Advice and Support

Welcome to our Advice and Support service! Here, we aim to provide a comprehensive resource hub for individuals seeking guidance, assistance, and support on various aspects of their journey. Whether you’re navigating the asylum process, seeking mental health resources, or looking for community support, our goal is to empower you with the information and tools you need to thrive. From practical advice to compassionate guidance, we’re here to help you every step of the way. Welcome, and know that you’re not alone – we’re in this together.

Legal support

Shpresa works with MiCLU (Migrant and Refugee Children’s Legal Unit) on the Breaking the Chains (link to Project page within our site) project, which focuses on strategies to improve the prospects of Albanian children making successful protection claims in the UK. It has brought together specialist barristers, solicitors and academics to consider how legal professionals and others can ensure that children from Albania are granted meaningful protection against the risks of return to abuse in their country of origin, or further exploitation in this one.

Albania is a source country for one of the largest groups of trafficked women and children to reach UK shores, and is consistently in the top 5 or 6 child asylum applicant producing countries in relation to child asylum seekers in the UK. Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children from Albania – who have been trafficked or who are fleeing threats or violence – arrive in the UK every year, destitute, exhausted and traumatised. However the government’s approach to Albanian children and young people’s asylum claims does not accord with the reality on the ground in Albania: these very vulnerable young people have a less than 0.5% chance of securing protection from the Home Office when they seek asylum in the UK.

The project consists of a 5 point approach to providing specialist advice and support to the most vulnerable asylum seeking children in the UK:

Support and identification
Expert triage and prioritisation for acute casework service
Acute child-centred casework service
General engagement and empowerment programme including provision of child-friendly information
Immigration Champions ‘Voice of the Child’ engagement and empowerment programme

UK integration support

Shpresa works so that the Albanian-speaking community can positively integrate into UK society. We help them so that they can understand and access the universal services available, obtain training and find work, and feel socially part of a community

We want Albanian speakers living here to feel settled, safe and confident. We support them to adapt so that they can re-establish their lives – lives where they can vote, feel less isolated, take an active role in caring for their community and environment, and are happy.

Essential to our success is our partnership work with specialist providers who offer further support and training. This enables Shpresa service users to take part in courses that will help them to find work. This training often takes place on our premises (teaching assistant (TA) training is one example), so that we can further support our users by providing child care or crèche. Training like this is then followed up with work experience, which we can provide in-house at Shpresa, or through our partnerships with local schools.