Breaking Barriers provides refugee clients with tailored, 1:1 employment advice and guidance with a dedicated Employment and Integration Adviser, alongside Education (English and IT) courses at a variety of levels. They also give a central role to businesses, working directly with 40+ Corporate Partners (operating across sectors including finance, law, hospitality and media) to offer refugee clients skills workshops, paid work placements and permanent job opportunities.

The grant from SHCJ helped support 924 refugees through tailored, 1:1 employment advice and guidance and education courses – across London, Manchester and Birmingham

Case study - Philip received our 1:1 Employment support, attended our Education classes and completed a paid 6 month placement with  one of our partners. We are delighted that he now works in a permanent job with us, as a Partnerships Officer.  “I worked for 2 Christian organisations in Sudan, but the government shut them down and many of us went to jail. I was able to escape to the UK and luckily I didn’t suffer long because God had prepared Breaking Barriers as my helping hand. When I first came to them I was really lacking confidence as I’d been through many challenges. Breaking Barriers share a lot of the Christian values I hold. Values like loving others, empowering and respecting them, and giving them peace and hope. Now I have one of the best roles ever at Breaking Barriers, helping refugees get settled as I was helped to do. Through God I came across Breaking Barriers, and I just want to say that they have been amazing.”

Create Arts is built upon Christian values with the vision for a society where everyone deserves the chance to fulfil their potential.

Their aims are:

To use creative arts to empower, inspire, upskill and connect participants, reducing isolation, enhancing wellbeing, building self-esteem and developing learning.

To tackle inequality by giving society’s most disadvantaged people free access to the benefits of the creative arts.

To give participants the opportunity to take part in inspiring projects led by exceptional professional artists in areas where provision is poor and engagement is low.

To create a society that is fairer, more caring, more inclusive and more sustainable.

The SHCJ grant supported the delivery of inspired:arts - in collaboration with four young carer services- delivering 96 creative workshops with 80-100 disadvantaged young carers

Case study - Harrison* (12) is a young carer from Southwark. He took part in two inspired:arts projects: “I care for my mum because she is going through a tough time right now. She has helped me, so I repay her by taking care of her. Sometimes it can get a bit stressful for me because when my mum is in pain it upsets me and makes me worried. In photography, we got to go out to different places around the shopping centre and take photos of the lake. In ceramics, we got to create things with clay and then we made shrines. Doing creative workshops in person was really fun and I got to use my creativity. The artists, Alicia and Teresa, were really fun and they helped me a lot. They also taught us a lot of different things that I remember today. I would like to take photography as a GCSE now. I was interested in photography before but the project made me a lot more interested, because we were able to grow and learn different things and be creative. “

The Family Works is a trauma informed, early intervention family support organisation that helps families who are living in poverty or economic inequality, to achieve long-term, sustainable transformation.  They provide each family with a fully-trained Link Worker and volunteer Family Mentor for up to a year. The Mentor provides a listening ear for the family, someone to hear the story, encourage and celebrate small steps. The Link Worker liaises with the family, other professional organisations and agencies, and the mentor, to create a holistic wrap around support service. This support may include help with budgeting, arranging payment plans, advocating debt support, training/re-training, completing forms and applications, attendance at meetings, education and British status applications. 

The grant from SHCJ helped Family Works support 18 families – 28 adults & 39 children. Through working step-by-step alongside the family, small changes become big changes. 

Case study - The family is made up of mum, and three primary school age children. All four members of the family fled  domestic violence and initially lived in a 2-bedroom safe house. On fleeing to Sheffield, the family left behind all that they owned and mum had to leave a very well-educated professional job. The family faced significant trauma and had to move out of the safe house but were unable to access housing. Poverty prevented them getting a property and unemployment made it difficult to move forward. Mum was unable to resume her career due to gap in employment history. We liaised with housing to find them a safe and suitable property and helped provide them with goods for the new home.  We arranged payment plans to clear debt, advocated for children to get funding support for transportation to school and found training courses for mum to re-train. We also supported them with IT equipment for mum’s college course and children’s school work. Mum now volunteers for our project, has re-trained  and is now debt free and is able to budget her own finances. She has been able to apply get agency work and is working towards returning to her old career.

