Shropshire Supports Refugees

Who we are

Shropshire Support Refugees (SSR) is a small charity with a huge heart.

Originally starting as a welcome group for the Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement Scheme (VPRS), SSR has grown to need in the rural county of Shopshire. In the past eight years, the landscape has changed dramatically and we are now a rapidly developing multicultural county with a couple of thousand people here seeking sanctuary and refuge.

SSR is a welcoming organisation that provides people with emotional and practical support helping them to settle in their new home and now helping them to navigate the immigration system.

We run psychosocial activities, have an extensive ESOL programme, coordinate support across the county and raise awareness to create opportunities for community cohesion. SSR delivers empowering and independence building activities for the people we support. 

We pride ourselves in our person centred approach. Our trauma informed support workers specialise in facilitating offers of support from the community, and responding to requests for help from the people we support. 
We work closely with the local authority, other third sector organisations, the local community and faith groups.

We are now partners with Migrant Help and have just secured for a level two immigration advisor from the National Lottery. 

Our culture and values

We believe in treating people with equal care and compassion, no matter what their background circumstances are. 
Where we can be kind, we are when we can say yes, we do.

All people are welcome in our support hub, and if they can't get to us, we try to get to them.

Our mission is to facilitate as many offers of support as is feasibly possible as long as it will enhance the quality of the lives of the people we support. 

Although we are here to improve independence and nurture empowerment, we are happy to hold peoples hands in the first instance if it reduces the trauma of their experience.

We are still small enough to be able to dedicate decent amount of time and focus on the individuals that we support and we have a large team of over 100 volunteers who we bring into what we do to ensure that personal touch is maintained.
Our approach to managing the staff team is equally person centred we tried to facilitate flexible working and at times we are able to facilitate working from home when the situation is appropriate.

We encourage a relaxed yet efficient atmosphere at work, where the team are happy to chip in to any part of our service that is needing attention, we all work together closely to ensure a fair distribution of the workload.

We have faith in humanity and we champion values such as Authenticity, honesty, integrity, kindness, trust and transparency.

We are passionate about educating our staff, volunteers, the public and the people we support

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

SSR are passionate about fairness and making our support accessible to all.

Where we can we employ people with lived experience who are bilingual, when we struggle with languages, we manage with offers of help from other people that we support, or lean on Google translate. 
Where we can offer same-sex support, we do if this is an issue and a request  

All our staff are trained in safeguarding, exploitation, anti-slavery and trafficking and mental health support amongst many other courses.

Where we can give direct support we do but when people are struggling for whatever reason then we can deliver support online, via WhatsApp and also on Facebook..

We do group work we do one-to-one support and facilitate other offers of support from many other organisations charities and statutory bodies.

We try our best to use translated documents where we can and we use interpreters where we can. 
We are champions for LGBTQ+ And are very proud to have a diverse team in every definition of the word 

We regularly consult the people that we support directly about the support they need and we try to taylor what we do according to requirements.