or attend English classes in person.
Organisations became aware that, even though people were not able to physically come into their buildings, they were still receiving official letters with important information that they needed to understand. Some said that smart phones were helpful as clients could take photos of the letter they had received and send that in for someone to read and explain to them. COSS began to use an interpreting service that could join phone conversations and that helped with being able to understand what people needed help with.
From conversations with the participants and with the schools and organisations, it appears that a multi-pronged approach to disseminating information is needed to ensure that people are really able to access it. This means phone calls, letters, emails, texts, messages on other appropriate Apps (e.g. Whatsapp, Classdojo). There are benefits and drawbacks to each form of communication, for example some people found phone calls helpful, while others felt it induced anxiety, paper letters were not popular, however, they can be important to reach people who do not have phones. Text from written forms of communication could be translated using Google Translate, which was helpful, however, translations sometimes needed additional explanations which might be easier to achieve by speaking to someone. Therefore, information that was shared in multiple formats had the most likelihood of being received and understood.
Another really key aspect of accessing information was having one specific person to talk to, rather than having to call up a general phone number and speak to a stranger. All the families I spoke to had one, named person they relied up. It might have been someone from Family Voice, someone from the Health Inclusion Team, a volunteer from COSS’s Connections Team, a health visitor or an employee at COSS, New Beginnings or Learn for Life. Some people mentioned staff from their children’s schools. It was vital that the families had one person who they knew and trusted because there are currently frequent scams operated by people cold-calling and then trying to acquire personal details.
Some of the people interviewed mentioned that, unless they knew the person they were speaking to, they were uncomfortable to disclose information about their circumstances. One interviewee described speaking to a family on the phone who were in need of a food parcel, but when asked for their address, they were too frightened to disclose it and therefore it was not possible to arrange a delivery of the food to them.
What was clear was that each family needed to have one, single, named person who they trusted and who they could contact when they needed to find out information or ask for basic necessities.
In terms of support for learning English, many English classes, such as those run by SAVTE (Sheffield Association for the Voluntary Teaching of English) took place online during the Covid-19 pandemic. On the one hand, these were more accessible to some people for whom travelling is an issue, for people with caring responsibilities as they could attend at more flexible times, for people with young children and for people who were self-isolating. As explained earlier (see Barrier 1: Digital Access), online classes were not suitable for everyone and a further problem was that these classes became oversubscribed quickly. Some of the participants I spoke to were not able to find an availability at online English classes. While the classes worked well for those who were able to enrol and could attend, it was not the best solution for all.