Prisoners’ Education Trust is  the leading prison education charity in England and Wales, providing distance learning courses, advice and guidance to men and women in prison. They provide access to over 125 different courses, including GCSEs, A-Levels, Open University Access modules, and a range of vocational courses. This enables people in prison to study subjects failed or never completed at school, work towards employment goals for their future, or study courses to help overcome personal barriers to rehabilitation. They advocate for system-wide improvements in prison education, using their voice to inform the public, parliament and media about the positive impact of education on rehabilitation.

The grant we gave helped Prisoners’ education provide over 1,300 courses. Their work not only provides individuals with qualifications to improve employability: feedback shows that it can aid personal growth and improve mental health and relationships with family members whilst in prison.

Case study - Paul is now an artist who also works as a housing management assistant at a charity for people who are at risk of homelessness. I left school with no education, no qualifications at all. I left two weeks short of my sixteenth birthday to get a job, to make money for the family. In prison, I started to take a really deep interest in art, and wanted to take it beyond the levels that they were offering in education. So I applied to PET to do one of their art courses. In open prison, I applied to go to university. I was only the second person to go from that prison. They sent two of us that year: one was doing shipbuilding; I was doing art – you couldn’t get more different. But the whole point is, it’s about learning and improving yourself. It’s about finding out what you care about. Studying has proved that I’m not just a reactive person. I can think, I can process. I can take in information and then I can get that information out there in a whole new way. Education gives you the power and the ability to get your point across in a better way.

Scotswood Garden Charity  is an award-winning, environmental, community organisation set up in 1995. Their mission is to inspire and promote learning about nature, the environment and sustainable living, whilst having a positive impact on people’s health and wellbeing.   Their stunning community garden boasts ponds, meadows, woodland, forest gardens, and a kitchen garden; and is a designated Local Wildlife Site. The Garden has flourished into a thriving community hub which supports 2000-3000 people a year and is a source of pride for diverse local people, the majority facing challenges including mental health difficulties, living with a disability or navigating a hostile asylum system. 

The grant from SHCJ funded the exciting second stage of the successful Breeze forest school project .To roll the approach out to reach more children by working with an additional 9 schools and help them deliver specialist forest school sessions. This will lead to an additional 120 children and young people receiving specialist, intensive support, which can help them re-engage in education.

Case study - Polly is an adopted child who had a disrupted early life and struggles with relationships. She has also recently been diagnosed with ADHD.  She is a bright, sociable child who has extremely high levels of anxiety which makes it hard for her to engage in learning at school and regulate her behaviour at home. She has had a lot of therapeutic support in the past and receives a range of additional support in school. She attended half day forest school sessions for a year.  Her parent reported “We think forest school is raising her self-esteem which was at rock bottom. Now she knows she is able to achieve and successfully manage relationships. She is proud of what she learns and makes, which is so lovely to see. Her teacher has also commented that Polly is happier and more confident in school which he attributes to coming to Forest School.  I have no doubt that without Forest School, it would be a real struggle to get Polly into school at all”. 

Voices of Hope (VOH), based in the Royal Borough of Kingston was founded in 2019 and aims are to restore and rebuild hope, improving physical and mental health through initiating community-based projects, engaging people who are experiencing disadvantage and isolation due to being minoritised, personal and/or social circumstances.

Their BRITE Box project teaches 600 families, identified as at risk of food poverty,  how to cook healthily on a budget. BB sends a weekly meal recipe kit with all ingredients, enabling families to prepare and eat a balanced meal together. 

They also help Improve well being and social inclusion by running 11 choirs across SW London in care homes, day centres and a women’s only choir for those who have experienced domestic violence/abuse.

They also host Kingston Women’s Hub - empowering women to thrive after facing domestic violence, honour-based violence, abuse or multiple disadvantages including physical/mental health problems, over 135 women a week.

The grant from SHCJ helped support over 550 families each week, through the Brite Box project, with an expectation for this to grow to 700 before the end of the school year.

Case studies - ‘Thank you. It's a weight off my shoulders once a week. That's a really positive thing in my week’ ‘I would like to thank you, not only has this helped out a lot with trying new food but it has given me and my sons something to enjoy creating tasty and healthy food, plus one less stress on a Friday, Thank you.’

- ‘When she goes to school [9-year-old] she says mommy I can’t wait to bring my BRITE Box to cook it by myself so she’s so happy and even me, I am very happy.’

- ‘She [9-year-old] is enthusiastic about it, it’s the magic of what it is going to be this week.’ ‘It is an awesome scheme to be a part of and quite literally given us a meal some days when we’ve run out and it’s exciting’