Mark (not his real name) came to Access to Care as an asylum seeker from Afghanistan. Mark was a very positive young man and was keen to integrate in to the local Afghanistan community. Mark was supported to gain access to College for an ESOL course. Mark was a great cook and would often cook meals for the house with his rice dishes being a speciality.

Marks biggest concern was the topic of remaining in the UK. Access to Care supported Mark with attending immigration meeting with legal professionals and appearances at court. These were very difficult and emotional times for Mark.

Mark’s experiences were very stressful for him to re live and Mark would have to re tell the story many times through an interpreter to different professionals, as well as being cross examined in court.

A big part of supporting Mark for the Access to Care team, was language. Mark had access to an interpreter for court and other professional meetings which was a great help for staff in understanding Mark’s needs and wishes.

For every day scenarios Mark and staff developed a sticker process with items in the house being labelled phonetically so staff could pronounce words in Arabic correctly and Mark could work on the English pronunciation at the same time. This process worked really well.

Over eighteen months Mark developed conversational English, obtained his bio metric card, maintained his ESOL studies, got a bank account and established himself in the local community starting by playing football and attending the gym.

Mark was a great ambassador for other Arabic speaking young people who came to live at Access to Care.

After a long battle and two appeals, Mark was granted a right to remain in the UK, he had won! Mark went on to an independent flat and is doing well. He has a job in the town centre and is always happy to catch up when we meet.