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City 'failing asylum-seekers over health care and decent housing'
ASYLUM-seekers in Hull are still finding it hard to access medical care and living in housing so poor that it affects their health, according to a report
The study, commissioned by NHS Hull, talked to some of the 1,600 asylum-seekers and refugees who have arrived in the city in recent years.
Some of its recommendations – including providing counselling for those who suffered trauma in their home countries – have already been taken up since it was accepted by the NHS Hull Board.
The report calls on the authorities to play a more important role in ensuring that housing for asylum-seekers is adequate, saying there is "abundant evidence of unhealthy housing" provided by private landlords contracted out by the UK Borders Agency.
It cites interviews with people living in damp and crowded houses. One interviewee stated that whenever it rained water seeped through the walls.
The report's author, Prof Peter Campion, who has worked in frontline GP services, said the city, whose most famous son is the abolitionist William Wilberforce, had "an opportunity to address another humane goal, to welcome those seeking sanctuary from persecution from around the world".
The emeritus professor, who worked at the University of Hull, said some housing was of a "dodgy" quality, but the council was now looking to monitor it more closely.
He said there was "an element of ignorance" displayed even to the people who had settled in the city and people had to understand asylum-seekers were neither taking jobs nor scrounging benefits.
"When people hear their stories and get to know them they become more accepting," he said.
In all there are around 1,600 asylum-seekers and refugees in Hull, including around 100 destitute refused asylum-seekers. The figure does not include the far higher number of migrants from the so-called A8 accession states, including Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.
In general, the report says attitudes towards the newcomers have improved.
But an African living in the city for some years says he still gets abuse when he goes into a pub and is patronised by NHS staff. Some of the worst racism, however, comes from white eastern Europeans, who he reports "call us niggers, spit and hold their noses in the street".
Interpreters "spoke of attitudes in NHS staff towards themselves and their clients, of disprespect, verging on racist".
The report concludes that attitudes need to change "from suspicion and hostility to welcoming and caring."
Already the specialist counselling service, the Haven project, which faced closure because of lack of cash, has been given 70,000.
There are also plans to pay doctors more to see asylum seekers, provide a new multi-language DVD welcome programme for new arrivals, and train health staff in awareness of trafficked children and adults, all proposals under the umbrella aim of seeing Hull become "a city of sanctuary", a movement that began in Sheffield.
The health and social care of asylum-seekers would be overseen by a new Sanctuary Board made up of NHS, council staff and the voluntary sector.
Overall the changes would cost around 140,000 to implement, including extending the post traumatic stress disorder service, already being offered to war veterans locally.
The health locality director for the North, Andrew Phair, said the extra costs represented a tiny proportion of their 470m budget.
Hull Council said they were committed to developing Hull as a city of sanctuary and would be meeting the NHS and the voluntary sector in the next few weeks.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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