Drop-in

PAFRAS is the main project in Leeds pro­vid­ing direct sup­port to des­ti­tute asy­lum seek­ers. In 2009 we pro­vided on aver­age 460 hot meals and 320 food parcels per month to the 540 vis­i­tors attend­ing our drop-in ser­vice each month. That’s nearly 4,000 food parcels one year; made up of more than 15,000 tins of canned food, 9,500 cups of rice and pasta. To these fig­ures you still need to add food used in the hot meals we pro­vide; more than 5,500 in 2009. For more details on this visit our sta­tis­tics page.

After hav­ing had to scale back the num­ber of food parcels we deliv­ered between April and Sep­tem­ber 2010 we are very hap­pily now able to give out around 70 food parcels a weeks, largely thanks to the gen­eros­ity of schools, churches and other com­mu­nity organ­i­sa­tions who have made dona­tions from the Har­vest Fes­ti­val gatherings.

All those who attend our drop-in are pro­vided with a meal, pre­pared by our vol­un­teers, snacks and fresh fruit as well as hot and cold drinks. Addi­tion­ally, at each drop-in we dis­trib­ute food parcels put together out of the dona­tions of food­stuffs that we receive. We ensure that all vol­un­teers who han­dle food have food safety aware­ness training.

The food given out at our drop-in is a vital life­line for peo­ple who have lit­tle or no access to food else­where. At the same time our drop-in opens a vital social space in which peo­ple for whom meet­ing in a café is unthinkable.

Our aim has been to cre­ate a space that ser­vice users can feel at ease in and take own­er­ship of. To this end they are encour­aged to get involved in run­ning the ser­vice, from man­ning the recep­tion desk to prepar­ing food in the kitchen (more infor­ma­tion on this can be found on the vol­un­teer­ing page).

Des­ti­tute asy­lum seek­ers are one of the most mar­gin­alised and excluded groups liv­ing in Britain today. Iso­lated lin­guis­ti­cally, cul­tur­ally and socially, they fre­quent in a world where rumour and fear over-shadow and often play to great a part in people’s choices. In pro­vid­ing a lit­tle for people’s imme­di­ate needs, our drop-in also opens a win­dow through which our ser­vice users are able find out more about other ser­vices they can access.

A range of dif­fer­ent ser­vices are deliv­ered at the drop-in:

• One to one sup­port for clients with expe­ri­enced staff and volunteers,
• Advice, sign­post­ing and refer­ral pro­vided by expe­ri­enced caseworkers,
• Men­tal health sup­port and com­ple­men­tary therapies,
• Social activ­i­ties and vol­un­teer­ing – oppor­tu­ni­ties to take part in var­i­ous activ­i­ties includ­ing con­ser­va­tion, arts and com­mu­nity projects in part­ner­ship with other organisations.

The drop-in is held on Tues­days and Thurs­days between 10:00 am and 12:30 pm, con­tact us for more information.